If I Should Die Before I Wake

Imagine you have become two different people. Today, you are a Bar Mitzvah, studying for a ceremony in November. Then, suddenly, you dream (a vivid one, no less!) that you have been transported back in time to 1939 Poland, and become part of a Holocaust. And you are LIVING this dream. And then you dream that you have been transported to Poland in the middle ages. And you are a Jew. And you are to be eradicated by gentile society that sees Jews as not chosen, but sub-human. How can you react? How can you think? What do you think? What is the TRUE reality? How can you survive? And what does it mean to be a Jew, today or then? And what about GOD, ADONOY? Is GOD listening to us? Does GOD care? And most important, what is the purpose of a modern Bar/Bat Mitzvah if it doesn't give the Jews of 2008 a link with the terrors and beliefs of the past? And if it isn't meaningful or relevent?

Imagine you are Reuben Maimon, an impressionable young man of almost-thirteen, about to take the vows of Judaism for his Bar Mitzvah, yet, with these horrible (lifelike!) dreams, he must question who he is, and what the purpose of that ceremony is. Imagine you are Reuben Maimon, living two different lives with the same cast of people, and not knowing what the true reality is.

Imagine.

Imagine what would happen if you should die before you wake. Imagine, if you were Reuben Maimon, if he should die before he wakes. Imagine!