hmmm…looks at Op’s username…and join date……hmmmm
In case the OP is serious: check out askmoses.com . The logo’s cute, too.
If they want their children to be Jewish, either she needs to convert, or each child needs to have a separate conversion after birth (a conversion the child has the right to repudiate, which is not the case if the child is born Jewish because the mother converts first). Some people consider it a shandeh to have children with a non-Jewish women, because you are creating more gentiles-- something that does not happen when a Jewish woman has children with a gentile.
An Orthodox rabbi is not going to consider conversion if you have not been living a frum life before the conversion, so if you are not living one now, it’s a waste of time to go to an Orthodox rabbi and ask about conversion.
There are lots of religions in the world, what is the particular appeal or Orthodox Judaism? I have a couple of relatives who have converted to various sects of Judaism (most of our family has basically let religion lapse), one pretty “reform,” and one pretty conservative (maybe Orthodox, I can’t keep track). To be honest, neither seem to actually believe the supernatural part of the religion. Are there actually people who weren’t born into the religion who say to themselves “that God, as described in the Old Testament makes the most sense to help me understand my place in this whacky world, and this is a religion I can wrap my arms around.”
Orthodox Jews may not recognize conversions performed by other denominations. If the family is Orthodox then nothing else will be sufficient for them to accept.
Yes. We are friends with a couple who are both converts. When they married, neither of them was Jewish. She was Italian-Catholic, he was (mostly lapsed) Mormon. She became interested in Judaism and was converted by a Conservative beit din (lit. House of Law; a tribunal of 3 qualified witnesses). He converted later, after both their kids were born, and they had a chuppah shortly after that. They are among the most observant members of our synagogue (which means, in this case, that they keep a strictly kosher home and are strictly Sabbath observant, including not driving to services on Shabbat and holidays). I’d call them “Conservadox”.
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On another note, some posters have used the Yiddish word shikseh. Please don’t. It derives from a Hebrew word meaning “abomination” or “object of loathing”. I realize that, in this context, it is probably how the woman in question is being described by her in-laws, but it’s extremely rude by contemporary standards.
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They are rabbis, are they not?
Interesting. Did not know that. I’ll refrain from now on.
What about “goy”? Is that equally insulting?
Israel accepts only Orthodox conversions in terms of accepting people as Jewish under the Law of Return. If the OP ever wants to move to Israel with his wife and have her considered Israeli, she needs to convert as Orthodox if she converts in the US.
Orthodox rabbis are concerned with how you live your life: my cousin married a woman who was adopted as a baby, and her parents had her converted as an infant in a Reform community. Later, after their first two children were born, they decided to join a Modern Orthodox community and shul. They asked the rabbi what was necessary for my cousin’s wife in regards to her conversion, and she went in front of a beit din (rabbinical court), where they asked a lot of questions, more about their current life, and how they had raised their children, and less about her conversion, although they did ask if her parents had taken her to a kosher mikveh, which they had, and they had documentation. They asked her to go to mikveh again, but mainly because she hadn’t gone after the births of her children, not as a second conversion; they judged that her conversion fulfilled all the talmudic requirements, and that she was sincere in living a Jewish life, and had been for a long time, even if she had gradually been becoming more and more frum. They decided she was Jewish, and so were her children.
I knew another woman who converted with a Reform rabbi, then converted again as part of an Orthodox community. The rabbis she consulted advised her on a new conversion, based on the way she had lived prior to her interest in Orthodox Judaism, which was pretty much that she hadn’t been shomer shabbes or shomer kashrut (she ate kosher meat, but her kashrut wasn’t very strict, and she ate in non-kosher restaurants, just didn’t order meat). They wanted her to live as part of an Orthodox (it was an American Haredi) community for a while, just to see what she was getting into. Then she would go to mikveh, and be fully converted as Orthodox. I’m honestly not sure what she had done for mikveh the first time around.
Some Reform rabbis can oversee a conversion that passes muster with the Orthodox community by asking the person to be shomer shabbes and shomer kashrut for a year before conversion, and having an Orthodox beit din examine them, an Orthodox mohel do the bris (for a man), and go to an Orthodox mikveh. I’ve known people who were in small towns where an Orthodox shul wasn’t available, but a Reform, or simple “egalitarian, unaffiliated” congregation was, and the converts had to go out of town for the beit din, mikveh, and bris. (Some of the brises were just hatafat dam brit, though.)
I’m not actually sure. That’s why I hedged by saying the beit din is composed of “qualified witnesses”. For conversion, maybe the qualifications include rabbinic ordination, but I don’t think that’s universally the case for a beit din. I served on one to witness the delivery of a get (religious divorce papers), and I am decidedly not a Rabbi.
No the reason she wants to convert is not only to have a Jewish wedding and raise Jewish children she has an inner desire to convert for her self it’s something she has been looking into and seriously considering for many years
Yep. It’s also one of the more polite things I’ve been called by relatives who, shall we say, strongly disapproved of my parents’ marriage.
Even if the word is offensive in Hebrew it’s not necessarily in other languages.
“Goy” means “nation” in Hebrew. Israel is a nation, but when a Jew says “nation,” or “nations,” it’s understood, unless otherwise specified, that the meaning is “other nations.” When it’s used as a Yiddish word, it means “someone who is something other than Jewish.” Jews who don’t like gentiles may have a tone when they say the word “goyim” (plural) that makes it sound bad, but there is nothing inherently offensive about the word.
“Shiksa” (this is how I usually see it spelled, but “shikseh” works just as well) is one of those words that gets tossed around as pidgin Yiddish-English, and people don’t know what they are saying. A lot of Jews don’t even have any idea how offensive shiksa can be, especially since the word has taken on a secondary meaning of “attractive gentile woman,” particularly in that there was a time when Jewish men who wanted to assimilate considered dating a gentile woman, or “shiksa,” a symbol that they had “arrived,” so to speak.
The same thing kind of happened to the word “shmuck.” It’s a very offensive work if you are speaking Yiddish, but English-speaking Americans think of it as only a mild insult.
Did you miss this part:
For many people, having two Jewish parents or particularly a Jewish mother is fundamental for that.
This exact thing happened to a friend of mine. Although she faithfully converted to Judaism and continues to practice her faith, his parents and other relatives did not come to the wedding and still will not speak to her. However, she did not expect any different, because she’d already met them.
This was a couple years ago.
I don’t believe that’s still true. I believe they will recognize the “non-Jewish” spouses of Jews. In fact, they’ve extended it to nonJewish spouses in SSM. Israel Expands "Law Of Return" To Include Same-Sex Couples — Finally
She couldn’t return on her own, but with her spouse she can.
We know an orthodox conversion takes time but how long should we expect many people have told us because she has a man the process will be much easier and the beit din will be more lenient with our process
This website will have many of the answers you seek.
This one’s more context dependent, I think. The word itself is entirely neutral, simply meaning “nation”. There is a biblical verse, used in daily prayers and often sung as a camp song that goes “Lo visa goy el goy kherev… (Nation shall not lift up sword against nation…).” Clearly not insulting in this context, since we’re not referring to particular characteristics of any group, and, in fact, the Jewish nation is included in the general terms here.
On the other hand, any neutral descriptor of an individual as a member of a group can be turned into an insult by tone and context. If I say someone is “French”, I could mean that he’s “a person from the country of France,” or I could mean he’s “an existentialist-philosopher-worshipping, Gauloises-smoking, cheese-eating, surrender monkey,” depending on how much foam is leaking from the corners of my mouth.
Goy can also be mildly or ironically disparaging, especially in adjectival form, viz “Pastrami on white with mayo? How goyishe!”
Thank you RivkahChaya & RickG. Ignorance fought.
There is no one answer to this. A year is usually the least (full cycle of holidays), and I’d imagine that’s probably a faster track for people who have already largely adopted shomer mitzvos lives of their own accord before formally approaching a beis din. More people take longer. I’ve heard the London Beis Din takes 4 years at least. The more suspicious they are of your motives and commitment, the longer it’s going to take, because if a beis din converts someone who later goes off the derech, part of that is on their head.
If your family is concerned about your wife being recognized as Jewish in Israel, you need to be very careful which beis din you use. Over the last decade or so, the Rabbanut has been nullifying conversions performed in chutz la’aretz that they thought weren’t done properly, and given the sway chareidi leaders have over religious matters in Israel and the general slide to the right of Orthodox Judaism over the last generation, that often translates to “conversions done by Modern Orthodox rabbis we think are too far to the left.” The Rabbinical Council of America supposedly has a list of batei din whose conversions are accepted by the Rabbanut.