Hi All!
To answer the questions that Emah S, the new Israeli citizen :) asked me in the 'comments':

Hmm. I guess whether I will start living as a Jew depends upon what that means to you. I mean, I won't be frum, since I'm secular. I do observe/celebrate Jewish holidays already, even though I'm a Christian. My Christian friends have learned to accept my differences in holiday observance. To be honest, with my family (I'm single, so 'family' is mom and brother) I just celebrate regular Christian holidays. I've tried to incorporate Jewish holidays, but my brother feels weird about it, because we weren't raised with them. So I don't want to make him feel uncomfortable.

In Israel, I would attend services at a Christian place of worship as opposed to a synagogue. I have attended services with friends and family at several synagogues, but I don't go to any regularly. I feel that it would be deceptive to do that on a regular basis. I recently met a guy who regularly attended a conservative temple, and he's a Christian. He didn't proselytize, but when people asked him about his faith, he answered honestly. (The rabbi later questioned him then asked him not to continue attending, with which he complied.) This is a tough situation, because as Christians, we are taught to share our faith openly if asked. I would never choose to have a conversation like that at a synagogue; I just feel it's disrespectful and uncalled for. So I'm very reluctant to put myself and others into an uncomfortable position by attending regularly. Essentially, while I have tremendous respect for Judaism, it don't want to put on airs by pretending it's my faith, because I want to be honest-- both with myself and the people I'm talking to.

As far as whether I identify with being Jewish, I guess I do to a certain extent. Because of my upbringing, I probably have a similar mindset to many very secular Jews. I identify strongly with the Holocaust, I'm wary of people from lands that have been antisemitic (past and present), and I identify with a lot of Jewish cultural concepts that were an integral part of my upbringing.

Here's a story from my family's past that sort of explains a lot:

My mom's parents had a mixed-faith marriage. My grandfather assimilated into US society, at least outwardly. They married during WWII, and when he got out of the Navy, I think he wanted to try to forget the catastrophe, so he distanced himself, changed his last name, and married a happy-go-lucky Christian girl (can you say shiksa?). Later,when my grandma sent my mom for confirmation in a Lutheran church, she asked my mom's Jewish dad to buy my mom a confirmation Bible. That's when my grandfather decided there was a problem. He sent the Bible, along with Leon Uris' novel, _Exodus_. He said that if she was going to learn her mother's faith, she would darn well learn his beliefs, too. I think the zionism in _Exodus_ was the closest thing to faith that he had.
Now, it would be easy to judge my grandfather for several of the decisions that I just wrote about. But please don't; how can any of us know if we would have done the same thing in his shoes? He wanted to spare himself and his family the pain of a Jewish life, when the Holocaust was just ending and it was too huge of a thing to deal with. Isn't it still? But it was even more so back then. I remember how later in his life, he would take me out for Jewish food, quiz me on math, and make sure I identified with the Holocaust and know some of my family's history. So in some ways, yes, I identify with being Jewish in a cultural sense.