From Carlos and Gabby’s to G-d

The story of a local woman’s journey to Judaism

Issue of August 22, 2008

Sitting across from Daniella Saffiato, a pretty brunette with a bewitching smile, whose speech is peppered with phrases like “boruch Hashem” and “hashgacha pratis,” and dresses according to the strictest laws of Jewish modesty, one wouldn’t believe that less than two years ago, a completely different girl, dressed in jeans and a tank top, her lip pierced with a metal stud, stumbled on a “help wanted” sign outside a kosher Mexican restaurant on Rockaway Turnpike, Carlos and Gabby’s.

The rest of the story is something of a religious fairytale.

Daniella was raised by her grandmother in Lawrence, and always had a sneaking suspicion that she was Jewish. In third grade, she declined a part in a Christmas pageant because she claimed she was Jewish, despite the fact that both her parents were non-Jewish Italians.

“I always thought I was Jewish, just born to the wrong family,” she says, fiddling with a gold chain with the word “Chai” emblazoned on it. “I thought I could be Jewish just by saying I was Jewish.”

Daniella describes her younger self as a run-of-the-mill rebellious teenager. After graduating from Lawrence High School, she attended New Paltz University, where she studied education. Home for a summer and looking for a job, she saw the sign in the window of Carlos and Gabby’s. She began working there soon afterward, and met Adam Kay and Robbie Klein, the owner and manager of the store, as well as a local mashgiach. She says they were some of the nicest and most caring people she’d ever encountered.

When they asked her if she was Jewish, her old answer of being Jewish because she wanted to be didn’t work. After being informed that she officially wasn’t Jewish since her mother wasn’t, she began pestering them with questions.

“Everybody’s always looking for happiness and the blueprint is right there, the blueprint to be happy and how to live your life,” Daniella explains.

After the fall semester she transferred to Queens College, moved back home and embarked on an intensive learning program about Judaism through chavrutot, lectures, and in a relatively post-modern twist, Google (she claims to be the Jewish poster-child for the website). She gave away all her old clothing and officially converted this past September through the Vaad HaRabonim of Queens, sitting alongside her mentors, Yaffa Jungreis and Andrea Steiner.

Becoming Jewish is no easy feat and Daniella had to cope with her grandmother, who was relatively anti-Semitic despite having a strong relationship with her Jewish daughter-in-law, Daniella’s aunt.

“She thought Jews had horns,” Daniella says.

Her grandmother’s ire was strong enough for her to take Daniella out of her will once she officially converted. Insomuch as this story is about Daniella’s conversion, it’s also about her relationship to her grandmother, which was a difficult and contentious one throughout her life. Daniella’s grandmother eventually came around, though.

“A week before she died, she called my aunt and said that she was proud of me,” Daniella recounts. “She said I had become a good person. In the end, I had her love, which is so much more important than anything else.”

Daniella’s grandmother slipped into a terminal coma two months ago, on a night that Daniella spent by her grandmother’s bedside.

“My grandmother always said that ‘I’m going to die the day we get along,’ and sadly enough it was,” Daniella says. “In some ways I feel that Hashem took her away when I was ready for it.”

Daniella currently lives with the Weinbergs, an Orthodox family in Woodmere. She is continuing her studies at Queens College to become a teacher and she still eats at Carlos and Gabby’s. She says the hardest thing about her life right now is realizing that everything is a test and she is thankful for a community that helps and supports her.

While she believes that the help wanted sign was a sign from G-d, she tries not to reflect on it too much.

“I just look at where I was and where I am now,” she says. “I’m a whole person now.”