I mean, I'll always be Jaclyn, that's for sure. And I don't anticipate very much about myself changing after tomorrow. I'll still be the same-old, irreverent, loud n'proud JFroCo I've always been.
But.
(there's always that 'but...")
Tomorrow I become a rabbi.
Tonight, I'm really, actually, at-lastily ... erev rav.
Tonight I'm perched at the threshold. Tomorrow I cross it.
Because tomorrow, I'll be ordained.
No more student rabbi. No more intern. No more graduate school.
Rabbi.
It doesn't seem real. Maybe that's why I keep repeating it; to sort of let myself take in the hugeness of it all.
When you're on the slow train for six long years, slogging through what feels like endless cycles of classes and homework and papers and finals and projects and meetings and uphill battles, you become locked into this mentality that this is your life forever. Coming to the end of that ... well, it doesn't all sink in so easily.
Yet, everything is shifting in this beautiful direction. We're going to an awesome city, where my husband already has a job and we have a beautiful home in which to live. I'm so incredibly excited to finally begin working, and in a great community, no less!
Maybe tomorrow it will really sink in, when I'm standing there at the threshold becoming ordained by the president of our school. Or maybe it will be immediately after, when everyone starts calling me "Rabbi Jaclyn" and I no longer have to correct them. Or maybe it will sink in six months from now after my first High Holidays in Seattle.
No matter what, tonight is my last night being "just Jaclyn." Tomorrow the hard work, blood, sweat, and endless tears will all finally prove worth it.
Because tomorrow, I'm a rabbi.
Laila tov.
-Jaclyn
Tomorrow we will have a title that finally does justice to how we have all felt about you all along.
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