Elizabeth Taylor-Religion and Identity

 

 

In 1959, after nine months of study, Taylor converted from Christian Science to Judaism. She took the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel. She stated that her conversion was something she had long considered and was not related to her marriages. After Mike Todd's death, Taylor said that she "felt a desperate need for a formalized religion,". She explained that neither Catholicism nor Christian Science were able to address many of the "questions she had about life and death."

 

Biographer Randy Taraborrelli notes that after studying the philosophy of Judaism for nine months, "she felt an immediate connection to the faith." Although Taylor rarely attended synagogue, she stated, "I'm one of those people who think you can be close to God anywhere, not just in a place designed for worship . . . " At the conversion ceremony, with her parents present as witnesses and in full support of her decision, Taylor repeated the words of Ruth:

“. . . for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.”

Taylor was a follower of Kabbalah and a member of the Kabbalah Centre.

 

During an interview when she was 55, she describes how her inner sense of identity as a child actress, kept her from giving in to many of the studio's demands, especially with regard to altering her appearance to fit in:

“God forbid you do anything individual or go against the fad. But I did. I figured this looks absurd. And I agreed with my dad: God must have had some reason for giving me bushy eyebrows and black hair. I guess I must have been pretty sure of my sense of identity. It was me. I accepted it all my life and I can't explain it. Because I've always been very aware of the inner me that has nothing to do with the physical me.”

She adds that she began to recognize her "inner being" during her adulthood:

“Eventually the inner you shapes the outer you, especially when you reach a certain age, and you have been given the same features as everybody else, God has arranged them in a certain way. But around 40 the inner you actually chisels your features. . . Life is to be embraced and enveloped. Surgeons and knives have nothing to do with it. It has to do with a connection with nature, God, your inner being—whatever you want to call it—it's being in contact with yourself and allowing yourself, allowing God, to mold you.”