A “HinJew” wedding ceremony. (Photo by Aneta Mak, via smashingtheglass.com)

NEW YORK – Last April, Josh, 37 at the time, watched his wife Priya, 34, convert to Judaism at a Reform synagogue in midtown Manhattan. He was in Israel, watching the proceedings over FaceTime on an iPad that Priya that had propped up on a high table under the domed arc of the synagogue. He lived in Jerusalem, she in New York. He was Jewish, she was Hindu. They had been married for two months.

As Priya stood patiently, waiting for the Rabbi to finish blessing her, she felt the now-familiar bout of nervousness grip her. Her parents had no idea she was converting. “They would have my head in a platter in an instant,” she said in an interview earlier this year in February, almost a year since her conversion. “I probably will never tell them.”

Out of respect for her parents, Priya, not her real name, asked that pseudonyms be used in this article for both her and her husband.

While Priya may be part of the miniscule number of Asian-American Hindus who have switched their faith – a mere seven percent according to a 2012 Pew study – she is also part of the larger demographic of the same group (91 percent of Hindus) who “reject the notion that their religion is the one, true faith.” The study also indicates that 90 percent of Hindus say, “[T]here is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.”

Supporting this theory is the explosion of Indo-Judaic blogs and online discussions that have popped up over the last few years. Hindu-Jewish couples are trying to find ways to integrate both religions in their marriage, sometimes taking advice from couples that have gone before them. In fact, there is even a term coined for it – “HinJew” – and someone has already written a book on the phenomenon of Hindu-Jewish unions.

Priya goes to synagogue on weekends, and also celebrates all Hindu religious festivals. Her parents can never know of her Jewish life, and Josh respects that. “I’m totally with her,” he said. Likewise, her synagogue can’t know that she is still a practicing Hindu. The rabbi would never have completed her conversion had she known that Priya would maintain her old faith.

Though Josh is not religious, he made it clear to Priya from the very beginning that she would need to embrace Judaism if they were to hope to marry, he said. “It was difficult for me to bring up,” he said. “But we eventually got married and she has learnt more than me about Jewish faith.”

Priya, who works in a hospital, had been studying the Torah for the past year and a half. She would run to class once a week after her shift at work, barely catching the last half hour of each session.

She had taken the first half of the day off that particular Tuesday, telling her colleagues at the hospital that she had an “appointment.” At the synagogue a panel of three rabbis screened her one last time to decide if she was ready for the conversion. Half an hour later, she was led to a neighboring building where an attendant helped prepare her for immersion in the mikvah pool. Priya had to take off all her clothes, even her wedding ring, before she plunged into the pool that recalls the “watery state” that each of us was born from. She emerged ritually cleansed, ready to embrace a new stage of life. The final stage of her conversion came in front of the Torah, where she was given a blessing and accepted by the congregation as a Jew.

Priya and Josh had met in Israel in 2007, through a mutual friend. When the friend was suddenly unavailable to travel with Priya, Josh volunteered to show her his country.

Priya still remembers great dinners, whirlwind shopping trips, and a beautiful day at the Dead Sea. As they watched the sound and light show on their last day in Beit Jann, Priya decided to extend their trip by three more days. Three weeks later, Josh came to New York.

“She took my hand and then we became friends,” said Josh, of his first visit. Since then, Josh would visit New York twice every year, many times spending a month with Priya before going back. The flexibility of his job as a software engineer allowed it to be part vacation, part work. Priya, who had fewer vacation days, would visit him in Israel for one week twice a year, celebrating all Hindu and Jewish holidays with him and their friends.

What about the rest of the nine and a half months? “There would be lots of Skype dates,” Priya laughed. “We would need to wake up really early, and sleep really late.”

Sometimes they would stay up all night.

Google Talk, Whatsapp, FaceTime were all their co-conspirators. Weekends would be spent lounging at home, watching television shows together, yet apart. Their favorites included “Homeland”, “NCIS” – all with Hebrew subtitles for Josh.  Saturday afternoon was “date night,” where they would, each a glass of wine in hand, watch movies streamed online at the same time, sharing jokes on Skype.

In the August of 2011, three years since their first meeting, they planned a trip to the Grand Canyon. Josh had bigger plans in mind. As their helicopter landed near the mile-deep canyon, he bent one knee. Priya wasn’t expecting it. “I was surprised that she was surprised,” Josh later said, during an interview last month. Priya told Josh that he would have to ask her father’s permission before she could agree to marry him. Though her family had lived in the U.S. for generations, they had strong Hindu values, and convincing them to agree to an inter-religious alliance wouldn’t be easy.

Priya’s father wasn’t an exception – the Pew survey also shows that Hindus have the lowest intermarriage rate among all Asian Americans. “Nine-in-ten married Hindus (94 percent) have a spouse who is also Hindu,” according to the study. Only about a third of Hindu parents said they would be “very comfortable” if their child married someone with different religious beliefs, according to the survey.

It wasn’t until almost a year later that Priya’s father approved. He had visited Josh’s family while on an overseas trip, making a stop in Israel just to meet them. Convinced that his daughter was marrying into a good family, finally gave the green light. How did they wait so many months? “We just kept the faith,” Priya said, with Josh nodding in agreement.

Their wedding – in February last year – was an extravagant affair. Priya’s mother, who had been planning her eldest daughter’s wedding since Priya turned 25, had everything in place. Their big fat Hindu wedding had three celebrations over the course of two days. Josh wore the traditional Hindu kurta, a long, flowing shirt to his knees and a regal golden turban. His three sisters wore sequined saris, long pieces of intricately designed cloth, pinned and pleated around their tall Jewish frames. “It was like a fairytale,” said Priya. “I felt like a princess.”

While the traditional ceremony itself was a small, private family affair at Priya’s east coast home, the festivities two weeks later included a raucous music event, a six-hour long wedding the next morning, and a reception party that went on late into the night.

As Josh walked into the wedding venue, his baraat (wedding entourage) included only his siblings and a couple of friends from Israel. Priya’s friends and family, charmed by Josh, rushed to join him as he entered the venue, propping him up on their shoulders as he arrived to a deafening welcome. What followed was a day-long whirlwind of Hindu rituals – exchanging garlands, reading out vows in front of the holy pyre, getting blessings from elders and exchanging rings – all under a makeshift canopy, much like the Jewish chuppah.

“It was at once unique, strange and new,” said Josh. “All the colors, the length of each ceremony – it was all very different from a Jewish wedding, which is short and not as interesting.” His parents and the rest of his family watched it on livestream from Jerusalem.

Josh stayed in the U.S. a few extra weeks before returning to Israel, this time as one half in a long distance marriage. Now that Priya is Jewish, the couple is scheduled to have a Jewish ceremony in Israel later this year, for Josh’s family and friends.

Their eventual children will be raised with both faiths, the couple has decided. “We’ll let them decide when they are ready,” said Josh. “We won’t impose either of our beliefs,” said Priya.

For now, the couple celebrates Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in Israel, along with the Israeli New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which is usually around the same time. Holi, which is a Hindu spring festival, is usually celebrated in New York along with Purim, the fourteenth day of the month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar.

But how much longer do they plan to remain living across continents? What of children, and a family home? Not too long now, if things work out.

Josh is in New York, filling his immigration papers. Initially, the couple had planned on moving to Israel. But Priya, who plans to go back to college this fall, will have limited career prospects in the Holy Land, so they’re hoping to make New York their home, at least for now.

The couple is eagerly awaiting news from the immigration services. “Unless I’m very miserable, we’ll be staying in New York,” said Josh, in an interview last month after Friday services at the synagogue. The couple was meeting the same Rabbi who had helped Priya through her conversion process. As they walked out of what is now “their” synagogue in midtown Manhattan, Josh said, “I believe that the connection between us will make it, wherever we are.”