Whatever journeys kindred spirits take separately, when those spirits become soulmates, their paths retroactively intertwine. And though Grace Slick’s voice is often called "the voice that launched a thousand trips," it was the voice of Jorma’s Catholic-born wife, Vanessa Kaukonen, that launched Jorma’s Jewish journey.

Vanessa and Jorma found each other in 1988. The condensed version of the story is that Vanessa was working as a civil engineer in Key West, Fla., when an out-of-town "surfer dude, dumb as a bag of rocks," asked her if she wanted to check out a band, Hot Tuna. She’d never heard of the band, but decided to go.

Jorma saw her from onstage and had his road manager invite her backstage after the show. The two hit it off immediately and spent the whole night talking. At some point during the evening, Vanessa told a white lie — that she owned a sailboat — and she suggested that the band come sailing with her. After a night of dancing and drinking, she "crawled home at 5:30 in the morning." When she got there, the phone was already ringing. It was Jorma calling to tell her that the band wanted to take her up on her offer. She had to scramble to find a friend who owned a boat.

She found one, and spent the next 24 hours talking and connecting with Jorma. They discussed life, God, "everything you can imagine," and Jorma was "a complete gentleman," she said. He didn’t touch her, aside from one innocent kiss on the elbow.

At the end of their second night together, Jorma invited her back to his hotel room and something clicked. There was a full moon, and Jorma took her to his room’s sliding glass windows, which offered a perfect view of the moon — and of a nude beach where Vanessa realized she had sunbathed topless only several hours before Jorma had his road manager invite her backstage, and that the faces she saw peeping at her that day had come from Jorma’s room and were those of Hot Tuna.

But it didn’t matter. She was already smitten. Jorma kissed her again.

"It was overwhelming," she said of the kiss. "I felt like I was home."

It was the first time she had felt that way. The second came three years ago.

The two were married only several months after they met, and they became very much a rock ’n’ roll couple. Vanessa started working for the band, and, like many such couples, both struggled hard with addiction.

Vanessa was also struggling with her own spiritual search. Though she had gone to Catholic schools and had been confirmed a Catholic at 13, she never found solace in the Christian scriptures. She had a strong belief in God, but Catholicism didn’t speak to her.

"I wanted to feel it when I would breathe. I wanted it to be that close to me," she said. "But I didn’t feel I was getting that."

She didn’t feel that she ever really found a spiritual fit until 14 years ago, when she was on tour with Jorma at a show on the West Coast. Jorma’s road manager at the time, Ira Silver, was Jewish, as were a number of people in be crowd of friends surrounding the band. Vanessa walked in on him as he was lighting a yahrzeit candle in memory of his mother. He left the candle on the sink in the bathroom, and the two stared at it and talked for several hours about its importance, and about the importance of remembering the dead.

"He was able to share with me the memory of his mother," Vanessa said. "There was something about the flame that just opened up this consciousness that I had not been introduced to. We left that hotel the next day and went to another hotel, another show. But I was moved."

She wanted to explore the religion a little more, but Silver was standoffish, which made Vanessa think that he felt she was simply not bright enough to grasp Judaism. So she went to a Jewish bookstore at a tour stop in Seattle, where she bought an esoteric kabbalistic book that turned out to be way over the head of someone looking for an introduction to Judaism.

"It was about the Judeo-Christian myths and elements of light," she recalled. "I realize today I had no business reading it. I could not understand the text at the time. I felt, ‘I really am stupid.’"

For an addict, that is a surefire turn-off, she said. "But a flame had been lit. I just didn’t realize it."

She dropped her search for Judaism for more than a decade, turning for a time to a form of Buddhism. During that time, 13 years ago, she also got clean.

Three years ago, after 10 years of sobriety, she and Jorma decided to take a rare vacation and headed for Cabo San Lucas in Mexico. On the way, they stopped at a bookstore in Houston, where Vanessa on a whim bought some beach reading, a book about kabbalah by Michael Berg.

"For whatever reason, I grabbed the book, and I read it before the vacation was over," she said. "It was so simple and beautiful, and there was no talk of the elements of light. I felt it behind my skin, in my bones. I felt the light and felt the warmth of that yahrzeit candle I had discussed with Ira, and I said to Jorma, ‘I need to pursue this now. Something has come full circle.’"

Jorma didn’t argue, and from there, things just started to come together, Vanessa said.

She started grilling her Jewish friends about Judaism. Among them was Margot Leverett, the founder of and clarinetist for the Klezmer Mountain Boys. Leverett told her that she had converted to Judaism.

"It was the first time that I had heard someone say that," Vanessa said. "I was like, ‘You can do that?’"

Those who know Vanessa say that she is beyond driven, and when it came to her interest in Judaism, she wasn’t about to waste time. The Kaukonens started exploring, picking up a few books, and attended a friend’s Passover seder in Brooklyn. But things really got into gear when Vanessa put in a call to Rabbi Danielle LeShaw, the rabbi at the Hillel of Ohio University, a non-denominational Hillel house that also serves the community around Athens County, Ohio, where the Kaukonens live.

LeShaw said that she was not all that surprised to hear from Vanessa. The Kaukonens are well known in the community and usually give a donation to the Hillel each year, but that year their donation was larger than usual.

Vanessa called her while driving over the Verrazano Bridge.

"Vanessa said, ‘I really want to start a conversion with you,’" recalls the rabbi, who was ordained Reconstructionist. "She said, ‘I feel it is in my soul, and it is my calling, and I want to study when I get back to Athens.’"

Before the Kaukonens returned, they had a reaffirming moment. Leverett had invited them to see a Klezmer Mountain Boys’ show at B’nai Sholom Congregation in Huntington, W.Va. Vanessa said that she was surprised by the show of support for a Jewish band by a community they found in — of all places — West Virginia.

But, "as we were walking up to this temple, I remember admiring the simplicity of the building," said Vanessa. "It was a very beautiful, practical building. The whole thing made sense. The walkway, the stairs, the Star of David. And my knees got really weak as I walked under the Star of David and into the vestibule. Out of nowhere, I started weeping. I looked over at Jorma, and his eyes were watering too. Either I made him cry, or something happened to him, too. I said to him, ‘I feel like I am home.’ It was the same feeling I had when Jorma kissed me. That was it — that last piece, that thing that was missing."

Jorma remembers the building as incredibly intricate with beautiful stained glass windows. And he remembers the feeling. He was connecting with a past that he never knew.

"All at once, I just felt so right," he said of being in the first synagogue he’d been in since he could remember. "I just felt at home. I felt, ‘This is good.’ It was very moving. I am an emotional guy when I allow myself to be, and it was emotional. It was as if all of my ancestors were saying, ‘Welcome. What took you so long?’"