December 14, 2009

My official conversion was scheduled for December 9. A strange thing happened on December 7.

My son's tennis lesson was rescheduled to 7:00 p.m. on Monday due to a conflict with his regular Wednesday afternoon time. It was cold outside, and dark, so instead of dropping him off and returning an hour later as I usually do, I decided to wait for him in the lounge at the gym. I had a book I was trying to get into, a novel centered around the lives of four young women attending the same college I did, so this seemed like a good opportunity to sit and read for an hour, with no interruptions.

I had read about one page when a friendly looking woman sat down in the chair opposite the sofa where I was sitting.

"Reading anything good?" she asked, smiling brightly.

"Not really sure yet, I just started it," I said.

"What's it about?" she asked.

"It's about these women who went to the same college I did," I said.

"Where was that?" she asked. She was clearly looking for conversation, and I was happy to oblige. She seemed nice.

"Smith College," I said.

"Where's that?" she asked. I don't want to sound elitist, but that should have been my first clue that I was not dealing with a worldly person. Anyway, I told her a little about Smith, the all female student body, the left-wing bent to it. Which led to her wondering out loud if any campuses in America were politically conservative. Which led to her bemoaning the fact that God has been removed from academics. Which led to her expounding on how we all need Jesus Christ in our lives.

"I'll just stop you right there," I said, "because I'm Jewish." 

I wasn't officially Jewish yet, but I figured (1) I might as well start practicing telling people I was Jewish, to see how it felt, and (2) I expected my statement to truncate whatever path she was attempting to lead me down. Truthfully, I didn't want her to embarrass herself by going off on some Jesus tangent that I was not prepared to follow.

Those words, "I'm Jewish", had an unexpected effect. She looked at me like I had three heads. To paraphrase, she said something along the lines of the following:

"I just don't understand how you could be Jewish. I mean when you die, you'll just be dust, and I don't know how you could accept that."

"Well, I'm willing to admit that I don't know what will happen when I die," I said.

"You know, we have a lot in common," she said. "We share the old testament. It's just that you dropped the ball when you didn't take the whole book."

This was getting strange. I studied her face. She had pretty blue eyes and blond hair framing her face. She was on the heavy side, about forty years old, and very earnest in everything she said.

"What about Isaiah?" she asked. "If you read Isaiah, he predicted the coming of Jesus Christ. Don't you believe that?"

"I don't know about Isaiah," I said. "Let's just say you have your God and I have mine."

Why was she speaking to me like this? It would never occur to me to approach a total stranger and engage in conversation challenging that person's faith. I even wondered as she was talking if she was a messenger from God, sent to stop me from my impending conversion. I've never believed in those kinds of messages, but still, the timing seemed so strange.

There was more she wanted to share, this time about Sarah Palin and the wisdom found in her book. I had to stop her once again.

"I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin," I said, "and I'm not going to read her book. I wouldn't waste my time on it."

She seemed to take offense at this, so to reassure her I said I wouldn't read Obama's book either. In my opinion, one was as bad as the other. I guess I really had her stumped at that point, because she got up and left.

When I returned home, I related the incident to my husband, who was dumbfounded.

"It's fine," I said. "She thought she was doing a good deed. Trying to save me."

Fifteen minutes time later, I received a phone call from one of my oldest and dearest friends, one of the first people I became friends with in college over 30 years ago. She was also the first Jewish person I ever met. She had received my Hanukkah card and called to congratulate me on my conversion.

I realized then that people that love me support me. People who don't know me support themselves. God wasn't sending me a message with the woman from the gym. If he was saying anything at all, he was telling me to use the brain he gave me to make my own choices. Choices that have served me well over 21 years of raising a Jewish family.

Oh, in case you were wondering, on December 9, I went to the mikvah and am now, officially, Jewish. Mazel Tov to me!