My father is upset that I am teaching my boyfriend to be Jewish. We have even signed up for what we affectionately call “Jew Class” so we can meet other interfaith couples and maybe even pick up a great latke recipe or two. We want to get married, and this is our first tenuous step toward creating our life together.

On our first date, I cut right to the chase, telling him, “if you are not open to eventual conversion to Judaism, this can go no further.” It’s a wonder there was ever a second date with that as my kicky opener.

I grew up as an Orthodox Jew, attended a yeshiva from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and neither foresaw nor was prepared for the realities of love in the real world.

He had moved from Korea at five with his extended family, and attended an all-Korean church where he and his cousins went on retreats and sang Korean Christian songs by the campfire. Somewhere along the way he lost some of his religious fervor, and by the time he got to college, church was a place he went to only on visits home, and solely to please his parents.

At some point I too had strayed a bit from the confines of my religious upbringing. But somehow I still always assumed without question that I would fall in love with a “nice Jewish boy,” and that together we would figure out where we stood religiously. Would we keep kosher in our home? Attend synagogue every Friday night and Saturday? Even what sort of synagogue we would attend was an issue I hoped to push off until I found that somebody to explore these things with as a couple.

But then Paul showed up, with his beautiful eyes, his love for spicy foods, and strikingly calm and serene demeanor. I accidentally fell in love with him.

Suddenly, I was happier than I had ever been, and meeting his entire extended family as they whispered to each other in Korean, “That’s not his girlfriend, right?” (His cousin explained later.)

He was supposed to bring home a Korean girl, maybe even a churchgoing one. When his grandmother asked him where I go to church, he brushed off the question saying I was from Boston, and “worshiped” there at a place she would be unfamiliar with.

When I first took him home to my dad’s apartment for a traditional Friday night dinner with my four siblings, I introduced him as my friend Paul. When my father found out later that we were more than just friends, he wished he hadn’t opened the good wine that night.

But now, four years later, we are in the throes of our relationship, and I’ve realized that I will still get to commiserate over the finer points of Judaism with my mate. The two of us will still decide what community we feel we belong to, and whether or not our children will attend a Jewish day school. And more importantly, I have had to reexamine my own commitment to this culture and these traditions, realizing I cannot just wait for someone else to decide for me what is going to be important.

I saw that I cannot ask Paul to go through with this massive change when I am not sure where I stand myself. I could no longer be lazy about nailing down which aspects of Judaism I believe to be truly important in my future family’s Jewish life.

I realized that besides kimchi (which is delicious, by the way), and a greater tolerance to extreme spice, the greatest thing Paul has given me is a newfound confidence in my beliefs, and a partner willing to continue to probe, explore and learn.

When his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, his mother, sister-in–law, and I stood around in his kitchen making pae jun (Korean pancakes) as she broke the news to me. What followed was a reflection of the cultural differences regarding disease; she hadn’t wanted to tell Paul’s grandfather about the cancer, but the doctor told her she had no choice, and eventually broke the news himself. Although it was a sad and difficult time, I had never felt closer, more in their circle, than when she shared this very personal news, and asked my opinion on what she believed to be the doctor’s indiscretion.

And three months later, in the same house, the night of grandpa’s funeral, eating the same pae jun, I again felt I belonged. All of us had gone back to his parents’ house to sleep over: his brother, sister-in-law, two nieces and three relatives who had flown from Korea, and even though we had to camp out on the floor, his mother insisted we join them. We stayed up late drinking whiskey together and talking, mostly in Korean, which I could not understand, but I felt an indispensable part of the family.

He had his breakthroughs with my father as well. When my sister had a car accident, it was Paul who left work to be with her and make sure she was all right. Eventually he brought her to a nearby train station, and had to speak to my dad on the phone for directions and train schedules. I know my father was grateful that my sister did not have to be alone. A few months later on Paul’s birthday he even told me to pass along well wishes.

It seems a simple and irrelevant thing, but in the four birthdays Paul has had since we began dating, it was the first one my father ever acknowledged. Baby steps, I suppose.

We are navigating the traffic signals of our families’ feelings. It is a difficult thing to feel that you have to tread lightly around such happy subjects such as love, family, and eventually children, but we are doing this in our own stilted way, starting with our “Jew Class.”

Danielle grew up in Newton, Mass. and works at a hedge fund in New York City. She is strongly considering trademarking a recipe for kimchi-filled knishes.