Dreaming of bagrut

November 15, 2010 - 11:36 AM by Brian Blum

Hebrew translation: "Matriculation Certificate"

I had a horrifying dream last night. I imagined that I was 17 again, but this time living in Israel. It was bagrut season – that time in the spring semester of a student’s junior and senior years in high school when matriculation exams pile into each other like Nascar…or the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

In my dream, I was preparing for my bagrut tests…except that I had done nothing so far and I couldn’t figure out why. My mind raced between the upcoming exam in ezrachut (citizenship) in my dream and memories of my own high school days in California where we had “finals week” but no standardized national tests staggered every few weeks from Purim to summer break.

It’s not surprising that I had this dream – I’ve been living and breathing my teenage daughter’s bagrut tribulations especially since she was able to move up one of her tests from spring to winter, thereby reducing some pressure by making it more imminent.

This is not the first time I’ve had this kind of dream. I used to wake up in the middle of the night convinced that I had not in fact received my college diploma as I still had one more paper to turn in. Naturally, I’d long since forgotten the study material, relegating my entire professional life to little more than a thinly calculated fraud.

Fortunately, it’s only my daughter who needs to pass her bagruts in order to graduate. Maybe I should help her a bit more – it might hasten my own nocturnal remission.

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