The Aftermath of ‘Becoming’

Scrubbing the blue ink of a Hebrew name off my forearm felt like erasing a temporary tattoo that I actually wanted to keep forever. I stood there at the sink for at least 12 minutes, the water turning lukewarm, realizing that the physical evidence of yesterday was literally down the drain. The certificate is in a folder. The rabbi is probably having breakfast with a different student now. The emails-the constant stream of ‘Read this chapter’ and ‘Don’t forget the candle-lighting times’-have simply stopped. I’m standing in a kitchen that looks exactly like it did 52 hours ago, but I’m told I’m a different person. It’s a quiet, vibrating kind of terror.

We spend so much time obsessed with the ‘becoming.’ We treat the conversion process like a marathon where the finish line is a pool of water, and once you emerge, you’re handed a metaphorical gold medal and a bagel. But nobody talks about the Tuesday morning after. The morning when the syllabus is gone. You wake up and you’re just… a Jew. Alone in your apartment. Wondering if you’re allowed to feel this hollow, or if you’re doing it wrong already. I’m an elder care advocate by trade-Ruby V., nice to meet you-and I spend my life dealing with people who have reached the ‘end’ of their major life arcs. I see what happens when the structure of work and active parenting falls away. People crumble when the ‘doing’ stops. And here I am, 42 years old, crumbling because I don’t have a homework assignment on the Book of Ruth.

The Spiritual Fly Is Open

I’m reminded of this morning, actually. I spent nearly 132 minutes in a high-stakes meeting about Medicare funding, speaking with what I thought was immense authority and poise. It wasn’t until I went to the restroom afterward that I realized my fly had been wide open the entire time. Not just a little bit. Fully. The gap between who I thought I was (a professional advocate) and who I actually was (a woman with her zipper down) was staggering. That’s what this first week of being Jewish feels like. I feel like I’m walking around with my spiritual fly open. I’m performing the identity, I’m saying the words, but there’s this nagging sense of being exposed and slightly ridiculous. I’m waiting for someone to point it out. ‘Hey, Ruby, you know you’re not doing that right, right?’

“But the truth is, nobody is looking. That’s the most frightening part. In the conversion process, you are the center of the universe. […] Then, the day after, you are just another person in the pews who might be ignored during Kiddush.”

– Realization of Ordinariness

I think we need to talk more about this transition-the shift from being a ‘Candidate’ to being a ‘Nobody.’ It’s a beautiful, brutal demotion. We want to be part of the people, but we forget that being part of the people means being ordinary. It means having to figure out which brand of kosher salt to buy without calling a mentor.

The Wetted Anxieties

I used to think that the Mikvah would act like a spiritual car wash. I’d go in dusty and come out shiny and new, with all my doubts buffed out. But I came out with the same anxieties, just wetter. I’m still Ruby. I still worry about my cat’s kidneys. I still get annoyed when people cut me off in traffic. I just have a different legal status in the eyes of Heaven now. It’s a contradiction I haven’t quite reconciled. How can everything be different when everything is exactly the same? I think about the elderly clients I work with. They are still the same rebels and artists they were at 22, even if their bodies are 82. The core doesn’t change as fast as the circumstances. My soul might be Jewish now, but it’s still wearing my old personality’s shoes, and they’re a bit scuffed.

Winging It: The Club Mentality

I tried to explain this to a friend-who has been Jewish since birth-and she just laughed. She said, ‘Ruby, welcome to the club. We’re all just winging it.’ She told me she hasn’t looked at a prayer book in 32 weeks and she still feels Jewish. That blew my mind. The idea that Jewishness could be a state of being rather than a state of ‘doing.’ For a convert, Jewishness is 100% doing. If we aren’t doing, are we even there? It’s a performance we’re terrified to stop, lest the stage lights go dark and the audience realizes we don’t belong.

But that’s the trap. The goal of the conversion isn’t to become a professional Jew; it’s to become a Jewish human. And humans are messy. Humans have their flies open. Humans forget the words. I spent 2 hours yesterday just sitting with a Siddur, not even reading it, just holding it. It felt like holding a hand. I didn’t need to finish a chapter. I didn’t need to pass a test. I just needed to exist in the same space as the tradition.

The Long, Flat Plain

I’ve decided to stop looking for the next ‘level.’ There is no Level 2. There is just the long, flat plain of the rest of my life. There will be 52 Shabbats every year for as long as I’m alive. That’s a lot of candles. That’s a lot of braided bread. The weight of it is immense if you look at it all at once, but if you just look at the next one, it’s manageable. I think about my work again. We don’t try to solve ‘aging.’ We just try to make today a little more dignified than yesterday. That’s my new theology. Don’t try to be the most Jewish person in the world. Just try to be 2% more intentional than you were when you were a secular ghost.

I still feel that weird itch to check my inbox for a grade. I still feel like I’m waiting for someone to tell me I’ve graduated to the next phase. But the graduation was the water, and the next phase is just… living. It’s the least dramatic thing in the world, and that’s why it’s so hard. There are no trumpets. There is just the sound of the refrigerator humming and the realization that I need to go buy more candles because I’m down to my last 2.

The structure didn’t go away; it just became internal. I am the rabbi now. I am the student. I am the advocate. And if I’m doing it with my fly open, well, at least I’m doing it as myself.