Pure Bliss

The day has come. Well, not THE day. But the day I found a Rabbi with whom to work on my Day has come. Hooray! At the moment, I am not going to tell you who it is.

Suffice it to say, I am Very, Very Happy. And also a little bit nervous. It's finally beginning to hit me; no, wait - it's about to hit me, but hasn't quite yet, that this is irreversible. Irrevocable. That is one of the first things that the Rebbetzin at Boston University Hillel told me: once you do it, you can't take it back.

I thought, sure, that's great. I don't want to take it back! And I still don't. But the implications are huge. I am about to BECOME something that I wasn't before. Of course, that's not entirely true. I am about to become myself. I am about to become who I already was. But in terms of the world, and how I relate, I am about to become OTHER. Other than what I was. I am no longer going to be a goy (or whatever the feminine version of that is). I'm not going to be white, exactly, though I will be. I will be in a minority. I will be in a small group of people whose influence is greater than their numbers. I will be able to identify with a community, with a people.

At first, this seems strange and bizarre to me, as a concept. But I've already been feeling a part of it. When I learned that Bernie Madoff had scammed Elie Wiesel's organization, I felt personally up in arms, because Mr. Wiesel is one of my favorite people on this earth, and he, least of all, deserves to be scammed. When I read a story recently about a young girl with a bizarre medical condition, my feeling for the family was one of neutral interest and compassion until I looked at the last picture, which showed the little girl at her bar mitzvah. Then I realized what their name meant: they were Jewish. And suddenly I felt a warmth toward them that I hadn't felt before, just by that simple piece of information.

So I am about to join this community, this tribe. I will become one of the "Chosen People." I suppose the only thing that will make me different from most is that I will have chosen myself. But maybe that's what every Jewish person does. Maybe that doesn't make me different at all. Maybe the Jewish people are chosen simply because they choose themselves. Every day, whenever the option presents itself, they say, "I choose me. I choose life." L'Chaim.