The conversion

The picture above is from Norway. It was taken right before I was abducted. I still look happy and content, as opposed to the pictures taken after I was abducted. My mother made the outfit I´m wearing. Very Seventies, and so cute.
My dad's Jewish, and my mother is not, so according to Jewish law I was not considered Jewish. My father became religious when he abducted me, a smart move as the tight-knit Orthodox community was a great way to hide me, and he knew it. I was converted to Judaism within a year after we arrived in NYC. My father told some people that my mother was dead, and told others that she didn't want me or was mentally ill. There was always another story, depending on where we were and what would sound best.
The tight-knit Jewish community, especially back in the 70's, was not informed about abduction and most didn't think to question my father's claims. Since he wanted to raise me Jewish, they agreed to convert me to Judaism. I needed to go through a conversion process to be a Jew. This requires immersion in a ritual pool, called a "mikvah" in Hebrew, which is a small pool made of stone and filled with rainwater. For Jews this is a process of renewal or purification, a sort of rebirth for someone who is converting. So I was going to be born again into the Jewish faith, and leave the past behind.
I have strong sensory memories of it. The concrete memories are of walking the stone steps into a deep pool with my father, and getting dunked under water 3 times. There were men there, I suppose they were the rabbis who had converted me, watching above. There was an air of mystery, the aromas of a room that smelled of old water, and of a feeling of vulnerability. It was a strange feeling to be in the dark water, in the stone pool in a synagogue building in Brooklyn, and to be so little and be doing something that felt so BIG, so huge. I was given a new name, Sarah Zissel, and I felt like I surely must be a different person when I walked out of the mikvah that day. It was a really freaky experience for a little kid.