It's been awhile since I've had a convert nightmare. I had a series of these germares, or Jewish night terrors, in the lead up to my date with the mikveh.
Conversion was stressful. First, there were the "J-SATS", a series of mostly unanswerable essay questions given to me by my rabbi given beforehand about taking on the yoke of the mitvoth, my relationship to Israel and why I wanted to be Jewish in the first place. I say unanswerable because the only truthful answers led to more questions. Luckily, my questions-with-questions approach passed.
It's not that you can fail really, short of professing Jesus Christ is your saviour, while simultaneously eating bacon wrapped shrimp and denying the Holocaust.
The talk had with my Beit Din (a court of rabbis assembled), the day of my big dip was, much to my relief, fine. No one was there to grill me on whether Kangaroo was kosher or whether I recite the Pirkei Avot while jumping rope.
The actual dip, supervised by a mikveh lady named Gita, was, if nothing else, surreal. If you had told me in the year 2000 I would someday be speaking Hebrew naked whilst dunking in a ritual bath with three rabbis on the other side of the door listening to make sure it's kosher, I would have, well, I don't know what I would have done.
But back to the germare I had two nights ago. The first one since I took the name Elisheva and began my life as a Jewish lady.
The dream began quite innocently, as many horrible dreams do. It was Shabbat. My husband I were hosting 3 very important and pious rabbis and their sheitled wives. Everyone was gathered around the table and I was busy in the kitchen, nervously preparing to bring out the meal. In the other room, I could hear the rabbis deliberating, handing down religious rulings of some kind.
"That can't be right," I thought. "You can't do that on Shabbat." Then my heart began to race. "Can you?"
At this point it's important to mention that I, for some reason, had made a Mexican themed meal, which as I brought it out to the table seemed even to me a weird choice. As I approached with a gigantic steaming bowl of beans, rice and corn, I realized, "Omigod, these rabbis are so pious, they don't eat Kitniyot, even when it's not Passover."
For those, who just got lost on that last paragraph, Kitniyot is a special group of foods (including beans and rice and yes, corn) that are deemed not-kosher-for-Passover for Ashkenzi Jews.
At this point in the dream, I was so horrified, I just shook myself awake. It was just too unbearable, my Kitniyot humiliation.
I have theories on this one but I'll save it for later.
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