Tomorrows the big day–Ill be a new jew!

I did not do this for the jokes, but occasionally funny things slip out. Usually just using the word jew is funny to me. Maybe the way it feels in your mouth. Jew. Jew. Jew. The kid’s a jew. You’ll be a new jew. The jew thing. How jew doin’?

The list goes on and on and sometimes I giggle, that is all I’m saying. Sometimes the word Jew makes me giggle. But tomorrow–tomorrow around 10:45 or so–I’ll be jewish. I’ll be a jew. I’ll be jewish.

Say it with me.

Leah, you know, the jewish girl. She insists on pronouncing it Lee-uh, doesn’t she know she’s jewish now? Now she’s Lay-uh.

It is a slight change, but I could always tell if someone was jewish–jews call me Lay-uh, everyone else calls me Lee-uh. Except Star Wars geeks, they call me Princess. No, that’s not true. I didn’t know it was jews that said Lay-uh until I started converting. I would introduce myself as Lee-uh and immediately be reintroduced as Lay-uh.

But now I will be Lay-uh–as least in Hebrew. I’ve settled on Leah Meira for my hebrew name. I’m saving Margalit (Ruby) for my own daughter in honor of my grandparents. Keeping Leah–my mom chose it when she was 8 years old, you think I can change it now? And Meira means Light, Enlightened and is an anagram of Marie, my given name. I figure that being Jewish wasn’t a huge leap for Leah Marie, so why make the Hebrew name incredibly different?

Sorry I don’t have anything more profound to say right now. I reread my essay, since all the rabbis read it this week, and it wasn’t half bad. I never read it a second time after I wrote it–I was afraid it was terrible. It wasn’t it was honest.