Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of conversion, the process by which those of other faiths adopt Judaism. Most streams of Judaism, unlike many other religions, do not evangelize.
Conversion
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News 3 Weddings In New York Synagogue. One Shared Act Of Defiance Against Israel’s Orthodox Rabbinate
Jewish weddings are typically joyous events during which a couple’s family and friends gather to celebrate and shower them with love as they create a new life together. But on Sunday, three Israeli Jewish couples will turn their party into a protest, and their intimate moment into a public, political act. Temple Emanu-El, the iconic…
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Fast Forward Federations Demands Israel Reverse ‘Divisive’ Moves On Western Wall And Conversion
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Jewish Federations of North America called on Israel to reverse its “divisive and damaging” steps to freeze an agreement on egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and its support of a bill that would grant a monopoly to Orthodox authorities in Israel over conversions to Judaism. The JFNA’s board of…
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Community Who Gets To Judge The Converts?
The law “ואהבתם את הגר,” and you shall love the convert, is mentioned over 36 times in the Torah. The prolific rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote that “As a matter of normative practice, one should know that the mitzvah (commandment) to love the convert obligates us to bring them closer and to be lenient on all…
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Community When Converts Are Commodities
If my Facebook feed is any guide, converts to Judaism are commodities, not human beings. In countless posts, and in real life too, born Jews of all stripes opine about — depending on their ideological outlook — whether particular converts have met proper conversion standards, or whether there should be any standards at all. Not…
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Opinion Is It Way Too Expensive To Become A Jew?
This essay is part of our ongoing series, Outside the Bubble: Class and Inequality in the Jewish Community. It explores the class divides in Jewish communities of all denominations, and the financial struggles that belonging to these communities can incur. Please email your thoughts and essays to [email protected]. In the world of Orthodox converts, there’s…
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Community Seriously, We’ve Got To Stop Obsessing Over Jewish Genetics.
The Jewish world has been obsessing over genetics recently. Are we or are we not white? Has the Khazar hypothesis been conclusively disproven? All these are interesting questions that are fun to discuss, but it’s time to take a breather. Not only are the tests that tell you your ancestry less reliable than people believe…
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Yiddish World Why Does This Moscow Shul Attract So Many Converts?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the center of Moscow stands the historic Choral Synagogue – a beautiful yellow-white Neoclassical structure, the most famous shul in the Russian capital. The building, which now belongs to the Lithuanian Jewish community and its “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia,” was built in 1891 by…
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Breaking News These Rabbis Have No Idea Why They’re On Rabbinate’s ‘Blackllist’
NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2012, Rabbi Jason Herman wrote a letter to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate certifying that a friend of his who wished to get married was Jewish and single. The letter was declared invalid. But several months later Herman, spiritual leader of the Orthodox West Side Jewish Center in Manhattan, obtained a license…
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