The New Jewess On The Block

In other news, I got the Jew talk at dinner earlier this week. It had been a shit day at work - shooting summer fashion in the North End (the I-talian neighborhood) with no model (the agency eventually sent us a replacement - who was perfect - about 2 hours after call time), a cracked out hair stylist who kept drinking beer in the street and a short amount of daylight to shoot in. All in all, it ended up pretty kick ass but frustrating nonetheless. So the last thing in the world I want to do is have this conversation that I know I'm about to have. 

After Mike kept getting yelled at for not being serious, I was told by his dad how honored, grateful, etc they are that I'm making the decision to convert (something I brought up at Passover, don't know if I ever mentioned that here). He tells me that they've met with the rabbi they chose for me (in which his mother chimes in, "she's not very attractive" - I totally know where Mike gets it now). Hopefully she'll never read this, yikes. Bottom line, there are two ways that rabbis deny you into the tribe (according to Sex & The City, you get denied 3 times before you're allowed to start the conversion). One involves getting a door slammed in your face. The other involves reading copious amounts of books. Can you guess which one I got? Yeah. So I'm probably going to have to write a book report to become Jewish. Luckily, Mike has offered to write it for me. I mean, I write a lot, I write often, it's not that I can't do it. But I write about shoes and clothes and sparkly things. Not G-d.

Immediately after the conversion convo - which BTW "Jew school" begins in September, happy birthday me - Mike's mom asks if we have an idea when we want to have our wedding. You could literally see Mike turn pale and crap out his heart. I told her one thing at a time. We still have at least 21 1/2 months to go. She's also looking forward to learning Hebrew with me and teaching me how to cook Jewish meals. Oy.

So basically in a year, I'll be Jewish. Or as my love Jeannie says, Druish (which sort of makes sense since I'm mostly Irish and Druids are Irish). My friend Sam, who is Mexican, gave me a great idea for my bat mitzvah (yes! I'm finally becoming a woman). It's going to be a quinceanera-themed bat mitvah. Sam keeps calling it my bat quince. When a Latin girl turns 15, she has a quince the way I had a sweet 16 only far more illustrious. Her godparents give her a rosary, a bible, a tiara, her first pair of heels and earrings. So for my bat quince, I will receive a Star of David or a hhai (the symbol for life - Mike's dad wears one and I think it's awesome), a Torah or at least a prayer book, and all the rest, preferably a pair of Louboutin or YSL's for the heels (we'll have to see). The food will be Mexican-Jewish fusion, although I don't think that's very kosher. Maybe we substitute beef for gifelte fish? Blech, wouldn't eat it either way.

Oh yeah! We have to keep kosher for a year. Which isn't too hard because we typically don't have food in the house. Really, I just have to keep the turkey out of the cheese drawer and the turkey meatballs on a separate shelf from the ice cream. Mike said we can keep the NYC apt our kosher home, but that would mean Shaka would have to throw out those Jamaican patties he left in there over a year ago. Gross.

This is going to be quite the ride...