Immersion

Published in Choosing Judaism: 36 Stories, edited by Bradley Caro Cook and Diana Phillips (2020)

I loved the soft ringing of the bell at consecration, the Latin incantations, the clergy’s colorful vestments.  I was a deeply spiritual child and, enthralled by the mysteries of the Catholic mass, I asked the nuns leading my catechism class how I could become a priest. 

“You cannot become a priest,” they said; a conclusion my parents echoed. 

“No, you can’t be an altar boy, either,” the parish priest added, unable to offer any hope. I was crushed, confronting my first bewildering encounter with exclusion because I was born a girl.

Then, at age eight, I met my first Jew:  Anne Frank.  In the library of my rural Minnesota elementary school, I discovered her diary.  Anne felt as close to me as one of my sisters.  I imagined gossiping with her about boys, giggling with her on the back porch.  She inspired me to keep a diary of my own.  Little did I imagine that, twenty-five years later, I would be Jewish.

As a teenager and young adult, I continued to seek a path that would lead to full immersion:  a spiritual life that absorbed mind, body, soul.  Sitting Zen meditation stilled my body, but not my mind.  The Protestant church I joined fueled my passion for justice, but I longed for more ritual.  My future husband Joel introduced me to Judaism.  Enrolling in synagogue classes to learn more, I sensed that my spiritual home was just over the horizon.

I studied for a year, learning Hebrew and studying the Jewish holidays, Jewish family celebrations, liturgy, and prayer.  Our Intro to Judaism class made a field trip to the grocery store to learn about shopping for kosher food.  Jewish tradition spoke to me, but I was longing for something more.  My studies did not make me feel Jewish.

I dove deeper.  I wrote essays on topics ranging from “What Israel Means to Me” to “The Hanukkah/Christmas Divide.” I could explain what Judaism meant to me, but I did not yet feel like I inhabited a Jewish body.  In the penultimate step to my conversion, I appeared before a bet din of three Jewish men who asked me questions to determine my understanding of Judaism and my commitment to living a Jewish life.  

“Welcome to the Jewish people,” one of them said as we concluded.

I was accepted by the experts.  I understood the basics of Judaism.  But something was missing.  I loved Judaism; I wanted to practice Judaism.  But I still did not feel Jewish.  I was waiting for a light to go on inside; I wanted to embody a clear transition from “Before” to “Happily-Ever-After.”   

I anticipated with joy the experience of the mikveh, the ritual bath, where I prayed that I would meet my Jewish soul.  Considering the holiness of the ritual, I imagined the mikveh would be a spa-like environment, bathed in golden light and soft music.  But when I entered our local mikveh, it reminded me of my junior high locker room:  spartan, cramped, and smelling faintly of mold.  I was naked, feeling more vulnerable than I had in my entire life.  A rabbi’s wife witnessed my immersion.  To give me a modicum of privacy, she held a beach towel in front of her face.

As I immersed the first time, I wondered whether my hair was floating on the surface of the water.  What would it be like to have a Jewish body and non-Jewish hair?  On the second immersion, I grabbed my hair and pulled it below the surface of the water to assure it made the transition with me.  After the third immersion, I recited the Shema.  The Hebrew words were still foreign to me. I repeated each word slowly, repeating after my witness:  Shema.  Yisrael.  Adonai.  Eloheinu.  Adonai.  Echad.  I was pleading for my Jewish soul to unite with me.  But I could not feel it.

I emerged from the mikveh, and the rabbi’s wife enfolded me in the beach towel.  Mazel tov!” she exclaimed.

“Mazel tov!” echoed the rabbi and Joel--now my fiancé--who had been listening from the men’s section next door.   It hadn’t happened. The mikveh did not make me feel Jewish.  Tears filled my eyes. 

Afterwards, outside the mikveh, Joel could see something was wrong.

“What happened?”  He leaned in with concern.

“I expected it to be more, I don’t know, special.  Meaningful.  Jewish.”

I could tell that he could not really comprehend my unfulfilled longing.  He was born Jewish; he always felt Jewish.  But he squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead.

The next stop was our synagogue, where I was to receive my Jewish name:  Chava bat Avraham v’Sarah.  Eve, daughter of Abraham and Sarah.  The rabbi opened the heavy ark doors.  Standing with Joel, I had never stood before the Torahs before.  Like my namesake Eve, the first woman to survey God’s creation, I felt in awe of the majesty before my eyes:  the raw power of the texts; the toil of the scribes who copied them; the many fingers that embroidered the covers over the scrolls; the silversmiths, who pounded the ornaments decorating them.  This is what had drawn me to Judaism:  a reverence for language and story, ancient tradition, and the daily rituals and yearly holidays inspired by the Torah.

At that moment before the Ark, bathed in the love of my fiancé and the welcome of my rabbi, with my Jewish name, I began to feel a little more Jewish.

* * *

Becoming Jewish is like learning a foreign language:  you struggle with the verb tenses or whether the nouns are feminine or masculine.  And then, one night, you find out you are dreaming in your new language: you are pulling a challah that you baked from scratch out of the oven, lighting Shabbat candles, and you know all the prayers by heart.  I had been longing for this since I was eight years old.  But I did not become Jewish by receiving a Jewish soul.  I had to live a Jewish life with my family, Shabbat after Shabbat, holiday after holiday, raising Jewish children, weeping at their brit milahs and bar mitzvahs, and waving goodbye to the bus carrying them to Jewish camp each summer.

To be Jewish is to pay attention.  We sing Hallel when the moon begins its cycle.  We know when to don a prayer shawl and tefillin to embrace the new day.  We pinpoint when the sun sets on Shabbat.  Judaism invited me to plunge into a practice that regularly takes me outside my busy life, to mark a moment with ritual and mindfulness, and to allow my soul to bathe in holy refreshment. 

My children are older now.  I am unable to place my hands on their soft hair, as I once did every week, to recite the blessing of children on Friday night.  Instead, I text them:  “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.”

“Shabbat shalom, Mama,” they text back.  Sometimes adding a big, red heart.

To read more or purchase the book, click here.