CHRISTMAS is the time of year when my feelings of alienation gel. Every year I bring out my tree, put on the fairy lights and decorate the house. And every year I feel that it is an act of defiance. Sometimes neighbours come in and admire the tree; other times they look uncomfortable, as though they have accidentally stumbled on something acutely personal.

It is not easy being a Gentile in Israel. The first years were the worst. Wherever I went, whatever I did, the first thing that people wanted to know was whether or not I was Jewish. It was a question that dogged me everywhere. In taxi cabs, at bus stops, at interviews, at work, at the theatre, in the supermarket, everywhere and anywhere. It was like an obsession: “Are you Jewish?”

I lied about it twice, the first time to a taxi driver. He eyed me suspiciously, then launched into a tirade about his brother who had married a “goy” and gone to live in America. “It’s terrible,” he told me angrily, his eyes locked on me in the mirror. “It’s people like him who are destroying the Jewish race. I cannot forgive him.”

The second time I was standing in a queue at a public lavatory. I was six months pregnant and the attendant, an elderly man with a stoop, shuffled over to me. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“England, but I live here now,” I replied in Hebrew.

“Are you Jewish?”

“Yes,” I said.

With tears in his eyes, the man thanked me for moving to Israel, and for bearing this child here in the Jewish homeland. I never lied about it again.

The prejudice against non-Jews from many sectors of society remains strong. Just this weekend, a furore erupted when the Health Minister, Nissim Dahan, announced at a convention of World Orthodox Jewry in Jerusalem that secular Jews should not emigrate to Israel. “We prefer a Jew overseas to a Gentile in Israel,” he declared.

Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister and the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, added fuel to the fire by calling for a law to ban Gentiles from emigrating to Israel. “A secular state will bring . . . hundreds of thousands of goyim, who will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see Christmas trees,” he announced insultingly.

Even before I landed in Israel nine years ago with my Israeli boyfriend — later my husband — the pressure was on to convert. Israelis insisted that it would be impossible to live here as a Christian.

Initially it seemed logical to me. When I saw how threatened Israelis felt I was seriously concerned about how it would affect any children I might have. I was also open to Judaism. It seemed a fascinating thing to learn about. I am not a practising Christian — I never really went to church except when the school took us. My faith went so far as the morning assembly and the Lord’s Prayer. I thought of becoming Jewish as an intellectual and emotional challenge, something that might bring me closer to my husband’s family and my new way of life.

My first taste of the Jewish religion came in London, where I began studying with a rabbi. Every week he spoke to me about the physical relationship between married couples, about the fact that they could not have sex at certain times of the month. I visited him for a while but I grew increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually I decided to stop going there.