Hineni. Here I am.

Just over one year ago, just before the High Holidays, I started meeting with my Rabbi, beginning my conversion process. Now, I am ready to complete my conversion with beit din and mikvah. This is supposed to be a simcha, a joy, yes? Then why am I so anxious?

I am not nervous for the actual day. I expect that goes the way it is meant to go. Perhaps it is more to do with this being a significant lifecycle event. The mikvah, like all water rituals, is more than a cleansing; it is also a rebirth. You go into the water as one thing, and come out of the water as another. I have devoted so much time and energy to this effort. Now, it is time for that to pass and something new to start.

This is a hineni moment. Here I am. To what new start am I saying hineni? And to whom am I saying it?

I don’t believe in God as some super being who hears all our prayers and answers them if we’re good enough to win favor. Fortunately, we are encouraged to study, to be mindful, and to fill in these gaps.

I have had to adopt many new interpretations in the past year. Once I broke down such a large definition, so many others words in my personal religious lexicon had to be redefined. Old ideas about image, creation, and grace have made way for new ideas.

On Shabbat, we thank God for the gifts of wine and bread, we do not really believe that God magically put that bread on our table. I bought the bottle of wine and the ingredients for the bread. I mixed, kneaded, and baked the dough. It is work of human hands, specifically mine.

But still, I did not put that bread there. Bread and wine are miracles. Seeds are planted and harvested by GPS-controlled machines with millions of parts costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Bugs pollinate. Yeasts consume sugars. Clouds give rain. Photosynthesis allows plants to create life from the light of the sun. And every atom on this planet was manufactured in a star that lived and died billions of years ago.

Could we even begin to enumerate the process of something as simple and miraculous as bread? I am comfortable with calling the force that compels us to put bread and wine on the table, this process that started billions of years ago, “God.” In putting bread on our table and blessing our children, I am creating a ritual that links our past with our future. I keep the process moving forward.

Adonai echad. The Lord is one. The unity of all things has always been present in Judaism.

In wisdom tradition, especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the heart doesn’t refer to the muscular organ in your chest. Instead, it means the authentic, most honest version of yourself. We fracture our hearts when our true self fails to align with our social selves. We all understand that we have different selves — we put on different façades for work, school, religious life, various friends, and social media. For the most part, some divergence is expected. You expect the person you are when you are with your spouse to be different when you are with your boss. When these selves diverge too greatly from the true self, we hurt ourselves. We tear ourselves apart.

Maybe our work requires us to do things that we do not agree with, or our religions ask us to profess words we no longer believe. We may have relationships that are not healthy. We cannot find ourselves because we are in too many places.

Where am I? Hineni.

Hineni is a response to the heart, as if your true self cried out and your mind was in a place to hear it. Hineni is about becoming one with yourself.

As Reform Jews, we talk a lot about tikkun olam, repair of the world. Perhaps hineni is the beginning of tikkun etzem, repair of the self.

Hineni. Here I am.

!שלום