It is with great excitement and pride that I share my acceptance to the Rabbinical Ordination program at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion! The road to “Rabbi” started long ago, and this point in the journey is especially sweet. As I prepare for the next five years of study, reflecting on my experience not only fed my gratitude, it resulted in a personal statement I am thrilled to share with you.
“You know, you should really think about becoming a rabbi”. I looked over at the man, practically a stranger to me, who had just said those words. I’d only met this new rabbi twice before, and he was already throwing around crazy ideas. In that moment, converting to Judaism seemed like the craziest thing I could possibly do.
“Um, I should probably become Jewish first” I replied timidly. He laughed as though that was already a given. I’m glad one of us was sure. I was raised in a Catholic home by a spiritually progressive but religiously traditional mother and strictly conservative Irish father. I was eleven when my mom passed, and with her physical presence went all the room to explore the multitude of ways to define “God”. So, I delved into traditional Catholicism and tried my best to connect to Jesus. Life did not get easier like the Bible told me it would if I prayed hard enough. In fact, life got harder, scarier, and less appealing.
College was my escape from this hardship. It was my first Lech Lecha moment, leaving the house of my father. Finally free from the turmoil and traumas of my childhood, I began playing with God. I started in what I was raised with, and very quickly realized the façade I had put up to please my father did not need to remain. So, it crumbled, and in its wake was a proud gay woman who had previously only existed within the walls of a confessional. Stepping into myself meant that God took the back burner for a moment, or so I thought. What I found as I began recognizing my own identity was also a new way of understanding the Divine. The white man with a long beard on a cloud became the spiritual fire within me that I hadn’t know about.
I loved recognizing, truly, the existence of holiness within myself, but I also began to miss some of what I was raised with. Jonah and the whale, Queen Esther, the story of Genesis, and more were all stories that I had grown to love and derive spiritual insight from. However, I simply didn’t know how to make my identity and lack of faith in Jesus match these biblical stories. I thought of my friends growing up, those who stood at the front of a synagogue and shared their understanding of the texts I loved. But Judaism is a closed religion. Closed enough, I thought, to mean I could never relate to ancient texts and tradition as one of those friends I respected so greatly.
My life changed when I learned conversion was an option. However, the tradition of turning away the prospective convert several times is undoubtedly true. After six months of independent study and trying to connect with rabbis, I was convinced I would never move beyond living by the Noahide Laws. So, I stopped reaching out to rabbis. I continued my learning, but decided that I would finish college, leave the state, and start anew somewhere else. It was at this point that I enrolled in a sociology class. On the first day of class, the professor ran through the syllabus and started introducing herself. She has two children, she has a dog, oh, and she’s a rabbi’s wife. I knew in that moment that my life had just changed again. It took me several weeks to tell her I was trying to learn Hebrew and someday wanted to convert. But once I did finally share these personal details, I had a Hebrew alphabet tool at my ready and her husband’s business card with the date of our first meeting scribbled on the back. Shortly thereafter, my conversion began.
Suddenly colors were brighter, days had more time for reading, and my heart was fulfilled in unimaginable ways. I felt connected to a tradition under a movement that embraces me in my entirety. As I began to lead a Jewish life, I began to recognize myself more and more. I gradually grew to believe that this meant I started recognizing God more and more. Pages were filled with writings and reflections of what I was learning. At last, I felt like I was living, even when my sponsoring rabbi threw around wild ideas about me entering the rabbinate. Shabbat services became a weekly necessity for my spiritual wellbeing, and bible study was my earliest introduction to Jewish communal learning. Like the cliché of a sponge soaking it all in, I lived each moment of that year to its fullest.
Sadly, my great joy in my conversion lead to the dissolution of my relationship with my family of origin. Without much understanding of what exactly had gone so wrong, I found myself talking to the God as I did when I was a child. I had to nurture the child’s soul within me for my authenticity as an individual person to truly shine through. It was in this bittersweet moment that my rabbi and I knew it was time for my mikvah. On the 27th of Iyyar, 5783, I became Esther Aviva Bat Avraham v’Sarah. The teaching that the month of Iyyar is an acronym for “Ani Adonai rofecha” felt as though it were a divine coincidence. The sadness of losing my family of origin did not disappear, but I did what any Jew has done at some point: I turned to the ancient text I had worked so hard to hold on to. Little did I know, it would prove that my rabbi’s crazy idea wasn’t so crazy after all.
When Moses stood on the planes of Moab, he spoke words that changed the course of my life yet again: אתם נצבים היום כולכם – You are standing here today, all of you. In the same way every Jewish soul stood at Sinai’s foot, we all stood before Moses in that moment, the land of Israel so close we could almost touch it, at attention with vigor in our hearts. He called on the leaders, the craftspeople, the women, and the children. Then he called on me, the ger. A stranger, perhaps I was, but a giyoret, a convert, I proudly am. That pride in my own Jewish story had finally sunk in.
What I internalized in that moment was the space that existed before me, a promised land of my very own. My promised land started in the living waters of the mikvah and extends with every step I take. All I had to do to receive it was to make the same promise as every Jew that came before and after me. It was when Moses spoke those words and I heard them for the very first time that I truly internalized the nonduality of my Jewishness and the Jewishness of everyone around me. Moses was my steppingstone to realizing that the line where one Jew ends, and I begin, is nonexistent. As I stepped into my promised land, I did so in tandem with everyone else.
For many months after completing my conversion, I impulsively felt the need to tell everyone I was a convert. I did so not with a sense of superiority, but with crippling imposter syndrome. It wasn’t until I embraced Moses’ call to the lives and roles around me that this struggle ceased. Knowing the value of every soul, including my own, gave me the opportunity to stand on my own two feet proudly as a daughter of Avraham and Sarah. Existing in a context where each Jew is encouraged to learn for themselves and from everyone around them is to me the foundation of progressive Judaism and the Reform Movement.
I stood before Moses in the land where my older sister, Ruth, grew up. I stood before him as a giyoret, but not exclusively. I give a heartfelt hineini every day as a student friend, creator, and one day, as a rabbi. There came a point in my conversion when wanting to become Jewish evolved into needing to become Jewish. I feel that same sense of need, for myself and for my global community, when it comes to entering the rabbinate.
Guided by pivotal figures like Moses, along with my beloved clergy and fellow Jews, I have come to know that I will spend the rest of my life uplifting my community. Where they want to go, I will help get them to. Where the lodge, I will protect and maintain. Their people will always be welcomed as my people, and our God will always be our God in the infinite ways the Divine exists. Along each step of their lives, I will give them the same opportunity Moses gave us in Moab: to see themselves as part of the collective working towards a better world, and equally valued as the individuals leading their own breathtaking lives.
Humble Chutzpah 