The following narrative is the story I end up telling first dates and other virtual strangers over and over again in my adult Jewish life. So I've organized it in Q&A form, according to the usual progression of such conversations.
Actually, no. I converted.
February 6, 1996. I was 23 at that time, and nearly three years out of
college. But it was the culmination of about five and a half years of
learning, experiencing, exploring, and gradually living Judaism
I was raised Lutheran.
I grew up in the small suburban town of Valparaiso, Indiana, home to
Valparaiso University (a Lutheran
institution) and hence demographically slanted toward the high-church:
Lutherans, other Protestant varieties, and Catholics.
I knew exactly one Jewish family, who lived a few blocks from us.
There actually was a synagogue in Valparaiso, but I never knew of it
until my junior or senior year of high school, when it made the news
because a fire broke out in the building where it was located (above
a storefront) and they eventually built a new building of their own. (I
still make a point of driving past it every time I'm home. It's called
Temple Israel.
Last I heard, they have a part-time rabbi in from Chicago
for services twice a month, and not at all in the summer. People looking
for more consistent Jewish community go, apparently, to the Reform synagogue
in Michigan City, Sinai Temple -- which I hope to check out some day just for
completeness' sake. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here.)
My family's church was
Trinity Lutheran Church
on Washington Street in downtown Valparaiso. Its "synod" or branch
is the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America), which is fairly progressive on the spectrum of
modern American Lutheranism (relative to, say, the more conservative
Missouri or
Wisconsin Synods). It was (and still
is) a lovely place and a good-hearted community.
My mom was always very involved in church activities, from choir
to Altar Guild (setting up the altar for the communion service), and
eventually, so was I. I remember attending Vacation Bible School from
a young age, joining the children's choir in the third grade (and
continuing in the choir until I graduated from high school), becoming an
acolyte in the fourth grade, babysitting in the nursery during Sunday
services, participating in the youth group beginning in junior high,
regular attendance at Sunday school and confirmation classes, canoeing
and singing around the campfire on retreats to Camp Lutherwald, and on
and on.
But although I was so involved in our church and its activities, it was
really on mostly a "social" level. All the time I was growing up, I felt
I was missing some kind of connection that everyone else in the Christian
world seemed to have.
I believed in God, but the ways in which I could conceive of God didn't
really have anything to do with the idea of the Trinity. I mostly
understood God as the Father; I could understand the Holy Spirit as
essentially the same entity, without drawing too much of a distinction
between them, except maybe in the sense that the two aspects represented
different sets of attributes and different functions in our lives. But
for as long as I can remember, I didn't relate to Jesus at all. No
matter how much I heard (or read) about other people's "relationship
with Jesus," Jesus still never seemed real to me -- not in the same way
that my conception of God as a whole seemed real. When I thought of Jesus
at all, it was as a human being, if a unique one. Alternatively, I could
even believe that Jesus was somehow part of God, like a disguise that God
was using to look through our eyes. But that wasn't the same thing as
perceiving a separate personality Jesus who was supposed to be this
greatest friend in the universe. It was just going back a level to
thinking about God again, as a whole entity.
Furthermore, the idea of Jesus as a Savior troubled me. It made no
sense to me to say that an omnipotent God would have to "buy" our
redemption from sin (or more properly, I think, from the consequences of
sin) with a "sacrifice," either of God's Son or of any part of God's
Self. How can God "have to" do anything? And how can God "sacrifice"
anything? There is no system outside of God's Self which can compel God,
or to which God can owe anything, since God is the ultimate Source. So
how can I feel properly impressed with the idea that Jesus "died for our
sins"? In my view, our forgiveness is God's to bestow, out of God's own
grace and mercy, without buying it at any price.
Luckily for me, I guess, Lutheranism isn't so much a fundamentalist
"Jesus-is-my-best-friend" kind of denomination, so on the surface, I
managed all right within its context. But still, I always felt secretly
alienated, like I was a lousy Christian and nobody knew it but me.
My senior year of high school, I was regularly serving as a Communion
Assistant (distributing the Communion wine to the congregation) as well
as singing in the adult choir. Sometime that year, I was invited to
become what was called an "Assisting Minister." This was also a lay
position, but required a short preparatory course of study because it
involved greater responsibilities: leading a significant portion of the
worship service, writing some personal prayers to offer in front of the
congregation before the communion service, and distributing the host
(Communion wafers) to the communicants.
This was a great honor; I only knew one other person in the congregation
who had taken on this position while in high school. Also, I had always
wanted very badly to lead the liturgy in front of the congregation. So I
accepted the invitation.
I attended the first of the training classes. It was about two hours,
with perhaps five people in the room, but all I remember of it is being
completely unable to stay awake. I went home and panicked. I didn't know
what my problem was, but it seemed something in me was fighting
notto engage with the material. Was I a terrible person? Was
I competent to stand in a place of spiritual intercession for the
congregation? Could I, in fact, stand up and proclaim the words I would
have to speak on their behalf?
Without fully understanding why, I decided that I couldn't. I told my
mother the program was not for me after all, and I dropped out.
I went to Brandeis University
(which, although non-denominational and not religiously affiliated,
was founded by the American Jewish community in 1948, and its
population to this day is around 2/3 Jewish).
Ah. The only answer I have to that is: Fate. It must have been fate.
When it came time to look at colleges for me, my family took a road
trip to tour schools on the East Coast. For the record, these included
Carnegie Mellon (in Pittsburgh); Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and MIT (for
my brother, really);
Emerson College, also in Boston (and well reputed for their program
in communications, which interested me); and Syracuse University (NY).
I was already pretty well convinced I wanted to be in Boston. However,
at the time, I wasn't considering Brandeis at all, so we didn't even
go look at it while we were in town.
Later, Brandeis began sending me more promotional materials, and
it seemed to fit all of my basic criteria. Located in Waltham, MA, it
was part of metro Boston, but (unlike Emerson) far enough out of
the city to have a traditional "collegey" campus feel. It was (also
unlike Emerson) highly reputed academically. It had a tradition of
liberal involvement and other passionate qualities in its student
body. And, once I applied, they offered me not only a National Merit
Scholarship but a Justice Brandeis Scholarship, totaling $6,000 a
year.
Mom and Dad said, "Do you want us to fly you out there to have
a look at it?" And I thought about it -- and about the other schools I
had visited, and wasn't too excited about. And I thought, Well, it can't
be any worse than any other choice.... And I said, "No, let's
not bother. I'm going there." So the first time I set foot on the
Brandeis campus was when I matriculated there in August of 1989.
What I think now, in retrospect, is that if I had visited the place to
examine it with a critical eye, I might have been scared away from it.
(I doubt I'd ever even heard the term "culturally Jewish", and had no
conception of the breadth of meanings it might entail.) But, because I
just jumped in with both feet and never looked back, I acclimated
without a second thought -- and I loved it. It never occurred to me
to feel "culture shock", or homesick or alienated in any way.
Any perceptible differences, I happily chalked up to the simple fact of
being in college, or being on the East Coast rather than the Midwest.
At the same time, I knew a majority of my friends and classmates
(and, for that matter, professors) were Jewish, and there was some
slightly mysterious underlying quality to that for me. But that was,
conversely, just part of the experience of being at Brandeis.
My favorite anecdote on that topic is from April break (Easter/Passover
week) of my freshman year. I generally did go home for that vacation,
and this first year I was enjoying the novelty of running around my
hometown as a bigshot college student. So one afternoon I was out at
the strip mall near my house, and I went into the Hallmark store (which
I used to love as a kid). Being springtime in Valparaiso, Indiana, the
entire store was filled with Easter cards and paraphernalia -- except
for one three-foot section of Passover cards near the front of the store.
For which I made an immediate, joyful beeline. And proceeded to stand
there and pick up and read every single Passover card in the rack.
"Oh, look!" something in me said. "Home! -- It must
just be that I'm this homesick for Brandeis!"
Uh-huh.
I should start by saying that Brandeis has three chapels and three
chaplains: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant. I did attend a Protestant
service there once, sometime my freshman year -- but the Protestant
chaplain is generally of a more Southern, Baptist, or even AME variety.
Nothing wrong with it, but it didn't feel much like home to me. Then
I tried out the Catholic Mass once, knowing that liturgically it would
be almost identical to the Lutheran service I was used to; but I also
knew I was excluded from receiving Communion or anything, and overall
not entitled to feel a part of that community. So I didn't worry too
much about going to church at Brandeis at all, after that.
The first time I attended a Jewish service was on Rosh Hashanah in
1990, shortly before my 18th birthday, when I was a sophomore.
My roommate that year was Miriam Kaplan (hi, Miriam!),
and she came home one day in the first couple weeks of school and
said, "I need someone to come with me to services on the High
Holidays. Do you want Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur?" As it turned
out, she got another volunteer for Yom Kippur, so I got Rosh Hashanah.
I was completely blown away. This was the Conservative service, held
in the Spingold Auditorium with close to 1000 people, and the energy
in that room was amazing. But what struck me most powerfully was
the sense that for once, it was directed toward the God that I
had always felt was there... talking about God the way I had always
understood God to be. And what I felt there was the overwhelming
energy of being with a thousand other people praying to that same God
in those same terms.
Those first impressions formed the basis for all my further study and
eventual conversion to Judaism. The rest is commentary. :-)
Also, taking part in Hebrew prayers (or even, with my nonexistent
ability at the time, listening to them and trying to follow along in
the English translation on the facing page) was very moving. I had the
sense of glimpsing some facet of spiritual reality that I'd never been
so close to before.
That experience has informed all the rest of my journey. I love a lot of
things about Judaism and the culture that it drives, but for me, it
comes down to a question of theology. I feel that I've found the true
religion of my heart. And the things in it that fascinate me are
meaningful precisely because I feel that they approach the ultimate
truth.
For example, I personally find prayer in Hebrew exciting and mystical,
a communication on an entirely different level from praying in English
-- because I really believe that there's something holy about the
language, something fundamentally closer to the reality of God. That's
the mystic in me talking; but I did and do feel that Hebrew has an
inherent potency (talking to God in "God's native language"...!).
My junior year at Brandeis, I signed up for beginning Israeli Hebrew
(and ended up taking all four semesters of it by the time I graduated),
so I like to say that that was really my Hebrew school. Also that fall,
I started dating someone (hi, Sam!) who was a Near Eastern and Judaic
Studies major... he had grown up ordinary Conservative Jewish,
went through a very Orthodox phase once he got to Brandeis,
then swung the other way entirely and avoided doing anything religious
for a year -- so by the time I came along, he was ready to think about
doing some of it again. He thought it was great that I was so
interested in learning, so he taught me a few of the Friday night songs
and prayers, and we started going to the Friday night services of the
Egalitarian (Conservative) Minyan at Brandeis. After the service,
instead of joining people for the big communal Shabbat dinner, we'd go
out for pizza! But the following year, I continued going to Friday night
services on my own, and then to Shabbat dinner... and it gradually
snowballed from there until I was attending evening and morning Shabbat
services every week, as well as observing (at least in part) all the
holidays. My Jewish practice became an inextricable part of my life.
As I was saying above, the whole point was that
I never really had any faith in Jesus as divinity or figure of
salvation. So if anything, the thing I stopped doing was feeling
I needed to try to reconcile these dissonant impressions.
As a Jewish adult, I find the historical figure of Jesus (Jewish radical
and political activist), and what has since been done with his
message(s) and his memory, very interesting. One thing that struck me
as I came to learn more about Judaism was how many of "Jesus's sayings"
were actually drawn from older Jewish sources, like the teachings of
Rabbi Hillel. Since then, I've started buying books like
The Essential Jesus and
Jesus The Heretic,
and come to the conclusion that whatever the man Jesus had to say for
himself bears almost no resemblance to the messages of the subsequent
"Christian" church. (Which I think are largely the fault of Saul of
Tarsus, a.k.a. Saint Paul. But my personal, somewhat aggressive opinions
on that topic
are really outside the scope of this discussion).
No, I don't think there is a hell awaiting me as a disbeliever in Jesus.
I don't deny that people are sinful, in the sense that it's in our
nature to have to struggle to make choices for good in our thoughts,
words, and actions. But I don't equate that condition with "original
sin," and I don't accept the idea that humanity is in an automatic state
of damnation based on it, or consider it a sin of pride to claim that we
are capable of any merit on our own. God made us in God's own image. We
are wondrous creatures; God gave us the potential for great good as well
as great evil. In general, we may fall short. But again, it's God who
decides whether to forgive or (at least in theory) to punish us. And I
cannot accept a system which professes that God Is Love, yet fervently
believes that this same God created the universe with a big ol'
playground of hideous torture at its heart, and created a race of
wonderful little beings (us) all of whom through no fault of our own
were headed there by default; and though we can't merit relief
from this bizarre threat, we can have it for the asking, but ONLY if
we ask in the right way...!
Rather, on the subject of punishment, I agree with what I've read of
C.S. Lewis (whom I really love), that the consequence of sin is not
eternal fire and brimstone -- the "torture" simply is the vast
emptiness and meaninglessness of life without God. Sinfulness consists
of willful separation from God, and from what God wants of us; thus the
wages of sin are having to suffer that separation: spiritual death.
And conversely, anyone who honestly yearns after God will reach God,
regardless of the path by which they approach.
More importantly, though -- Judaism is strongly a religion of
this world, not the next world. There are Jewish traditions
regarding the afterlife and the World to Come (ha-olam ha-ba),
but the real focus is on how we conduct ourselves in this world and how
we make it a better place. We live morally and ethically, not out of
fear of some gruesome punishment, but because it is the right thing to
do, and is what we (as human beings in general and as Jews in particular)
are put here for.
Originally, while I was at Brandeis, they were fine with it because they
managed to treat it as sort of a cultural exercise. "Oh, isn't that
nice? She's at Brandeis, so she went to hear them read the Book of
Esther on Purim... She's at Brandeis, so she's dating Jewish boys...
She's at Brandeis, so she's taking Hebrew classes..." But this was also
partly the way I presented my explorations to them. It was easy
for me to share that I'd gone to synagogue on Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah
-- the parts that were easily explainable as fun and interesting. The
weightier, less-fun things, like fasting on Yom Kippur, I kept to myself
-- because how could I explain my desire to do them, as an outsider, in
any terms other than personal, meaningful attachment?
Eventually, of course, it became clear even to my parents (a thousand
miles away) that this was not purely a social endeavor on my part. At
some point, when I came home for a visit, Mom sat me down and said,
"Okay, what exactly is going on with all this?" And I told her the
truth, that I was coming to feel this personal, meaningful attachment,
and that I was (by then) planning on pursuing conversion.
To which she said: "Great, I'm really glad you've found something that
makes you happy and fulfilled." And that was pretty much it.
But there is another interesting aspect of the story, because, in fact
-- like all stories -- mine grows out of the generations that came
before it.
All four of my mother's grandparents came to the United States in 1906,
when the steel mills were founded in Gary, Indiana. Her mother's side,
the Mandels and Webers, were German Catholics. Her father's side, the
Bulzas -- and, as it turns out, the Rosenbergs -- were Romanian and
Hungarian Baptists.
(It was not until after I began exploring Judaism that I became aware
that my grandfather's mother was my great-grandmother Helen
Rosenberg, and that although she had been a practicing Baptist, it was
a little-discussed item of family lore that she was in fact Jewish. Her
brother was my mother's great-uncle Leo Rosenberg -- of whom my
mother likes to say, "You never saw such a Jewish uncle." This would
make my mother's father, who died in 1977 when I was four, my one
Jewish grandparent. Since then I've learned further that it was actually
Helen's father, Charles Rosenberg, who was Jewish and married out.
But still.)
In any case, when my grandfather Henry Bulza married my grandmother
Henrietta Weber, they had a Catholic wedding on condition that my
grandfather agree to raise their future children Catholic. However, when
they actually did have children -- four girls -- he backpedaled, and
would not allow them to be baptized as infants (a practice against the
Baptist tradition). And so my mother and her sisters were raised
essentially "nothing," betwixt-and-between.
All three of my aunts on that side eventually became Catholic as adults.
But my mother met and married my father, who came of solidly German
(and some Norwegian) Lutheran stock. So upon her marriage at age 23,
she was baptized as an adult into the Lutheran church, and that
became the spiritual "home" she had never had.
From this narrative, I draw two main points. (1) "Blood will tell" --
that is, I've read that lots of people who feel drawn to Judaism
eventually uncover Jewish roots in their family tree, and I count myself
in that camp. And (2) I'm convinced that the confusion of religions in
my mom's own background was what helped her understand and support
the journey, and the choice, that I eventually made.
My dad, for his part, has been more quietly supportive: interested to
learn from me about the way Judaism works, both in its concrete details
and in its philosophical principles. That's his style. He's very
careful about making sure I get what I need, though, especially when
I'm coming to visit ("Didn't you say you can't eat meat with dairy? I
got some smoked salmon, what kind of bagels do you want?"). That's his
style too.
But let me illuminate this question with one more story:
I own two mezuzahs. The first one, my mother sent me as a gift for
my conversion. Being in Indiana, she called up the Israel Book Shop in
Brookline, MA (our local Judaica powerhouse) to order it for me,
complete with kosher scroll. -- This, in itself, about sums up the
level of kindness and love with which my family has accepted this
development in my life.
The second one, my brother Rick bought for me in Israel (while he was
traveling there on business). The real gift in that has turned out to
be, not merely having this beautiful Jewish ritual object, but in being
able to point to said ritual object and hear myself say, "Oh, that, yes
-- my brother got it for me in Israel..." It's the sort of sentence I
hear other people toss out all the time, and never imagined could come
out of my own mouth. Which, for someone who converted, adds a whole
additional level of meaning.
I finally made up my mind, sometime in the spring of 1995, that Judaism
was something I couldn't imagine ever turning away from in my lifetime;
and that, moreover, in order to take on some of the participation I really
wanted to do (for instance, lead any of the prayers, or learn how to chant
from the Torah in the synagogue), I needed to join the tribe officially;
and that therefore I'd best be going ahead with it.
The first rabbi I consulted after that claimed she wasn't really in a
position to work with me herself. Instead, she suggested I look into
the program offered by the Conservative rabbinate in Boston, known as
the Gerim Institute. It consisted of 22 sessions of weekly classes,
culminating in beit din/mikveh appointments for those who chose to
complete their conversion.
I felt a little brushed off, at first, and approached the idea without
much enthusiasm. At that point, I'd been getting progressively more
involved in Jewish life and community for almost five years, and I
felt like having to take this class was beneath me! But weighing the
pros and cons, I decided it would at least be the most expedient method
to get it over with, and I signed up. And -- what do you know, I was
wrong, and it was wonderful! It wasn't beneath me; I wasn't even
the most knowledgeable student in the room. The majority of the students
in the program tend to be converting for marriage, in which case the
Jewish partner is required to take the class too -- so close to half
the people in the class were Jewish already. And the rabbi who
taught it (Sam Kenner, then of Temple Shalom in Salem, MA, now retired
to Florida; Rabbi Kenner, if you ever read this, please write and say
hi) was absolutely wonderful and very encouraging to me personally, and
I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to work with him. And,
we covered a lot of history material I'd never touched before, as well
as the holiday and ritual stuff I was more familiar with. And aside
from the regular homework readings, we were also required to write a
"midterm" research paper
on a topic of our choice, which I really got into. So from the very
first class, I never regretted taking that route.
My sponsoring rabbi was Richard (Rim) Meirowitz, then the rabbi at
Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, where I and several of my Brandeis
friends used to attend with varying degress of regularity. (We
nicknamed it -- affectionately, of course -- "Temple Beth Bingo,"
because the street side of the building was adorned with a large
Star of David next to an even larger sign for Tuesday night Bingo).
When I had decided to sign up for the Gerim Institute course, I wrote
a letter to Rabbi Rim explaining my situation ("I haven't discussed this
with you before, but..." -- !) and asked him if he would sponsor me. He
called me back as soon as he got it and said, yes, he'd be happy to
work with me on this. I attended TBI pretty much weekly during the
program; and the Shabbat after I completed the conversion, they
called me up to the Torah for the first time. The portion that week was
Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:26), and as a special honor, I was called for the
sixth aliyah, the section that includes the Ten Commandments.
Incidentally: Two years later, when I learned to read Haftarah, the
first one I read was the incredibly cool Haftarah for Parshat Yitro.
This is Isaiah 6:1-7:6 and 9:5-9:6, which starts out with Isaiah's
vision of the seraphim: "Each had six wings: with two he covered
his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one
called to another, and said, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of His glory'..." So, Yitro is officially
my adoptive "bat mitzvah" Torah portion.
No, I had a conversion.
... Really. Bat mitzvah marks the milestone of attaining Jewish
religious adulthood -- the time when one (in this case, a girl) becomes
legally of age to take responsibility for her own religious obligations,
instead of falling under her parents' responsibility. I know, lots of
women have had such a ceremony considerably later in their adult lives
(usually because bat mitzvah was not available to them at the appropriate
age). But me, I was already entering Judaism as an adult, fully fledged.
So, I had my conversion, they called me up to the Torah, I made the
blessings for the first time, they threw candy at me and sang Mazal
tov. That was all the rite of passage I needed.
[Note: You can read more about the ritual aspects of conversion at
www.convert.org.]
The beit din (a Jewish religious court consisting of three rabbis, or, by
extension, the hearing in front of same, which is required in conversion)
was a very emotional process for me. That is, the questioning itself was
easier than I expected; I felt like I'd be walking into a job interview or,
worse, an oral exam. But it was much more conversational and all the rabbis
really made me feel at ease. They were basically sounding me out on questions
like "What is it that draws you to Judaism?" -- questions that I'd certainly
already put a lot of thought into for myself and discussed with other people
at great length.
[Side note: While I was completing the conversion course in the spring of
1996, my friend and then-housemate Sara Ravid (hi, Sara!) was a senior at
Brandeis and taking a documentary filmmaking course. For her film project,
she decided to do a short documentary on conversion at Brandeis -- because
we knew at least six or seven people just in our immediate circle
of friends who were pursuing it! She taped an interview with me just a
couple of days before my beit din, and the funny thing was that the beit
din itself turned out to be almost an exact reprise of the things she had
asked me for the documentary. So I'd had a dry run without even knowing it.]
I don't remember how long it took, but after we'd talked for a while,
the rabbi who was leading the beit din said, "Okay, we're ready." (I
was like, "Don't you even have to send me out of the room and discuss
it?") It was basically a swearing-in: they asked me what Hebrew name
I'd chosen (Chana-Rivka), and then they gave
me a piece of paper with a statement a couple of paragraphs long which
I had to stand up and read aloud. That was the emotional part;
I'd been perfectly composed and then when I stood up to read, I choked
up with tears. It was powerful. Then I signed the paper, they signed
the paper, and I was authorized to go to the mikvah (a ritual bath, or,
by extension, immersion in same, which is the second required ritual
step in conversion), which was scheduled for the next day.
The mikvah itself was not as invasive a process as I'd heard it made
out to be... no one was inspecting every crevice of my body. Basically
they sent me into a little private bathroom to get myself ready (shower
and scrub), and there was a second door out of that into the actual
mikvah room -- which was like a very small swimming pool with a
staircase running right down into it from the door. The mikvah lady
stood inside the door with me to witness my immersion, and the rabbis
(all male) stood outside the door and yelled questions to me, and I
yelled back my affirmatives. And then they told me to immerse and I
went under the water a couple of times, and when I came up I was done.
It was actually strangely anticlimactic; I felt like there should have
been flashing lights or a gong or something at the moment of
transmission! Instead I was just wet. And Jewish. Wow.
Interestingly, once I began preparing for conversion, I had people
asking me on both sides: "Why don't you convert Orthodox?" (i.e., to
avoid any potential doubts about my status in future), and "Why don't
you just convert Reform?" -- to save myself the trouble of the
Conservative conversion, I guess is what was meant, though
the suggestion made zero sense to me! I knew I was going to be a
Conservative Jew, so how could I "just" convert Reform? (The Reform
movement does not necessarily insist on the ritual components -- beit
din and mikveh -- that are required for conversion by the halachically
bound movements. Some Reform conversions do include these elements,
though.)
Conversely, I was equally clear in my sense that I did not need an
Orthodox conversion, because I did not intend to affiliate with the
Orthodox community and therefore it wasn't my problem whether "they"
considered me officially Jewish. If I reached a point in my life
where the distinction actually became personally important (to me or,
say, to my children later in their own lives), there would be
time to redress it then.
Okay, there is no actual direct translation or equivalent of "Erica"
in Hebrew (although since it's the name of a flower, or genus of
flowers, I suppose "Shoshana" might have been thematically appropriate).
However, "Chana-Rivka" sounded to me like a loose phonetic equivalent
(at least the way I like to demonstrate it, "hahnnn... ER-iv-ka").
Also, my mother, father, and brother all have names starting with R,
so Rivka was my chance to tie in with that.
As for Chana -- it literally means "grace", and though it's the Hebrew
form of the Biblical name Hannah, it's often represented in other
languages as Anne or Anna, or other names starting with A or H.
In my mother's family there are, on her mother's side, several Annes
and Annas (my great-grandmother Anna Mandel Weber, and her oldest
daughter, my great-aunt Anne Wisner). And on her father's side (the
quasi-Jewish side, as you'll recall), there were my great-grandmother
Helen Rosenberg Bulza, and her oldest daughter, my great-aunt
Grace Zury. So to me, the name Chana, in a way, memorializes all of
them at once.
Interestingly, both
Chana and
Rivka appear in the Torah readings for
Rosh Hashanah: Chana in the first-day Haftarah, and Rivka in a quick
cameo at the end of the second-day Torah portion. I only figured this
out after the fact, but since Rosh Hashanah was really my Jewish
awakening, the synchronicity pleases me.
(Also interestingly, it turns out that Rivka comes from the root
r-v-k:
"to
bind, to tie up". Usually this is interpreted metaphorically as
"[spell]binding, captivating"; any further editorial comments are left as
an exercise to the reader. :-)
April 4, 2002
Really? How long ago?
What was your background before that?
Theologically, what did that mean?
So how did you discover Judaism?
But if you weren't Jewish to begin with, how did you end up at
Brandeis?
So what was your first religious exposure to Judaism?
What about Jesus? Did you just stop believing? Don't you worry
about going to heaven? Who do you think Jesus actually was?
What does your family think of all this?
What did you have to do to prepare for conversion?
Did you have a bat mitzvah?
Okay, so what was the actual conversion like?
Why didn't you just have a Reform conversion?
Why didn't you just have an Orthodox conversion?Why "Chana-Rivka"? Does that mean Erica in Hebrew?
Copyright ©2002 by Erica Schultz. All rights reserved.
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