I DECIDE TO TRY OUT SHABBAT NATION, the Friday-evening service Rabbi Klein recommended so many months ago. It is held in the same solarium where Eli gave his talk, against the glittery backdrop of Toronto’s skyline. By the time I get there, things are under way; several bearded men in white linen shirts are up on the makeshift stage. Their instruments are exotic: a kind of harp, a long bamboo tube. In the middle of the cluster of linen-clad men, a tall glossy-haired beauty is letting loose a bright ribbon of song. I look at her, look again. Finally I recognize her as the woman who was arguing with Eli after his presentation. Sarah? No, Shayna.
“I’m a singer,” she’d said.
No kidding.
Shayna beams at the participants, seated in a circle of plastic chairs, and motions for us all to stand. People shift nervously in their seats. She comes down from the stage and takes us, one by one, by the arms, still smiling. She instructs us to put our arms around each other and sway, and we willingly do it, wanting to please her. She must make a dynamite kindergarten teacher.
I look around the circle: men with colourful, Guatemalan-style kippot, and women in long, flowing skirts. There are toddlers running around behind the bimah. The proceedings wind down into a kiddush of sushi and wine. I cannot get enough of the challah, dense with yeast and white flour.
My mouth is full when Shayna approaches me. “We’ve met,” she says. “Where?”
Her height matches her presence. Up close, she seems even taller than on stage; she must be six feet.
“I think it was—”
“This always happens to me,” she says. “Why can’t I remember where I’ve met you?”
I try again. “I’m pretty sure—”
“Weird,” she says. “Isn’t it?”
“I guess. But—”
“I always like a mystery!”
She grins, popping a piece of sushi into her mouth, and I take my chance. “We met after Eli Bloomberg’s talk.”
Shayna’s face changes, a slight reconfiguration of features, which I can’t read. She chews carefully, her palm flat against her chest, as though to prevent herself from choking. “Oh!” she says, when she has managed to swallow. “Right. You’re Eli’s friend.”
I nod.
“I just had an email from him,” she says. “Sounds like he’s happy to be away.”
I have just received an email saying the opposite—that he’s having trouble adjusting to the residency in Paris, that he misses Toronto and his friends—but something tells me to keep quiet. There’s a strained silence. Shayna finally says, “I should go help the guys pack up the instruments.” She gestures behind her to one of the bearded men trying to cram an oversized pair of cymbals into a wooden box. “It was nice talking to you.” She pauses. “I’m sorry. Remind me of your name?”
“Alison.”
“Right. Good Shabbos, Alison.”
I have been taken as a real Jew.
“Good Shabbos to you, too,” I say.
When I arrive home, the apartment is dark. I go into the kitchen, turn on the light and look at the calendar on the wall. It is January 20, the date my great-grandparents Oskar and Marianne were deported to Auschwitz.
The following week the Jewish Information Class begins. The first meeting takes place in a small, hot classroom in the elementary school wing of the synagogue. The walls are covered with Hanukkah decorations and tourism posters of Israel. Degan and I try to wedge ourselves into the child-sized orange plastic chairs and schoolhouse desks, our knees doubled up underneath them. Around us, other couples are attempting the same contortion.
Debra is the only single person. I wave to her on the other side of the room.
A heavy-set woman with a flop of red curls enters and introduces herself as Harriet. She is wearing a purple track suit and matching lavender UGGs. “Welcome, everyone,” she says brightly. “Shalom.”
I have been warned against this particular teacher in no uncertain terms. A prominent editor at one of the city’s biggest publishing houses took the class with her fiancé, and it almost split them up. “Try to get another teacher,” the editor advised me. “Any other teacher.”
Yet despite having known that Harriet would be our teacher this session, I want to start as soon as possible. Degan has agreed to take the class, but he’s prone to changing his mind. And the road to conversion—if that’s where I’m headed—is long. Besides, Harriet seems friendly enough. “Shalom!” she says again, in case anyone missed it the first time. I don’t see what the problem is.
We go around the desks introducing ourselves. “I’m Andrew,” says a big man with earrings and a shaved head. “I’m here to support Lindsay in her path to conversion.”
His bride-to-be, a bleached blonde, blushes, although I can’t tell if it’s in response to the conversion or the impending nuptials.
The man to Lindsay’s left says, “I’m Ari. I’m here to support Layla, who hopes to convert before we are married next June.”
His fiancée flushes in turn.
The class, it turns out, consists entirely of couples engaged to be married. “Mazel tov!” Harriet says, over and over again. As we continue around the circle, I notice that the Jewish partner is almost always the man; I realize that because of matrilineal descent, these men want their fiancées to convert so their children will be Jewish. The only exception is Tom and Diane, the couple Rabbi Klein told us about. Their baby has fat cheeks and a slick of drool on her chin. A Jewish baby. Because her mother is Jewish. Her father is studying to convert.
Diane catches me making faces at the baby, sticking out my tongue to try to make her smile. “What’s her name?”
“Krista,” she whispers.
I can’t tear my eyes away.
After the introductions, we launch into our first Hebrew lesson. Harriet draws several characters on the board. “The first letter of the aleph-bet is what?” she asks.
“Aleph!” the Jewish men recite reluctantly, collectively. They can already speak Hebrew. I see immediately how this will work: each potential convert, each bride-to-be, will have her own personal tutor.
We take a short break, during which the Jews in the class compare notes on summer camps and day schools, and then return for the lecture portion of the evening. Harriet comes back into the class stuffing the last part of a banana into her mouth. “How do you become a Jew?” she asks.
She answers her own question: “Only one way. You’re born a Jew.”
She places her hands on her belly. “The way to become Jewish if you’re not born Jewish is to be born Jewish,” she says smugly, pleased with herself.
I look around the class. Furrowed brows. Does this mean there’s really no way in?
The answer to Harriet’s “who’s on first” riddle is eventually revealed: the mikvah. Through immersion in the Jewish ritual bath, you can be reborn as a Jew. There’s a collective sigh of relief from the partners of the potential converts. Harriet giggles over the class’s anxiety, her earlier conviviality having taken a fast turn to the passive-aggressive.
Now that we’ve established anyone can—theoretically—become Jewish, she says she will tell us a little more about the course. “It will be rigorous,” she says. “You will have to attend synagogue. You should live as Jews in your home.”
Here she looks at the clock: there are two hours left.
“Live as Jews,” she reiterates. “Go to synagogue.”
She keeps us until ten in the evening, finding new ways to make the same point.
Degan drives home. He can barely keep his eyes open. “I don’t know about this,” he says.
One week down and twenty-nine more to go.