Dancing the ‘Convert Jig’

The new Broadway production “Cult of Love” opens with the Dahl family in joyous holiday song.

They’ve gathered for their annual Christmas dinner and caroling fest, but their six-part harmonies belie tension boiling not far beneath the surface.

This rapturously reviewed dramedy stars Zachary Quinto and Shailene Woodley, among others. But it is Mare Winningham who steals the show. She plays the family matriarch, Virginia, a woman who continues to see her children through faith-colored glasses, spectacles that refuse to allow any deviation from the way things — and they — should be.

So, no, first son Mark has not lost his faith, and first daughter Evie is not gay, and a third child is not a drug addict and a fourth is not a psycho. We’re all one big happy family. Is that clear?

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“Cult of Love” is both hilarious and sad, and Ginny is at its center, a powerful but potentially difficult role. So when I had a chance, I asked Ms. Winningham what attracted her to it.

“This play is called ‘Cult of Love,’ and every cult must have a leader, and she must be it,” Ms. Winningham said. “I wondered about her type of power and her toolbox for keeping her kids followers. Lots of juicy stuff, overly emotional reactions, many guilt trips, infantilization, anger, conditional love, and narcissism, and cuddling. And folk songs. Lots to play with.”

Ms. Winningham’s own memories of Christmas are different — and much warmer. “When I was growing up, Christmas was loving and sweet,” she said. “My dad put the lights up around the roof of our house, and we went together to pick out the tree. My parents liked the pine ones, and the house smelled great with it in the living room.

“I am one of five kids, and on Christmas Eve, we always had a party. My mom played piano, and we sang carols. When we were little, we performed the nativity scene while my mom sang ‘Silent Night.’ Christmas morning, she made donuts or cinnamon rolls, and we opened presents one at a time, youngest child to oldest child.”

Ironically, like one of the Dahl children, Ms. Willingham also lost her faith, and more than two decades ago she converted to Judaism. That was the main theme of a conversation we had back in 2007. I reminded her of that, and she graciously suggested she remembered.

“Was it that long ago?” she asked. “I thought we talked after that.”

Mare, now 65, grew up in Northridge, California. Her mother was an observant Catholic; her father was agnostic. She was raised Catholic, had her first communion, and was confirmed. But shortly after her confirmation, she began to feel disconnected from her mother’s faith. She became “irreligious and secular and never developed an affinity for any religion.”

Some years later, by then a successful actress, she was working in Toronto on a television movie and spent her evenings in a hotel room watching television. Bill Moyers’ multipart interview with Joseph Campbell was airing.

“Campbell was talking about God and God-like figures and the spiritual,” she told me back in 2007. “I kind of made a pronouncement to myself at that time that I think I’m an atheist. And at almost the same time I had a powerful epiphany that said if you’re going to reject something you should know what you’re rejecting first.”

So she decided to start studying different religions and began with a class on Judaism at what is now the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. This was not a creampuff course. It ran for 3 1/2 hours every Monday, and if you missed a class you had to make it up.

“There were 15 of us, many different types of people in the class,” Ms. Winningham said. “There were some Jews, who were bar or bat mitzvah but didn’t do anything else afterward and wanted to reacquaint themselves with Judaism. There were women who were converting for marriage and Russian women who were now allowed to practice their faith. It was a really interesting group.”

I asked her if there was an aha moment that convinced her that she was in the right place. “Yes,” she said. “And it was early on.

Her professor, Rabbi Neal Weinberg, who now runs a conversion class in Los Angeles called Judaism by Choice, told her “that the Jewish God cares more about how I treat my fellow man then how I deal with it, him, or her. (God, that is.) That our relationship to our fellow man is what matters.

“I grew up in a Christian household. It was a lot about doing something for your reward in the afterlife. But I really like that in Judaism we don’t even want to talk about whether there’s anything after this. We really want to deal with how we behave here. And I thought that was good. It just kicked off what became a continual love of Judaism.”

Another thing she liked was the tribe’s argumentative nature. “At the end of every class, the rabbi would ask if there was anything that bothers you,” she said. “Usually nobody would raise their hand, and he was like ‘Really? None of you were bothered about the idea of taking a little boy up on the mountain to kill him?’ You know, he really pushed us to be strong about our feelings of discomfort. To question. You couldn’t just go along for the ride. You had to show up.’

“It’s kind of what I remember from my Jewish friends when I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley. I would go to their houses for Shabbat dinner or a seder or just even a regular visit. I always found at their houses — and I know this is a generalization, but it is true — they had lively, questioning dinner tables. I was almost intimidated by it. In a good way.”

She also recalled a class assignment where, though she was not Jewish, she was required to observe a complete Shabbat from candle lighting to Havdalah.

“I had teenagers at the time,” she said. “Kids who had no interest in religion. They were raised in a loving, religious-less home, and I think proud of that. So they probably thought I was a little weird, but they loved me and were accepting. ‘You wanna do this? Do it.’ But then you know what happens, Friday night comes, there’s challah and brisket and incredible food. And they invited their friends. Funnily enough, some of them were Jewish, but had never been to a Shabbat meal.

“So I’m this non-Jew having Shabbat, and we ended up having this great meal and then sitting around and talking about important things. What’s better than that? I mean, that’s a perfect recipe for having a teenage family experience. It really showed me like, wow, Judaism is really a family-friendly religion.”

Every week she did a little more, lighting Shabbat candles, adding a prayer to her routine. “It was overwhelming, but invigorating,” she told me. Even her children — she has five — noticed the change. “My daughter said, ‘You’re really starting to love it,’ and she was right. I began to have a relationship with God, and it was through that ritual.”

She finished the class in 2002 and spent a year observing all the holidays and keeping Shabbat. “I wanted to be sure I was really committed to it,” she said.

She officially converted the following year.

“I love the community,” she said. “I have a wonderful synagogue near my Manhattan home, and I’m very close with that community.

“And I have my L.A .community, which is where I started, and I’m very close with them, as well.”

Her newfound faith inspired her to pursue another creative outlet. Ms. Winningham is a talented songwriter, singer, and musician, talents she showed off playing the title character in the film “Georgia” and with a CD of Jewish songs. That CD, “Refuge Rock Sublime,” is a mixture of traditional and original songs ranging from “Hatikvah” to “What Would David Do?”

“I was in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, doing a film,” she said. “I had a lot of down time, and this bluegrass festival blew through town. It was very family oriented and a full weekend. There were some really great acts in it, Sam Bush and Doc Watson, really big headliners, and they were all staying at the motel I was at.

“I always have my guitar with me when I travel, so I got into jam sessions with these amazing musicians. I was invited to sing a couple of songs on the gospel hour that Sunday and I did a song in Hebrew. I talked to this incredible fiddle player, Tim Crouch — everybody sort of bowed down to him — and at the end of the weekend he asked, ‘Do you have any music you want to work on?’

“He said he was a producer, and I told him I have this weird hybrid kind of like Jewish country. He joked, ‘Jewgrass?’ and we had a good laugh.”

The CD contains a mixture of traditional and original songs, including my favorite, “Convert Jig,” which she wrote for Rabbi Weinberg. In that song, she proclaims “I am a Jew like you. Your tree has grown a little twig and I will dance the convert jig.”