Jewish Education: A Lifelong Journey
By DOTTIE DRESSLER
Thirteen years ago I began a
journey. It started the day I became
a Jew, on the day of my conversion
ceremony. To me, my conversion
was not the end of a journey, it was
really just the start. The journey was
— and is — without a final destination
or, rather, it is one with ever-evolving
destinations, one that has seen many
side-trips and stops along the way. It
has been a very personal journey,
one intended to make me feel, deep
in my soul, that I was Jewish.
My conversion could only be a
start. To really feel Jewish, I soon
learned, I needed to have greater
knowledge of my Judaism, to have
deeper experiences as a Jew, to
come to think like a Jew. And,
although I did not realize it then, one
of the first significant stages of my
journey would take me thirteen years
— to be exact, thirteen years and one
month — to complete. In November,
1992, you see, I became a Bat
Mitzvah.
The journey began in 1979 when I
chose Judaism as a way of life and
as a belief system. My husband,
Josh, is a "born" Jew, but he had had
no Jewish education while growing
up, a matter of deep regret to his
mother (especially when he decided
to marry a non-Jew, although she
and I were to become very close).
However, being Jewish was
important to Josh, and together we
decided that our children — as it
turned out, we had only one, David
— would be brought up as Jews.
We had little idea what we meant
when we made that promise to
ourselves, except that we wanted our
children to identify with a people rich
in culture, committed to values of
education and the importance of
family, and which, by the historical
experience of oppression, cared for
the underdog.
My husband and I had been
married for ten years, and our son
was six years old, when we decided it
was time to take steps to formally
identify as a Jewish family. One
instigating factor was that David
expressed an interest in learning
CID
Hebrew. Another factor, oddly
perhaps,
was that we had moved two
uj
Z
years earlier from Los Angeles's
U)
"rainbow coalition" to the wonderful,
but nonetheless very Scandinavian,
world of Minnesota.
Somehow, in that white-bread
world in which we found ourselves,
we experienced a greater desire to
express — to announce, if you will —
our religious and cultural identity.
As a consequence, Josh and
studied together in the "Introduction
to Judaism" class conducted by a St.
Paul, Minnesota, rabbi in preparation
L4
for my conversion. After my
conversion ceremony we joined the
synagogue. David entered religious
school, as he desired, and he
became a serious Hebrew scholar at
age 7. (A footnote to this is that David
was fifteen, he spent a high school
semester in Israel. While there, David
was forced to confront the halachic —
and political — reality, that in the
eyes of many, he was not Jewish. He
became friends with a rabbi who
assisted him in affirming his
Jewishness by having a ritual
circumcision, not an easy step for a
teenage boy, and by visiting the
mikveh.)
With my conversion, I began my
thirteen-year-long journey to become
a Bat Mitzvah. A friend of mine
pointed out to me that, according to
Jewish tradition, a born Jew becomes
Bat or Bar Mitzvah upon reaching the
appropriate age — thirteen or twelve
— without study or celebration. But,
where does that put me, a Jew by
Choice, who passed her
chronological thirteenth year before
conversion? I am not sure what the
tradition teaches in this regard. But, I
knew that, for me, I needed to do
more than simply have the years
pass by. I needed to study, to
immerse myself in Judaism, to
experience Judaism. One of my first
goals was to set out on a course of
learning that would constitute a
reasonable equivalent of what a child,
in a synagogue school, should know
by age thirteen.
The learning process did not come
easily. Often, especially at the start, I
felt inept and inadequate in
understanding Judaism and bringing
it into my and my family's life.
Sometimes I felt that I did not feel the
way a Jew should feel. My rabbi
comforted me. Gradually, I came to
understand that, as he explained,
there is no easy way to Jewish
knowledge, even for born Jews, no
way to feel Jewish except through
experience. I put aside my feelings of
inadequacy and came to enjoy the
path to my Bat Mitzvah.
On that path I have slowly, painfully
at times, learned Hebrew (attaining a
moderate level of proficiency), taken
courses in Talmud, Jewish spirituality
and worship, learned about the
"streams" of Judaism, been led by
capable teachers — mostly rabbis —
through Mishnah, Midrash and
contemporary Jewish thought, and
studied about, and twice been guided
through, the land of Israel.
Throughout this process, I brought
home my new learnings: I made my
Judaism more than simple book
learning. My Judaism took on a life, a
depth, of its own. Gradually — so
gradually that it almost crept up on
me — my Judaism, my Jewishness
became a part of me. I was not
someone learning about being a Jew;
I felt complete, as a Jew. It was not a
separate part of my character. It was
me. I knew that I was near the end of
this part of the journey. And, sure
enough, for me, it had taken just
about thirteen years to complete.
In 1991, I joined the adult
B'nai/B'not Mitzvah class held by our
rabbi on Monday evenings and began
a year-long course of study. Our first
step was to survey and discuss the
readings from our prayer book. Then
we studied the service itself,
examining its parts as well as the
whole.
As we neared the end of our
studies we were asked to prepare
and deliver a D'var Torah for our
classmates. For some it might be
easy to talk in front of familiar faces,
but not for me. It seemed to me like a
final exam. Worse, I felt that we —
my classmates and I — were taking
the' examination together, and .1 did
not want to let them down. Frankly, I
remember little about my delivery of
the D'var Torah, except that my
hands shook noticeably (at least, to
me), and my breathing was erratic.
But, of course, I lived through it, and
nobody evicted me from the bimah.
Concurrent with giving our D'vrei
Torah, we were also preparing for the
service in which we would participate
as B'nai and B'not Mitzvah. Each of
us led a part of the service in addition
to reading from the Torah. Many of us
chose to chant our verses from the
Torah, which required additional
preparation. When I first heard the
unfamiliar and discordant sounds of
my verses, I though that I should
scrap the idea of chanting. But, I
listened over and over to the tape the
Cantor made for me, as I drove to
and from work, and it became so
familiar to me that I even woke up
during some nights realizing that I
had been chanting my verses in my
sleep. (Thankfully I hadn't been
chanting out loud, thus sparing my
husband from my restlessness.)
Ultimately, I found that chanting
made the Torah service more
meaningful than reading the verses
alone. Chanting adds a spiritual,
mystical quality to the Torah service.
It somehow connects us to the past
more fully than do the Hebrew and
Aramaic words alone.
So, in November 1992, this part of
my journey ended. Becoming Bat
Mitzvah in public served as an
affirmation and celebration of my long
studies. But, as I said before, learning
about Judaism is a journey, without
any clear end to it. So, by becoming
Bat Mitzvah, I really celebrated just
one step along the way.
What is next? For me, adult
Confirmation. And so the journey
continues .. .
Dottie Dressler is a Huntington
Woods resident.