We started our Intro to Judaism class this past Thursday - and boy was it intense! As I posted that evening on Facebook (where you can "journal" in a sentence or two), "thrilled, fulfilled, and entirely overwhelmed." This class is complete with a college-like syllabus (listing the books, weekly assignments, and an absence policy), weekly journal entries, about eight or so books, multiple assigned readings, beginning Hebrew assignments, field trips of a sort, Torah readings, a presentation on one Torah portion, and a final project. Whew! Nicole and I both left feeling exhausted and anxious.
We have been talking about conversion (well, for me - more like rediscovering for Nicole) since spring of 2011, temple-shopped that fall after our wedding, and have been attending services at our current temple since the first week of January 2012. We began meeting with our rabbi in February to talk about conversion, and she explained that it involves taking this class. However, when she went to look up when classes began, she found that they began that very day. It was too last minute for us to go that evening, and we knew we would have to miss several other classes as well for our March vacation and my sister's wedding in North Carolina in April. It was frustrating because we were eager, but we decided it would be better to wait than to have to miss three classes. I wanted to do this the right way, and there was no need to rush it.
We then tried to register for summer classes, after months of antsy anticipation on my part. I was very much enjoying services and our monthly meetings with our rabbi, and I was feeling comfortable enough that I was ready to move to the next step. However, we received a cancellation notice within a couple weeks of registering, due to not having enough participants for a summer course. Strangely, our spring had been very busy but we were free all summer. This was a major disappointment, and when I expressed that to Rabbi, she responded by providing us with a book to read together (As a Driven Leaf - an awesome book that will now have to be on hold for months) and started providing some more structure to our meetings so that we could really start learning. I'm very grateful to her for this.
I then registered for the fall class, and while there was one starting September 25, it was with a male rabbi, and I really feel more comfortable with female rabbis. I appreciate the inherent feminist outlook on everything - how can you NOT consider that with pretty much everything you read and do as a woman? A progressive male rabbi may offer something similar, but I feel that it would be coming more from an intellectual place rather than from an implicit understanding of what it means to be a spiritual woman in a religion that historically has been dominated by males. I also come from a Catholic background and have a deep appreciation for the recognition that women can lead and teach, and I want to support that. This was worth pushing it off yet another month and registering for the October 25 class.
So in we went, hopeful, eager, and anxious. I have always been an avid student, and have very much looked forward to taking a class on something so new to me yet something I'm feeling so connected to and passionate about. I was ready to eat it up! For some reason, it had just never occurred to me that it would feel so intensely overwhelming. I almost felt panicky looking at our stack of books and the list of assignments - which we were already behind on from the first class! I also felt a little nervous about the diverse group of students in the room. This should add to the experience (and surely will), but for the time being it makes me a little nervous. People are there for all different reasons, and I feel less connected to them as a group than I thought I would. I'm hoping that will change.
It also felt odd to have a rabbi different from OUR rabbi. This is really the only temple and rabbi we have known, and it's like I forgot that other people have their own rabbis, different rabbis. It's like I expected Rabbi R to be sitting at the front of the room, ready to teach us, and was shocked and unsettled to find a different person there who also called herself Rabbi. Such a childlike perspective!
I'm excited to FINALLY begin this part of the journey. I have been waiting almost a year. I feel so comfortable in our temple and with our rabbi, and I'm ready for this challenge. I'm ready to shake up my discussions with Rabbi R.
So I guess this serves as my first journal entry. We get suggested topics every week, but we don't have to stick to them, and I kind of just ran with this in my own journal. My syllabus is buried in a stack of books and papers from class on the kitchen table, so I'll just end this with two of the questions I remember from this week's topic: what are your hopes or expectations, and what are your concerns or doubts?
My hope is that I will strengthen my bond with this faith that feels like home to me. My hope is that it will open up conversation between my wife and me as we learn new things together. My hope is that what we do every week at temple will start to make even more sense, and that we will be given history and context for our spirituality.
I worry that I will learn things I don't agree with or don't believe. I have some questions that I don't ask because I'm afraid of the answer, and nervous about what it means if I don't agree. There is a lot of flexibility in Reform Judaism which is part of why it feels like such a natural fit for me. There is room to question and disagree. But it's still a concern in the back of my mind.
I hope I can use this newfound time, with tomorrow off of work for the hurricane, to start tackling some of this reading. Feeling overwhelmed can easily immobilize me into procrastination, and I really don't want to let that happen.
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