Of course, there had been a protest. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Had it been a mistake to send him?

W

hen any potential convert comes before beis din, one of the things they’re warned about is anti-Semitism. “Do you know how many people have hated Jews over the millennia?” is a question that, for most of my lifetime, was a thought experiment. So when the rabbanim on the St. Louis Bein Din asked me, nearly 20 years ago, if I was prepared to be hated, I, with all the wisdom and experience of a 24-year-old, thought I knew enough to feel warned.

I’d read countless Holocaust books as a child, a result of my mother having been deeply moved by a formative trip to Dachau while in her early twenties. I was familiar with stories of righteous gentiles who had bravely hidden Jews during those perilous years. When I was young, our Jewish neighbors had their suburban home vandalized with hateful symbols. I myself had visited Mauthausen during my semester abroad and was shaken both by the experience and by the way some of my classmates were able to casually discuss things like their favorite yoga class in such a nightmarish location. Were they so immune to the horror that was radiating from the very ground we stood on?

I thought I knew.