"In some ways converting is very similar," Allen says. "You're taking on an identity that you're not getting from your family." She notes that while this experience unites her with other homosexuals, it separates her from other Jews who, for the most part, do receive their identity from their family.

Allen says that her conversion was not a surprise to her friends--most of her high school friends responded "it's about time." Regarding her parents, she again makes the comparison to coming out.

Allen says that her parents first reaction to her coming out was: "Well, I don't think you'll be happy because you won't have children.' I said, 'Well, I will have children' and they both immediately said, 'you can't do that to your kids'"

Allen credits her parents with coming a long way since then. She thinks her father had a harder time dealing with it initially but says it has been "amazing to watch him grow."

"He had very specific dreams for me," says Allen. When her father visited her the spring of her first year, Allen says he was astonished at the number of people who came up to her to say hi.

"It was weird to him. I had become an important person on campus in a way he couldn't deal with."

Allen says that she thinks her parents see her conversion to Judaism as another rejection, even if an inadvertent one. "In some ways I wonder if [my conversion] isn't harder for them to understand because they can't just say 'well, she was born that way,'" she says.

THIS SUMMER Allen is planning to travel through Europe and Israel--"the old roots and new roots tour," she calls it. She says she will probably apply to graduate school in English, but isn't interested in spending a lot of time worrying about it now. She'd much rather talk about the kind of dog she hopes to find at the pound.

Allen's friends see her as someone who will remain an activist, no matter what field she is in.

"She's always been worried about the reality of everyday lives," says Jessica S. Yellin '93, Allen's first-year roommate and a prominent feminist activist in her own right.

"I hope that she'd be an academic activist, someone who's truly able to bridge what seems to be a false gap between intellectual endeavors and activist politics," says Yelli.

In the meantime Allen has her eyes on a more immediate goal; hiking the Appalachian trail next spring--with the dog.