I had to puzzle it for a minute, but I think it’s short for “Michael Hunt”.
Okay, then we’re gonna do it!
That goes counter to everything I’ve ever heard about conversion. When you convert you are Jewish, and when women convert any children they have are Jewish at birth. There should be no separation between converts and Jews by birth.
There may be issues wrt Conservative or Orthodox Jews not recognizing a conversion from a Reform rabbi, but that’s another story.
Jews have been around a lot longer than the concept of race as a social construct. It’s not surprising that they don’t fit neatly into it. Race, religion, and ethnicity are all poor words to describe them. “Tribe” is better.
That has… not always been an effective strategy.
That’s weird.
I have a friend whose father is Jewish, and whose mother isn’t, who considers himself a Noahide. His mother never converted.
I have another friend whose wife was a Noahide for years, and finally converted. Now she’s a Jew.
I suspect you are missing some important detail in that story.
Yeah, there’s not really a such thing as ‘agreeing’ to live by the Noachide laws. Those are the laws that automatically apply to everyone who isn’t Jewish.
The whole point of converting is that you’re making a decision to no longer abide only by the generic “rules for all humans” and are instead taking on the much heavier and infinitely more picky burden of “rules for all Jews.”
But there are no degrees of conversion. No purgatorial waiting room where you’re kind of but not really Jewish.
I’m not sure of the intricacies involved in conversion. She was turned down by the Conservative and Orthodox temples, but eventually found a Reform temple willing to do it. It might be a local policy. This was in North Carolina, which doesn’t have as much a Jewish population as they do up north, if that makes any difference.
Their marriage fell apart anyway.
In one direction only. AIUI, if you are born of a Jewish mother, you are considered Jewish, and there is little or nothing that can change that. You can become a born again Christian, but according to the rules of Halacha, you are still Jewish. (Someone more knowledgeable than me may come along with some exceptions to the rule, but that’s my understanding.)
It’s much easier to be a gentile than a Jew, so there are old traditions to turn away prospective converts a few times. If she was turned away altogether it’s because they didn’t think she was serious about it, and that’s for her benefit. It would be actively harmful (spiritually speaking, but there are plenny temporal difficulties as well) to allow the conversion of somebody who didn’t intend to follow all the additional rules.
But the “Noachide” thing is still really weird, even for a Reform temple. Maybe she was so wishy-washy that the rabbi couldn’t bring themselves to actually convert her and just kind of made something up allow her to participate in the Jewish community without actually converting. Or maybe there are synagogues out there who do this to boost their numbers and establish ties in the wider community. I’ve just never heard of anything like it.
Yep, and this concept has ruffled a lot of feathers here and elsewhere. “You can’t tell somebody they’re not allowed to leave a religion!” It’s another spot where it’s easier to think of Judaism as a tribe. You can leave your ancestral lands, cast away your cultural trappings, reject those traditions… but the tribe is still there and you’re still a part of it even if it’s no longer a part of you.
Plus, the rest of the world has spent a few thousand years beating it into the Jewish psyche that ‘but I converted!’ doesn’t cut it when they come for you and your family.
From my understanding, Orthodox and Conservative rabbis might require more stringent work to qualify, and the couple may not have wanted to do something that took a long time, required a lot more steps, and cost more. As such, their Reform conversion probably wasn’t recognized by the other Jewish congregations in the community.
Jews don’t seek out converts, in fact, they actively try to discourage it. Non-Jews don’t need to be Jewish to be righteous people to get their reward, they just need to follow the 7 Noahide Laws, so converting puts an extra burden on them. The were followers of the Noahide Laws before any conversion process.
Ditto. My Reform temple does conversions. It’s a big deal, they get turned away a couple of times, and once they are allowed to start the process, there’s a year of study. We call the people who undergo that process “Jews”.
Do you mean complete the process? Or is the conversion at the beginning, and the process is bringing them up to speed?
Who undergo the full process, to completion. The conversion is at the end.
Well, she played the part at least. She dressed conservatively, wore a head kerchief, and taped Hebrew characters all around the house. Both she and her husband attended conversion classes. He got into it, because to him it was like participating in a Ren fair, and he liked the idea of celebrating Purim.
I never knew why she wanted to convert. When I first met her, she was antireligious and into Ayn Rand. Maybe she was making up for her rebellious stage? The shift in faith wasn’t the reason their marriage fell apart anyway.
This would annoy me to no end if I actually cared. I’m not Jewish. It’s a religion and it’s not my religion. Nobody except me has any business saying what my religion is. And people who believe that kind of thing shouldn’t be complaining about Mormons baptized dead people or whatever it is they do. Everybody can feel free to proclaim their own religion but don’t t tell me what my religion is.
Modnote: This is pretty far off-topic. Please refrain from such.
Israel’s religious authorities — the only entities authorized to perform weddings in Israel — are not permitted to marry couples where both partners do not have the same religion; the only way for people of different (or no) faith to marry is by converting to the same religion. However, civil, interfaith, and same-sex marriages entered into abroad are recognized by the state;[4] as a consequence Israeli residents not permitted to marry in Israel sometimes marry overseas, often in nearby Cyprus.
Re Noahide
IIRC Somebody who acknowledges the G-d of Israel as the one true deity and Judaism as the one true faith may opt not to convert (for the reasons given above) but become Bar (or Bat) Noah. They agree to follow the 7 laws, and that those laws come from G-d. Once after questioning whether such people really existed, I got an e-mail of PM (I forget which) from one.
Hid Off-Topic reply made long after the Mod-Note. {WE?}
A case can be made that in this and other respects, Judaism is not just a religion, if you consider a religion to be a set of theological beliefs. “Tribe” is one of the more common terms used, as is “culture.” And the tradition of matrilineal descent makes the term “race” not as inappropriate as it would be in the case of Catholicism or other religions that are more closely identified solely with belief systems.
There are plenty of atheists and non-religious people who consider themselves Jewish. Like me.
ETA: written and posted before I saw the mod note.
My experience with them is very limited, but yeah, “Noachides” are a thing. It’s actually the logical identity to adopt if you believe that Judaism is the true religion and aren’t already Jewish; as others have pointed out, God expects Jews to follow a huge array of bizarre rules, while Noachides only have to avoid the major sins like murder, theft and whatnot in order to be in good with the Big Guy. I think there was actually a thread about this in the fairly recent past.
But that has nothing to do with actual conversion to Judaism, and I’ve never heard of anyone asking a rabbi of any denomination to “officially certify” them as Noachide. So either Knowed Out is missing some details or something weird is going on in North Carolina.