Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

This 98-Year-Old Woman Converted To Judaism — After Winning A Raffle

Frances Bertetta, a 98-year-old woman from the San Francisco area, proved that it’s never too late to find your spiritual home — and a little luck doesn’t hurt.

Bertetta originally fell in love with Judaism more than 70 years ago, when she attended the bar mitzvah of a friend’s son.

Her love of Judaism was reignited three years ago when she won tickets to High Holiday services at a San Francisco synagogue through a raffle at the JCC. After that, she just kept going back, and began the journey to becoming a Jew.

“I never forgot that little boy reciting his Hebrew,” she told the Jewish News of Northern California. “The Catholic Church is very cold and you don’t question anything. We kids were scared to death of the priests and nuns. The rabbi was walking around and talking to everybody.”

Though she’s officially converted, she still learns as much as she can about Jewish tradition and history.

“Everything is interesting. I just love it all,” Bertetta said. “The more I learn, the more I love it. The hardest thing is learning Hebrew. Talking to the rabbis and the cantor and my mentor was really great. I love the discussions. With Jews there’s always discussion.”

Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version