The Voodoo that Jew do

I'm officially Jewish! I am so terribly excited. This means I can tell Jewish jokes now without being accused of being bigoted. Because, hello? I'm JEWISH! (to wit: My GFIL, upon being told that I had FINALLY converted asked me, "How do you feel?" My response? "Well, I'm feeling a bit oppressed.")

Anyway, all kidding aside, it was really an interesting process. Yesterday morning I met with three Rabbis - a Beit Din - and spent about 45 minutes talking with them. I had to answer a bunch of questions in writing (and one of the Rabbis LOVED my answers. Whee!) and a lot of the questions were in response to things I had written. It was really much easier than I had imagined. My Rabbi had told me what to expect - that it would just be a conversation. I couldn't shake the picture that I was going to be sitting in a straight-backed chair 10 feet from a long table with 3 elderly men, all with long white beards and dressed in black, while they asked me obscure questions about Judaism. Just in case, I researched the next holiday (Tisha B'Av) and other stuff.

But, they didn't ask me about that. And I passed! Then, it was off to another state to dip into the Mikveh, which wasn't nearly as terrifying as I had imagined it would be. The Mikveh at my temple was unusable so we had to travel. The mikveh we ended up using was much more comfortable to me because I was pretty much hidden from the mikveh lady. Of course, I couldn't go in with my glasses on so she had to hold the blessings I had to say. I had to submerge myself and then swim over to where she was and squint my eyes to read the blessings. But actually, it was quite an amazing experience (after I got over the fact that there were 3 men in the room with me - even though they couldn't see me). The water was incredibly warm. It wasn't really anything like when I was baptized twenty years ago. Maybe because it was a choice *I* made.

So, now I'm Jewish. And I make a mean Matzo Ball Soup!