{{notability|Bio|date=January 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}} {{Infobox writer |birth_name=Delores Gray |birth_place=Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |website={{URL|ahuvahgray.com}} }} '''Ahuva Gray''' (born 1944 or 1945) is an American writer on religion and memoirist. She is a former Baptist minister who converted to Judaism and chronicled her changing beliefs in the book ''My Sister, the Jew'', published in 2001.
==Biography== Gray is African-American and was born to a Baptist working-class family in the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. She is a relative of baseball player Lorenzo Gray.{{Citation needed|date=October 2025}} Each summer, she and her siblings visited her sharecropper grandparents in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.<ref name=":0" /> Her first experience with Judaism was in seventh grade, when she began working in a dress shop owned by a Jewish family.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Sarah|first=Shapiro|title=Gifts of a Convert |url=https://aish.com/48943156/|website=Aish.com}}</ref>
After college, Gray worked for 23 years for Continental Airlines, working first as a flight attendant and later becoming an executive.<ref name=":0" /> After Continental Airlines transferred Gray to Los Angeles, she became involved in a Baptist church, and was later ordained at the International Assemblies of God in San Diego.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">{{cite news|work=The Jerusalem Post|date=2001-11-09|title=From Sister Delores to my sister the Jew |first=Abigail |last=Radoszkowicz|url=http://www.ahuvahgray.com/reviews_JPOST.php |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100727030951/http://ahuvahgray.com/reviews_JPOST.php |archive-date=27 July 2010 |access-date=3 August 2010 |via=ahuvahgray.com}}</ref> Gray's church emphasized Christianity's Jewish roots, leading her to interact with local Jewish leaders and academics and to begin leading tour groups in the Middle East.<ref name=":0" /> She also began to pray using the Jewish siddur.<ref name=":0" /> She found herself disagreeing with some Christian dogma, such as original sin and the trinity.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" />
After a 1994 earthquake in California, Gray moved to Israel.<ref name=":0" /> Wanting to study Judaism further, she entered the Nishmat College for Women in Jerusalem and supported herself by cleaning homes.<ref name=":0" /> In 1996, at age 51,<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Schiller |first=Mordechai |date=2006-05-22 |title=Go Where I Send Thee: A Former Minister Finds Torah |url=https://jewishaction.com/religion/shabbat-holidays/shavuot/choosing-judaism-life-stories-remarkable-converts-4/ |access-date=2025-10-15 |website=Jewish Action |language=en}}</ref> she completed conversion through the Jerusalem beth din to become an Orthodox Jew.<ref name=":0" /> She took the name of Ahuva.<ref name=":1">{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishmag.com/64mag/ahuva/ahuva.htm |title=Ahuva Gray |publisher=Jewishmag.com |date=February 2003 |access-date=3 August 2010}}</ref>
In Israel, Gray has worked as a tour guide, and as a lecturer abroad. Gray has lived in Bayit VeGan, Jerusalem since the mid-1990s.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> She identified as Haredi.<ref name=":0" />
== Personal life == While working for Continental Airlines, she married; she and her husband divorced amicably after 16 years, and had no children.<ref name=":0" />
Gray remains close with her non-Jewish family, who were supportive of her conversion.<ref name=":0" />
== References == {{Reflist}}
==Bibliography== * {{Cite book|title=My Sister the Jew |publisher=Philipp Feldheim Inc |year=2001 |ISBN=1-56871-276-6}} * {{Cite book |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Gifts_of_a_Stranger/KszXAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=%22Ahuvah%20Gray%22 |title=Gifts of a Stranger: A Convert's Round-the-world Travels and Spiritual Journeys |date=2004 |publisher=Targum Press |isbn=978-1-56871-331-1 |language=en}}
== External links == * [http://www.jewishmag.com/64mag/ahuva/ahuva.htm Ahuvah Gray] * [http://www.aish.com/ci/a/48943156.html Gifts of a Convert] * [http://www.jewishjournal.com/community_briefs/article/from_baptist_to_beshert_20010406/ From Baptist to Beshert] * [http://www.aish.com/societyWork/arts/From_Mississippi_to_Mount_Sinai.asp From Mississippi to Mount Sinai] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200218064424/https://www.aish.com/societyWork/arts/From_Mississippi_to_Mount_Sinai.asp |date=18 February 2020 }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gray, Ahuva}} Category:Living people Category:1940s births Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:21st-century African-American women writers Category:21st-century African-American writers Category:21st-century American Jews Category:21st-century American memoirists Category:21st-century American women writers Category:African-American former Christians Category:African-American Jews Category:American emigrants to Israel Category:American Haredim Category:Converts to Judaism from Baptist denominations Category:Converts to Orthodox Judaism Category:Flight attendants Category:Israeli people of African-American descent Category:Jewish American memoirists Category:Jewish women non-fiction writers Category:Jewish American women writers Category:Writers from Chicago Category:American former Protestants