I was reading Virginia Heffernan's article for Tablet about her encounter as a young woman with J.D. Salinger in Cornish, NH.  Salinger died at age 91 on January 28th, 2010.  Heffernan, who is a convert,  reflected nicely on his half-Jewish identity and his troubled family life, but much to my astonishment, she was met with a barrage of comments that Salinger wasn't Jewish because he had a Jewish father, and that he had deserted Judaism as an adult, etc., etc.  Here is my reply:

Dear Commenters:

I never thought in a million years that I’d have to defend J.D. Salinger’s claim to Jewish roots.

I’m the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, the largest international organization for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage (www.half-jewish.net). As a member of Jewish outreach, I was recently informed that one of Salinger’s descendants currently lives as a Jew.

If this information is true, I sure hope that his descendant does not see your thread, filled with ethnocentric attacks on Salinger’s connection to the Jewish people and negative comments implying that the author of the article, Mrs. Heffernan, is unworthy to comment on Jewish topics because she is Jew by choice.  Your negative remarks would likely cause Salinger’s descendant to question the wisdom of affiliating with the Jewish people.  Moreover, you display a profound ignorance of the situation in which many children of intermarriage find themselves, and of Mr. Salinger’s tragic personal history in particular.

Salinger Was Raised Jewish

Mr. Salinger was Jewish as defined by both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. Both denominations require that the child of either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father be brought up as a Jew from birth, and given life cycle rituals like a bar or bat mitzvah.

Even though no Jewish outreach to interfaith families existed when Mr. Salinger was born in 1919, he was raised as a Jew and had a bar mitzvah.  Shortly after his bar mitzvah, he was told that his mother — coerced by her Jewish in-laws — had been hiding her Christian identity.  Can you imagine the impact of this discovery on a 13 year old? No wonder the heroes of his fiction display a contempt for adult “phonies” and a suspicion towards all conventional appearances.

Why Didn't He Live As A Jew?

You also resent that he sought spirituality in other religions.  Given your unwelcoming attitudes can you blame him?...and this is the year 2010. Imagine the icy reception Salinger would have received from other Jews, in say, 1936, if as an unknown writer  he had expressed any interest in conversion or living as a Jew.

I know from interviewing adult children of intermarriage who grew up in that era, that the American Jewish community often rejected them, which is in stark contrast with the German Jewish community of the 1930s.  There was no organized interfaith family outreach in American Judaism until the early 1980s, when Salinger was in his sixties. And even today, as evidenced by your negative comments, adult childen and grandchildren of intermarriage are routinely snubbed and rebuffed when attempting to gain entry to the Jewish community.  There is outreach for interfaith couples and Jews by choice, but almost none for half-Jewish people

His Experiences In World War II, The Holocaust

Now, about Mr. Salinger’s personal history with the Holocaust.

With regard to the comment that Salinger, as a trainee in his father’s business, was in no danger in 1938 Vienna, because he had an American passport, please consult any history of the Holocaust, and see report after report of people being killed or injured in the streets everywhere in the Nazi empire from 1934 onward because they “looked Jewish.”  How quickly you forget.  You think that the Nazi thugs asked for paperwork categorically?

None of your hostile comments present any awareness that Salinger spent World War II as a staff sergeant in the Army, suffering through bloody campaigns in Europe against the Nazis, helping liberate a concentration camp, and then serving because of his fluent French and German as an interpreter to American officials rounding up German prisoners of war.  Salinger’s experiences in WWII were so bad that he had a nervous breakdown. I would say that those are substantial services to Judaism and humanity and should be treated with more respect.

Jews By Choice Get A Voice

Now, with regard to your comment that Heffernan is a convert and therefore apparently has no right to discuss Jewish topics: have you read any Jewish texts?  As a convert Ms. Heffernan is considered a Jew and has every right to discuss Jewish topics.

Her perception of Mr. Salinger as a kvetching New York Jew in the utterly non-Jewish setting of Cornish, NH and his momentary kindness to her, is in keeping with what is known of his character and behavior. Irregardless of his adult spiritual beliefs, his early New York Jewish upbringing was marked in his behavior and outlook throughout his life.  Overall, her article is a tiny and precious snapshot which will be greatly appreciated by future Salinger biographers and scholars.

Double Bind Experiences in Jewish Community

In conclusion, I would like to state that your negative comments on Salinger’s connections to Judaism epitomize the double bind experiences that many half-Jewish people find themselves in today when they encounter the Jewish community.  We are often told that we are “not Jewish” and if we attempt to live as Jews, obstacles are put in the way of our converting or entering Jewish communities. Then we are berated, subtly or openly, by some Jews with two Jewish parents, for having explored other spiritualities.

It my earnest hope, as the leader of the Half-Jewish Network and of the Inclusivist Judaism Coalition that I will live to see a Judaism that is multicultural and multiracial, and where the number and gender of one’s Jewish ancestors will not be as important as one’s spiritual or secular culture ties to them, and that all persons connected to the Jewish people by family ties will see those ties honored.

Barely before the Thanksgiving leftovers are in the fridge and that last dish is washed, Christmas invades the New York City like the traditional consumerism orgy that it has become.  Stores decorate garishly in glitter, tinsel and twinkly lights, people begging for money on the trains deliberately remind you “it's the season for giving,” and various street corners become miniature pine forests populated by burley Canadians with their fragrant evergreens available for ready money.

If you’ve ever been to New York in December, you’ve probably walked through one of these random street corners lined with trees wrapped in large hair nets and strings of bulbish lights precariously dangling from red wooden stakes.  Tucked within the trees is almost always a shabby little shack cobbled out of bits and pieces with perhaps a bit of heat to protect and provide comfort from the elements to these sentinel street vendors who indefatigably hock their wares.

Walking through these temporary showrooms can be a briefly transformative experience.  The street noise dampens slightly, the scent of pine sap gently assails your nostrils, and for a moment you don’t feel you are in a loud bustling city of eight million people.  Perhaps it was this feeling that sparked the romance.

Several years ago I had an ecologically conscientious roommate.   She cared about the environment so much that she never flushed the toilet.  Purportedly this omission of common courtesy was an effort to save water, but it only really resulted in pissing off her roommate who - with my own standards of sanitation - would flush twice.  That and her other earth-saving tricks made me conclude that she really would be much happier in life living in a cabin in the woods.  This conclusion was reinforced by her December fling – our Christmas Tree Guy.

Our neighborhood Christmas tree stand was only about a hundred yards from our apartment and directly in the path to our closest subway stop.  So it wasn’t uncommon to walk through the trees several times a day.  First it was, “oh, I’m just bringing the Christmas Tree Guy some coffee,” she’d giggle as she ran out the door with a travel mug in hand.  Then there was a dinner date.  Not too long after came the late night moans and the ecstatic rhythmic thuds of Christmas Tree Guy sex.

The next morning my walk to the subway was a vicarious walk of shame.  “Oh hi,” I bashfully managed, “you know, the walls in our apartment are really thin.”  But the Christmas Tree Guy turned out to be very sweet.  He was a forest ranger by trade, but during the winter makes good money by selling Christmas trees.  When we wasn’t on duty, he shared a tiny apartment with about 15 other guys.  He said people were generally friendly and welcoming, bringing him coffee and snacks, but even so I suspected my roommate was the only one providing carnal comforts.  The local street gang had dubbed him “Tree Guy” and helped protect his trees from petty theft.  The only trouble he said that he was having was with the bank at the street corner where his trees were set up.  They would argue about where he could place his wares and hassled the vendors until the Christmas Tree Guy posted a sign that said “***** Bank Hates Christmas.”  Christmas eventually won.

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Jon Gosselin (basic explanation for those of you lucky enough not to know who he is: he and his now-estranged wife had twins and sextuplets, then they got a show on TLC called Jon and Kate Plus Eight, then they split up and Jon started dressing like an overgrown frat boy and dating Kate's plastic surgeon's daughter. You're welcome.) recently gave an interview to ParentDish.com. There was quite a bit of Jewish talk, since Jon's girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, is a member of the tribe. Most of the quotes were so hilarious/embarrassing that we've decided to let them speak for themselves:

This is the first year I will celebrate Chanukah. Hailey is Jewish. Everyone in my life is Jewish now, my attorney. I love it. I'm now half Jewish and half Korean. The family values are great.

I just went through Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur and learned about the new year and every Friday is the Shabbat dinner. I love challah bread. I'm learning about Jewish food, going to Zabar's. I love that place. I'm learning about kosher and when not to order a bacon, egg and cheese and make an ass of myself. Hailey makes fun of me. My mom came to the city on Yom Kippur and asked where all the traffic was. I got from the West Side to Midtown in five minutes. She wants to come to the city every year on Yom Kippur.

I talked to Rabbi Shmuley [Boteach] a couple of times. He has nine kids. I was really nervous dating a Jewish girl. She's like the best girl ever. All my friends are like 'I'm so jealous' and I'm like, 'Stay away, she's mine.'

I have a therapist. But hanging around Jewish people you don't need to talk to anyone else. My parents and grandparents are divorced and I want to break the pattern. I have Hailey and Mark Heller, my attorney, my therapist. They're all Jewish. I watch them and I confide in them, especially Hailey. She is my best friend. She'll tell me if I do something wrong. God has put these people in my life for a reason. My inner circle is Jewish. I only care what they think.

 

The New Yorker, everybody's favorite highbrow magazine, likes to drag their heels in the mud with the rest of us from time to time. Check out their new illustration regarding Britney Spears' ostensible conversion to Judaism [Editor's note: Britney is currently dating her agent, Jason Ashlock, who is Jewish, and rumors abound that she's pulling an Ivanka Trump and converting for him]:

 

In the accompanying article, Andy Borowitz skewers the all-too-easy target of Britney, trying on a new religion with as much disposability as trying on a new pair of panties. Best line: "Madonna is so Jewish I call her Mezuzah." Worst: I was like, “Rabbi P., is there any way you could break this down into a bunch of tweets? I’ll read it on my phone on the way to rehearsal.” He got so mad those curls on the sides of his head started shaking. (I don’t know why he won’t let my stylist snip them off. They’re not a good look for him, K.?)"

Which is, admittedly, more than one line. But you needed to hear the whole thing in order to fully appreciate the awkwardness and the trying-to-write-like-a-ditz-when-you're-actually-kind-of-an-intellectual-ditz quality of the entire falsified diary. Yeah, you heard me. You come after Britney, now you're comin' after one of us.

 

People don't like to think very far into the future. I understand that: I can barely think about next week, let alone a decade from now.

But if the Tribe is going to survive, we need to learn to adapt. Judaism came from a pre-modern era. Now, more than ever, we need to find creative ways to use technology to bring the Tribe into the 21st Century...kicking and screaming if we have to.

So here are five technological innovations, which I feel will greatly improve Jewish life and further the Jewish People.

Twitter Minyans: I brought this up in my last article on Judaism and Marketing. It makes no sense to me that technology and prayer have not been fused together. Most of the prayers are short enough that they will work in Twitter, and we can shorten the other ones to fit in the 150 character box.

Digital Shabbos Candles: There's nothing that requires a Shabbos candle be a physical candle (haters beware, I did look in Code of Jewish Law for this), so we can assume that a candle screen saver would work just as well for Friday night. If you want something a little more low-tech, a simple flashlight would work just as well. But remember that if you do that, you have to let the battery run out, as switching the light off is "work."

Robot Shabbos Goys: Need a Shabbos goy but don't want to bother the nice Christian family next door? In the future, we'll have robots to do that for us. Even today, modern conveniences like the Roomba by iRobot take away any pressure to work on Shabbat.

Kosher iPhone: The future is here and it's called the iPhone. iBlessing and ParveOMeter are two amazing iPhone/iTouch apps to appease the yiddishkeit desire to introduce efficiency into the Jewish lifestyle. Future apps that I would like to see include the Modeh Ani alarm clock and a call-your-mother app that sends pre-recorded voicemails to your mom, letting her know you haven't dropped out of med school (yet)!

Insta-Conversion: Utilizing the power of the Internet, we can completely re-think how new Jews are brought into the Tribe. The general requirements are a pre-interview, some kind of Judaism 101 class, Bet Din, bris, mikvah and a public ceremony. If we break this down, we find that most of this can be done quickly and efficiently, utilizing e-technology. Pre-conversion interviews between rabbi and convert can easily be done via IM or Skype. Classes can be modeled after distance learning with e-books to read and online exams. The Bet Din can be turned into a teleconference, or again, another Skype adventure. The bris (for men) and mikvah would need to be in person, but as far as I'm concerned a public ceremony could be a mass update on your Facebook/Myspace/Twitter. We could also use webcams to broadcast this event.

Stay tuned; I am sure I'll come up with more.

Seeing that I've been dating someone for a respectable amount of time now, and that things have been going rather well, it was recently decided that I should probably meet the other woman in his life – his mother.  It made sense because a few weeks ago I had convinced him that the 12-hour train ride to meet my Christian family in rural Pennsylvania was going to be fun.  And I even took it to be a good sign that he didn’t break up with me immediately upon returning to Brooklyn.  In fact, shortly thereafter he mentioned that his mother was coming to town and perhaps I should meet her.

I had met previous boyfriend’s parents before, but only once since I had decided to convert to Judaism.  I had been dating a wayward young man who had been raised in a strict Orthodox family.  My Conservative conversion was never going to be good enough for his family – which was clearly articulated to me through him prior to any actual familial introduction.  When I finally met that boyfriend's mother her first question was, “Well, are you going to miss Christmas?”  Yikes!  I will say that for all of the “you must break up with the shiksa” telephone conversations I occasionally overheard him have with his parents, his family was always kind or at least passably indifferent to my face.

Fortunately, in my current relationship, I was not aware of any prejudices against me arising from my Christian upbringing.  My boyfriend did say that his mother asked if our relationship was serious.  To which he responded, “No ma, it’s not serious, we tell jokes all the time.”

All joking aside, I do care about him a great deal, but who knows if years from now I will be looking back reminiscing about this weekend as the time I met my mother-in-law.  Truth be told we’ve only been together since Purim, so there was no sense in getting the cart before the horse.  But I was still nervous anyway about meeting his mother.

One of the ways I alleviate stress is by cooking, but since I’m without easy access to my own kitchen I resorted to my other nervous tic – cleaning.  My boyfriend really hates change and is not the meticulously neat and tidy (or crazy) person I am, so I knew I would have to trick him into my stress-reduction plan to clean his apartment.  When we talking out our weekend plans, I worked in trips to his place to pick up dirty laundry around trips to my place where I have laundry in my building.  I even snuck out early one morning to pick up bagels – and a new shower curtain.

When the appointed day arrived, my boyfriend found me scrubbing the bathroom floor wondering aloud if we should replace the shabby (and ugly) bathroom rugs. “No, my mom bought them for me,” which made me glad I hadn’t already pitched them out.  But we got her call earlier than we expected that she had landed and was on her way to get a cab.  I was still at his place nervously tidying up.  One of the first things she noticed was how clean the place was.  “This is not my son’s apartment,” she said eyeing the small vase of flowers in the bathroom.  I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  

The next night over dinner I again found myself nervous and talking up a storm.  But this was where we got it out in the open – my Christian family and my conversion.  To my relief she appeared rather curious about why anyone would choose to be Jewish, and what exactly was the process I was going through.  “Ah, you probably know more about Judaism than most Jews!” she declared.  Our only potential sticking point was our conflicting views on Israel (I recently took part in the New Israel Fund’s video Love, Hate and the Jewish State expressing opinions I would gather from our conversation she would disagree with) but I wisely kept my mouth shut.

So, as I hope my relationship with my boyfriend continues to grow, so will my relationship with his mother.  I find it such a relief that my family history does not appear at all problematic to her – and, in fact, she seems pleased her son has found a nice Jewish girl.

Some mornings I start clicking around on the internet, the modern equivalent of thumbing through the newspaper, and something magical happens. Today, that article that made magic happen was from the UK paper the Mirror, with the headline "Lindsay Lohan to Convert to Judaism."

Lindsay, who is much more famous these days for her rocky relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson than for her acting or singing careers, has kept herself a tabloid fixture.Ronson was certainly not unknown before she started dating the starlet - she is the sister of musician Mark Ronson and fashion designer Charlotte Ronson. Her DJing fee has gone up significantly since hooking up with Lohan, and the couple makes extra money by combining their forces and having Lohan host a party Ronson is DJing.  

Now Lohan, who dabbled in Kabbalah back when red string bracelets were the accessory du jour for Hollywood's younger set, is reportedly interested in converting to Judaism. She and Ronson were spotted attending services together at a synagogue in London last week, and Lohan has reportedly updated her Facebook status to "I'm converting." 

Will it be a race to the mikveh between Lindsay and Ivanka Trump (who is rumored to be converting in order to marry boyfriend Jared Kushner)? What about wild card Leonardo DiCaprio, who might have to convert in order to marry his girlfriend, Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli? Forget about Marquee or Nobu - synagogues might be the place to have the best celebrity sightings.

My life has never fit 'inside the box.' One-word answers have almost never sufficed for any aspect thereof. So it's no surprise that my religious beliefs don't lend themselves to a succinct definition. My religious affiliation can perhaps best be summed up by a remark uttered to me at the last Shabbat dinner I attended: "Tedesco? Where did you get a name like that?"

If you ask me my religion, I'll say, "Jewish." Any further questions require a miniature version of my life story. So here it goes.

I'm Italian. My whole family is Roman Catholic. My mother, however, living up to her reputation as the black sheep in the family, decided to convert to Judaism and had a Conservative conversion. And then she had me.

As a single mother, she knew there would be plenty of obstacles ahead. She didn't want religion to be one of them. So, knowing our entire extended family (and we're Italian, so of course it's massive) was Catholic, she decided it would be best to raise me in the Church. I would have loved to be there for the conversation she had with the parish priest when she tried to enroll me in Sunday school. I was all but unaware of the fact that she was Jewish, and it took me a long time to understand why she forced me to the front of the church for communion but never followed suit. For Christmas, she decorated our home to rival the North Pole, but I never saw her light a menorah.

Once she and I began talking about Judaism, I became increasingly curious. By the tenth grade, when I started studying the history of Christianity in my AP European History class, I had sworn off Catholicism forever. Not that I'd been to church more than a half-dozen times in my life, save for weddings. That was when I transported my mother's coffee table book The Jewish World from her office to my bedroom. I never actually read it, but I took comfort in knowing it was there.

Regardless of my perceived mini-rebellion against the Church, I was still in high school, bogged down with homework and, soon, college applications. I really didn't have the time or motivation to begin studying anything other than what was required for the next day's exam. I would talk now and then about converting, and the only real response I got from my mother was, "wait and see who you marry first." Of course, in her mind, I was to marry nobody but a "nice Jewish boy."

It didn't occur to me until about December of 2007 that there was no need for me to convert-I had been born into Judaism through my mother. At the time, I was working on a term paper for my English class called "The Argument for the Shiksa: Intermarriage and Conversion in Modern Jewish America." I don't think I can ever thank my English professor enough for giving us a completely open-ended assignment for this paper. She truly sparked my renewed interest in Judaism (and turned me on to Jewcy!). I started doing research for what was to be an eight-page paper and, fourteen months later, I haven't stopped the research. I turned in a fifteen-page paper at the end of the term and went book shopping.

The bookshelf in my dorm room is two-deep with books on Judaism. Still, each time I sit down to read my 700-page Telushkin book, I feel guilty that I should really be doing homework, and so it goes back on the bookshelf. I recently decided, however, that the best way to cure that guilt was to make it my homework. And so I declared myself a Jewish Studies minor.

Granted, no matter how many books I read by prominent rabbis, there's still a lot to be dumbfounded by. Luckily, I've had a lot of help. I started attending the occasional Shabbat service last spring; it was the first time I'd ventured into a synagogue barring the handful of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs I attended in my childhood. I began going with a wonderful friend who gave me a running commentary on what was going on and what to do each step of the way. My first Shabbat experience was at the renowned B'nai Jeshurun ("BJ," a popular Upper West Side synagogue), which definitely made me feel as though I'd made the right decision in choosing Judaism-the members of the Catholic church I once attended certainly never stood up mid-hymn and danced around the sanctuary.

Still, I stared hopelessly at the Hebrew in the Siddur, with no transliteration that I could even pretend to follow along with. So I decided to start taking Hebrew, a process that began at the Manhattan Jewish Experience in October. I enjoyed the first class, so I decided to stay for the next one, Conversations on Basic Judaism. And I liked that class so much I went back two days later for a Next Level: Judaism class. Before I knew it, I'd become a sort of regular at MJE and was comfortable enough with the rabbis to ask if they would assist me in preparing for a later-in-life bat mitzvah.

I still have a lot to learn when it comes to custom (and Hebrew, for that matter) untilI can reach a point where I can say, "I'm Jewish," without a disclaimer. (Though with a last name like Tedesco, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get away with less than "my mother converted.") After a year of library-building and a semester of classes, I've reached a level of comfort that allows me to go MJE services -Hebrew, mechitza, and all- without feeling completely foolish and awkward.

I'm endlessly thankful to have people around me who will help me, answer my stupid questions, and never judge me for not understanding. I'm at a weird place in the realization of my religion right now-I'm not a convert, I'm just a new Jew trying to figure out what the hell she's doing. But as Rabbi Ezra Cohen said to us at last week's Shabbat dinner, "this is your home." And it's a wonderful feeling to find home after 20 years.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on Jewcy about my Jewish identity - more specifically, about not knowing Hebrew and wondering if that made me less of a Jew. I also referenced the fact that my mother is not Jewish, which isn't some big secret or anything, but was tangential to the main topic of the post. The blogger Luke Ford linked to the post on his blog, and mentioned he liked my writing. In response, he got this email from "Chaim Amalek," which he published the next day:

We all know about the Shiksa Menace, V1.0 - the blonde with boobs and bearing who turned the heads of many a yid one or two generations removed from the shtetl, and who continues to lure Jewish men to the doom of happiness. Then came Shiksa Menace 2.0 in the form of the Yellow Peril - Asian women morphing themselves into good “jewish” wives while still eating dog meat. Now comes Shiksa Menace 3.0, possibly the most pernicious and effective of all because, well, they know Jewish men through their fathers, and have the good looks of the gentile mothers. This Lilit person is an example of that. She may think of herself as Jewish, but in terms of rabbinical law she simply is not. How many Jewish men will be lured to their communal doom by this new breed of shiksa?

Sadly, I believe this email was intended to be humorous. The bottom line is, I'm well aware of what Orthodox Jews think of my Jewish identity and, if I cared, I wouldn't go to shul, observe holidays, or edit a blog about Judaism. But I do all of those things and then some, and the people at my egalitarian, open-minded, non-judgmental Reform synagogue couldn't care less who my mother is or what she believes in. For the record, she was raised a Presbyterian - and perhaps the Protestant half of me believes that it's faith, just faith, that makes me a Jew. The rest is noise.

Luckily, I have some pretty rad, smart, and observant friends who thought "Chaim"'s email was ridiculous. Jewcy blogger Zachary Thacher noted:

For those who want to marry a Jewish woman who has a non-Jewish mom, there are many simple remedies for the halachic question it poses. Being a racist asshole isn't one of them.

If wanting to marry a Jewish man and raise Jewish children makes me a shiksa menace, then so be it.

Oh, and for the record, "this Lilit person" looks like her father. You know, the Jewish one.

A couple of years ago I decided to convert to Judaism. No, I didn’t do it for a nice Jewish boy, I did it for a bunch of other reasons. Let me tell you, it kind of sucks to go through that alone. I had tons of stupid questions and often no one to ask them to. One question that seemed to come up a lot was: should I only date Jews?

To be clear: mostly when I say "date" here, I'm not simply talking about the joys of foreskin (versus none) because a drunken hookup is just a drunken hookup, be it with a goy or a rabbi-in-training. No, I'm talking about trying to find someone who will share endless holidays in faraway hometowns with embarrassing members of our extended families.

Of course my rabbi is unanimously in favor of my meeting a nice Jewish boy, even though he has never introduced me to any. My Christian parents are far more indifferent, although they would just prefer I stop bringing home losers. And I guess if I really stop to think about it I guess I'd like to meet someone who shares in most of my interests. Let's be honest, there are a lot of Jewish holidays when it sucks being alone. I mean, try having a Shabbat chicken dinner by yourself while your passive-aggressive vegetarian roommate sits in the living room having loud phone conversations with her obnoxious friends. Not a lot of fun on so many levels.

I live in New York, so compared to other parts of the country it should be relatively easy to meet that nice Jewish boy, right? I mean, there are lots of kinds of Jews. I guess I would need to find someone of the relatively same practices that I have. So, I've met guys at minyan. But just because they go to shul it doesn't mean they are not obnoxious or arrogant or creepy and weird or too young or too old or gay or otherwise in some other way wildly incompatible.

When I first hit the New York City young 20s/30s (which is code for singles) Jewish scene it was kind of weird how frequently I got asked out. Was it because I was blonde? Or because I didn’t look like their mothers? So I tried JDate, which I'm pretty sure is a requirement for any single girl who is converting. But that was a $39.99 I wish I could get back.

So what's a girl to do? Is it really that important that my partner be Jewish? Shortly after I decided to convert I got involved with a nice Protestant. It wasn't enough that he wasn't Jewish, but he was an actual practicing Christian and he went to church every Sunday. Other than that things were great. He was smart and sexy and funny. Sure, he worked long hours, lived with his parents, and had a terrible allergy to chocolate, but we got along great. He accepted my Jewishness while I tolerated his Protestantism which even led to some great discussion on religion. Things eventually didn't work out, but our breakup wasn't over religion.

I really can't speak for all single women converting to Judaism. I just know that in my heart of hearts I'd just like to meet someone I’m compatible with. And although I waver on the implementation of this, that probably means I want to meet someone who is Jewish (even if it means that does seem to shrink my options quite a bit). True, there are some days I just like to going on dates, regardless of the potential walk-down-the-isle consideration, but someday I'm sure I’ll meet the nebbish boy of my dreams.

Reports are circulating this morning that onetime King of Pop Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and adopted the name Mikaeel. The Sun reports that Mikaeel (which is the name of 'an angel of rain' in the Koran) "donned Islamic garb to pledge allegiance to the Koran in a ceremony at a pal's mansion in Los Angeles."

The Jackson children--Michael, Janet, LaToya, Tito, Jermaine, and Co.--were all raised in Indiana as Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in celebrating birthdays or voting, considering both to be "too worldly." While pop star Prince, also a Witness, left his religious ways only to return a few years ago, the Jackson children have not been recently spotted knocking on any doors or handing out religious pamphlets. In 1989, Jermaine Jackson converted to Islam, and many believed his brother Michael might follow.

Last year, Jermaine was a houseguest on the British edition of Celebrity Big Brother. He proved surprisingly likeable and made it all the way to the finals (where he lost to Bollywood star and Richard Gere kiss recipient Shilpa Shetty). He brought his prayer mat into the house with him so that he could do the five traditional prayers a day facing Mecca. In a postshow interview with the Muslim News (UK), Jermaine said that he hoped his brother Michael would also convert to the faith. Michael was then living in Bahrain with his three children, Prince Michael Jackson, Paris Michael Jackson, and Prince Michael "Blanket" Jackson II. "I think it is most probable that Michael will convert to Islam," said Jermaine. "When I came back from Makkah [the Arabic word for the holy city of Mecca]. I got him a lot of books and he asked me lots of things about my religion and I told him that it's peaceful and beautiful. He read everything and he was proud of me that I found something that would give me inner strength and peace."

As for whether Islam will provide Michael Jaskcon with inner strength and peace, that's yet to be determined. However, he seems to have already embraced the notion of wearing a burqa in public.

 

Ah, there's nothing like a delicious amalgam of celebrity gossip and religious fervor. Tweak the details of the story to make the celebrities beautiful wealthy socialites who inherited their good fortune from their famous parents and make the religion Judaism and you find yourself with a story ripe for feature in the New York Observer, the Manhattan-centric publication that proclaims, "Everything is about style for New Yorkers, from what they wear to where they eat to how they entertain." Fittingly, The Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, who has entered the tabloid spotlight with his recent engagement to Ivanka Trump and subsequent insistence that she convert to Judaism before the nuptials are to take place.

Kushner and Trump are both the recipients of vast inheritance of real estate fortunes and have each landed in the public consciousness due to their affluent lifestyles: Kushner became the owner of The Observer while still in grad school in 2006, while Trump spends her days working as Vice President of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization. Both pretty standard-issue jobs for 26-year-olds, right?

With the overbearing coverage that accompanies any wedding of the glitterati comes word that Kushner had asked Trump to convert before they wed and that she was going through with it. Unlike Christianity and Islam, the other members of God's Big Three, Judaism does not generally lend itself to proselytizing. However, the 1981 book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, states about intermarriage:

If the non-Jewish spouse truly shares the same values as the Jewish spouse, then the non-Jew is welcome to convert to Judaism, and if the non-Jew does not share the same values, then the couple should not be marrying in the first place.

Partially due to Judaism's lack of any sort of central dogmatic governing body, reliable statistics on conversion are hard to come by, but spousal conversion is not uncommon. Other famous converts-upon-marriage include Tom Arnold, Connie Chung, Kate Capshaw, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and recently, Sacha Baron Cohen's fiancee, Isla Fisher.

The recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life told us what we already knew: America is becoming more and more religious. The draw of a spiritual life is growing in all sectors, and apparently all over the world—even in the officially atheist China. Christians in China: no longer in hiding(I guess this is another case of "atheists" who believe in God). The Chicago Tribune has a fascinating article on the rise of Christianity in China, that mentions some of the reasons that people are coming to church: 

Many of the church's new adherents profess a common belief that 30 years of ungoverned capitalism, amid the fading of communist ideology, has opened a yawning spiritual gap.

A public debate in China over ethics in business has bloomed in recent years from an unlikely source: the same unsafe products that have bedeviled U.S. consumers. In the most infamous case, 13 Chinese babies died and 200 were sickened in 2004 when a manufacturer skimped on the ingredients in infant milk. The case became a symbol of an economy so out of control that people could no longer trust their countrymen to adhere to the most basic ethical standards.

Later in the article, a Chinese professor is quoted saying that he thinks Christianity may be what helps Communism to survive in China.

And in the States, though evangelical Christianity continues to attract hordes of worshippers to mega-churches every week, the quest for spirituality leads in all directions. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covers the trend of black Americans converting into Judaism. Many of these converts feel they are “coming home”: 

That's how Sivan Ariel sees her experience. Born to a Catholic family in the Virgin Islands, Ariel now believes her biracial grandmother practiced Jewish customs she learned from her mother.
"She would always talk about the laws of God" and the Exodus story, Ariel said. Her grandmother would light white candles, which now remind Ariel of those lit on the Sabbath.
"She was the only person I knew that actually did that, so I wondered if it was actually witchcraft," Ariel said with a chuckle.

Ariel left Catholicism when she moved to Atlanta for college and joined a Pentecostal church for a while. But she never felt comfortable there, and she began a spiritual search that led her to convert to Judaism.
…
Ariel, referring to her experience and those of other black Jews, said, "Some of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt we're here because we're home."

Rabbi Norry called this an "unprecedented time" of interest in Judaism.

"Business is booming," he said. "On any given Shabbos, there's 10 non-Jews at our service, visiting or studying to be Jewish."

Still, he asks every convert: "Why would you ever want to be Jewish? Don't you know how many people hate us?"

The black converts respond differently, he said. They look at him as if to say: "Welcome to my world."

People seek religion for a variety of diverse reasons.  How the spread of Christianity might influence the nation of China, and how the growing number of black Jews might ultimately influence Judaism remains to be seen.

Israel has no civil marriage or divorce, which means that every Jewish Israeli is at the mercy of the state’s rabbinic courts. During the past decade, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have wrested control of those state rabbinic courts from their more moderate Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox peers. Now securely in control, they have begun to use this new power to de-legitimize those who came before them. What weapon are they using to do this? Conversion to Judaism. If a rabbi’s conversions are not recognized by the state, he is stripped of the authority needed to function and is essentially no longer a rabbi.

Last month, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox rabbinic judges voided hundreds, perhaps thousands of Religious Zionist conversions, creating a nightmare scenario where converts woke up one day—often years after their conversions—to find that they and their children had been ruled “goyyim.” The impact has not stopped at the Mediterranean. Converts in Europe, the Americas, and Australia now find their Jewishness under question. Even converts who have lived strictly Orthodox lives now must consider undergoing a second conversion procedure administered by ultra-Orthodox rabbis to clear up the “doubt”—“doubt” created by the ultra-Orthodox themselves. Many other converts, now less religious then at their conversion, or whose lives are not up to ultra-Orthodox standards, have nowhere to turn.

What follows is a brief list of the most involved ultra-Orthodox rabbis behind this mayhem—a rogues gallery, if you will, of ultra-Orthodox malfeasance.

Name: Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv Age: 98 Last Seen: Attacking Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox rabbis

The leader (“Gadol Hador”) of non-hasidic ultra-Orthodox Jews (haredim). A life-long Jerusalemite, Elyashiv has waged a long, personal, and bitter war against Religious Zionism and the Chief Rabbinate. In 2003, Elyashiv propelled Rabbi Yona Metzger to the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, in a backroom deal arguably worthy of the worst days of Chicago politics. Metzger’s ethical problems and his lack of advanced rabbinical training have considerably weakened the Chief Rabbinate, giving Elyashiv near-complete control of the state-funded Rabbinate’s infrastructure. Elyashiv uses that control to attack the Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox rabbis while simultaneously filling state-funded rabbinic positions with his cronies. All the ultra-Orthodox rabbis behind the conversion crisis call Elyashiv their leader.

Name: Rabbi Yona Metzger Age: 55 Last Seen: Dealing with allegations of sexual harassment and charges of graft and ethics violations.

As the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, it's not Metzger’s active presence in the conversion crisis that matters—it is his absence. A Religious Zionist who has moved to the right, Metzger—who was put in office by Rabbi Elyashiv—lacks the advanced rabbinic qualifications necessary to serve as Chief Rabbi. He is not trained as a dayan (religious judge), and therefore cannot hold the position of President of Israel’s rabbinic court system—a key part of the job description of chief rabbi—or sit as a judge on a religious court. While he was the sitting rabbi of North Tel Aviv in the 1990s, Metzger was credibly accused of extortion. In a judicial proceeding convened by the Chief Rabbinate to deal with those allegations, Metzger agreed not to run for Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv as part of plea deal. At the time of his election as Chief Rabbi in 2003, Metzger was also under the cloud of several sexual harassment allegations made against him – allegations made by both by females and males. When Metzger took office, I asked Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, Jerusalem Post columnist and haredi spokesperson, if Elyashiv knew about Metzger’s legal and ethical problems before backing him for Chief Rabbi. If Elyashiv did know, I asked, why did Elyashiv back Metzger anyway? Rosenblum checked with Elyashiv’s right hand, Rabbi Yosef Efrati. The answer he came back with was strikingly unabashed: Elyashiv knew about the extortion and the alleged sexual harassment before the election, but he backed Metzger anyway. Why? “To restore the glory to the Chief Rabbinate,” Efrati told Rosenblum. Metzger spent much of his first years in office dealing with those sexual harassment allegations, and with new charges of graft and ethics violations raised after he took illegal gifts from at least one business. Metzger is now supposed to succeed Sefardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar as President of the High Rabbinic Court. (Amar held the position for the first half of the duo’s ten year term of office.) But because Metzger lacks the necessary qualifications, Amar continues to serve as High Rabbinic Court president while Metzger presses his case in Israel’s civil courts. Metzger’s plight has weakened the Chief Rabbinate while at the same time increasing the influence of Rabbi Elyashiv, whose cronies now dominate state rabbinic courts.

Name: Rabbi Avraham Sherman Age: ? Last Seen: Voiding the conversions of thousands of converts to Judaism

A former Israeli Army rabbi who once spent a sabbatical at Yeshiva University in New York, Sherman moved to the religious right and is now a follower of Rabbi Elyashiv and a Judge on the High Rabbinic Court. Sherman wrote the High Rabbinic Court decision voiding the conversions of thousands of people who converted to Judaism by under Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leading Religious Zionist rabbi. One of the legal maneuvers used to void said conversions was based on a technicality—Druckman had signed state documents stating conversions were done in his presence, and that the three judges, including Druckman, “sat together as one.” That was true for almost every conversion he performed—except for a handful performed for converts in Europe. Along with his duties as head of Israel’s Conversion Courts, Druckman served as a Member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Due to unexpected Knesset business, occasionally Druckman was unable to leave the country to oversee a planned conversion. To deal with problem and avoid disappointing these converts, Druckman relied on three European rabbis to perform the actual conversions, then signed the state document to allow the convert to be registered as a Jew in Israel. But the document still contained the same wording, and Druckman was not actually physically present when the conversions were performed. Druckman relied on a halakhic (Jewish legal) principle with Biblical precedent allowing a person to appoint an agent or agents to function on his behalf. (Think of Abraham sending Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac.) The Chief Rabbis at the time, Mordechai Eliyahu and Avraham Kahana-Shapira, ruled those conversions valid, but asked Druckman to stop using proxies. Druckman agreed. Flash forward almost ten years: Rabbi Sherman reopened the these “forged” conversion documents and based some of his ruling voiding Druckman’s conversions on this issue. Yet Sherman himself apparently did what Druckman did—except when Sherman did it, the mandatory three judges did not “sit together as one.” They couldn’t, because there were only two of them. Sherman, the third judge on that panel, was not in the court at the time actual testimony was heard in a divorce case. And Sherman did not appoint a proxy. Yet Sherman ruled on that case anyway, and signed a state document regarding it, to boot. Sherman also ruled that people with serious hearing and/or speech impairments cannot convert to Judaism and that any conversion performed for these people in the past are invalid. In Sherman’s eyes, conversion depends on acceptance of all the commandments. Since the “deaf” and “dumb” are considered exempt from observing commandments, they have no way to convert. Sherman believes that no matter how much a “deaf” or “dumb” person loves God and the Jewish people, he must forever remain an outsider. Any conversion performed for him will not change his spiritual status as a “goy.” Reacting to Sherman’s treatment of Druckman and the belittling, obnoxious language Sherman used in his decision, Israel’s official ombudsman for judges and court procedures recently recommended Sherman’s dismissal.

Name: Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein Age: ? Last Seen: Pushing for a ban on Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist conversions

Eisenstein is a close follower of Rabbi Elyashiv and a leading figure in the push to ban Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist conversions. The rabbi of the Ma’alot Dafna neighborhood of Jerusalem, he also heads the Vaad HaRabbonim Haolami LeInyonei Giyur, an international haredi organization whose goal is to make stricter conversion standards worldwide. Eisenstein is a long-time enemy of Modern Orthodoxy and Religious Zionism, and is also an early backer of the Monsey, New York-based Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) and its founder, Rabbi Leib Tropper. Speaking at an EJF convention late last year, Rabbi Eisenstein said anyone believing the universe to be older than 5768 years is a heretic who is unfit to serve on a beit din (religious court). This would make any conversions done by that rabbi or beit din invalid. Eisenstein’s source for this ruling? Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Name: Rabbi Leib Tropper Age: 57 or 58 Last Seen: Revoking his own conversions.

A follower of Elyashiv, Tropper heads EJF, which seeks to convert non-Jewish spouses of mixed marriages to ultra-Orthodox Judaism—while at the same time marginalizing Orthodox rabbis who don’t march to Rabbi Elyashiv’s tune. Originally a North American organization, EJF is slated to have a couples seminar this November in Israel. Tropper told potential converts already in the conversion process with Modern Orthodox rabbis that they should move their conversions to EJF to “ensure” acceptance by Israel’s state rabbinate. Like Elyashiv’s Israeli acolytes, Tropper has also revoked at least one conversion. Tropper (together with another haredi rabbi, Leib Pinter, who is now on trial for his alleged role in a $44 million mortgage fraud) is said to have spearheaded the 2004 ban against the Zoo Rabbi, Natan Slifkin, and his books. Slifkin’s “crimes”? Following the lead of medieval rabbis and modern savants like Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Slifkin wrote that the scientific and medical opinions of ancient Jewish sages may have been in error. He also attempted to show that the opening chapters of Genesis can jibe with a universe far older than the 5768 years Orthodoxy commonly holds. Both positions are frequently held by Modern Orthodox rabbis, and were—before the ban—a mainstay of the ultra-Orthodox kiruv movement. (The kiruv movement is, in effect, made up of ultra-Orthodox missionaries out to “convert” Jews to ultra-Orthodoxy. Its main players internationally are Aish HaTorah and Ohr Somayach. Chabad functions in a similar fashion, but has been opposed to anything but a literal understanding of Genesis from the get go.) The ban against Slifkin was signed by dozens of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Who was the lead signatory? The Gadol Hador, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Rabbi Leib Tropper: says who's who IN JUNE 2006, ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Leib Tropper nullified a conversion over a year after supervising it himself. He decided that the convert, whom we will call “Sarah,” had become a Jew under “false Pretext [sic].” Rabbi Tropper informed Sarah’s husband, “Avraham,” that his wife’s conversion had been registered as nullified with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and that the child produced by their marriage would not be regarded as Jewish, either. Finally, Rabbi Tropper declared that it was “forbidden” for Avraham to be married to Sarah. “Even if she decides to become observant,” Rabbi Tropper wrote via email, “she will need a new conversion,” and the couple would require a “new halachic marriage.”

What happens if despite a rabbi’s best due diligence, a convert to Orthodox Judaism doesn't keep Jewish law for the long haul? If that convert begins eating cheeseburgers and driving on Shabbat? Does the conversion remain valid? Is a convert 100% Jewish no matter what? Historically, a lapsed convert was still considered a Jew unless those lapses were immediate to the conversion, public, and intentional. The convert had to know what he was about to do was wrong, and then had to do it anyway. (Before the 19th century and the advent of ultra-Orthodoxy, according to Zvi Zohar, an Israeli scholar who studies this issue, there is no evidence a rabbi ever revoked a conversion for any reason.)

Times have changed. That’s because haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews like Leib Tropper, founder and director of Eternal Jewish Family—an organization dedicated to converting non-Jewish spouses of intermarried Jews—represent the most rapidly growing demographic in Judaism. Tropper also founded and runs a yeshiva in Monsey, New York, and travels regularly to Israel, where he frequents the halls of haredi power and hobnobs with its leaders. People like him are the Jewish future. They’re at the center of a seemingly irrevocable schism between Orthodoxy and every other denomination of Judaism. They're determined to restrict and to monitor all Orthodox conversions as part of their spiritual war against non-haredi Judaism, and they want nothing less than ultimately to define who is a Jew.

Tropper did not revoke Sarah’s conversion because she bowed down to idols, accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior, or identified with the atheist philosophies of Christopher Hitchens. She didn’t renounce any universally accepted tenet of Judaism. Sarah’s conversion was ruled invalid because she did what many Modern Orthodox women do every day: get dressed and go out of the house. Sarah’s conversion was reversed because Tropper heard that she had worn pants, and occasionally—only when shopping outside the Jewish neighborhood—she had left her hair uncovered.

Sarah and Avraham live hundreds of miles from Tropper, who is based in the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Monsey, New York. How did Tropper find out about Sarah’s clothing? Easy: Her husband told him.

A “baal teshuva,” Avraham was as new to ultra-Orthodoxy as Sarah was to Judaism. Like many people who become Orthodox as adults, he had questions. Orthodox Jewish law mandates how to put on and tie one’s shoes; when, how, and even if to have sex; what and when to eat, and hundreds of other daily minutiae. Was it a major transgression for Sarah occasionally not to cover her hair? What about wearing pants?

Avraham didn’t know, so he asked Tropper, who said that her behavior showed a flagrant disregard for Judaism, and that she was taking Jewish law lightly. He questioned Sarah’s original intent in converting, and contacted her for an explanation. Shocked that her husband had gone behind her back, Sarah refused to talk, and Tropper revoked her conversion.

In an email to Avraham, Tropper wrote, “We must keep our word. [Sarah] ACCEPTED on herself to OBSERVE ALL of the torah & rabbinical commanments [sic]. She never did. You know that & you told me that.”

These: could get your conversion revoked IN LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, Tropper wreaked havoc on another family of seekers. Leah Bourne's maternal grandmother was Jewish, so according to Jewish law she was as well, but she hadn’t been raised that way. Her husband Peter wasn’t Jewish at all. After marrying and having children, the Bournes became involved with a Reform synagogue, but they wanted more. Along with their 16-year-old son Jonathan, they attended an EJF information seminar in their town.

Raised in the Bible Belt, the Bournes were attracted to Tropper’s Jewish fundamentalism. They invested in the expensive process of koshering their home, kept the Sabbath, and studied Torah. They were a model family—so much so that EJF featured them in its promotional video. Tropper even convinced Jonathan, then a junior in high school, to forsake his senior year and enroll at Kol Yaakov, Topper’s Monsey-based yeshiva for Baal Teshuva students.

Though at first his parents didn't agree with their son missing his senior year of high school, Tropper assured them that Jonathan would be able to learn Torah and get his GED at the same time. As they delved deeper into ultra-Orthodoxy, the Bournes were intrigued by the idea of their son becoming a learned Jew, and perhaps even a rabbi.

Jonathan moved to Monsey, where he spent his days studying. Peter, meanwhile, worked toward converting by learning Torah over the phone with a Monsey rabbi. Peter’s teacher happened to work at Tropper’s yeshiva, and kept the proud father informed about Jonathan’s progress. The reports were very good: Jonathan was a diligent, budding scholar.

Tropper promised the Bourne family that he’d send a rabbi to open a synagogue and build a mikvah in Lexington. Having an Orthodox synagogue and mikvah in their town was essential because EJF will not authorize conversions for people who live in areas without an acceptable Orthodox infrastructure. Unable to relocate, the Bournes depended on Tropper’s guarantees.

Eventually, Leah and Peter traveled to Monsey for an EJF seminar. Leah, who has an architecture degree, was shocked by what she found. In her words, Kol Yaakov was “unfit for human habitation.” It was dirty, unkempt, and unsafe. She saw students living in overcrowded basement rooms without egress windows or other safe exits.

According to Leah, “What pathetic stuff they had down in that basement to serve as a kitchen and dining room were disgustingly filthy, neglected, and inadequate for the number of boys living there.…They were not provided with breakfast (except maybe some day-old or stale pastries from a local bakery) or lunch, and for dinner they were divided up and sent around to other people’s homes every night—not just for Shabbat.”

Leah was amazed that in light of all this, Tropper had helped find Jonathan a black hat and suit. “Clearly, the clothes were far more important to Tropper than making sure they had food.”

Hungry?: eat your hat Just as Sarah’s clothes were more important to Tropper than the radical life change she’d made in embracing Orthodox Judaism, and just as her uncovered hair was more important to Tropper than her relationship with her husband, Jonathan Bourne’s black hat was prioritized over his health, his personal safety—and his education. There was no GED program available at Kol Yaakov, and when Jonathan began to ask questions, Tropper’s response was to chastise him for not finding an outside program to enroll in.

As Peter was completing the requirements for his conversion, Tropper presented the family with a major setback: There would be no synagogue or mikvah in Lexington. Peter was instructed to abandon his job and future pension, and move his family to Monsey. When Tropper’s nebulous offers to help Peter find a job there weren’t enough to quell the Bournes’ anger and disappointment, Tropper—who refused to comment for this story—expelled Jonathan from Kol Yaakov without notice, dumping him on the street.

IN ISRAEL, THE ONLY government recognized conversions are Orthodox. Last year, Israeli Rabbi Avraham Atia—a government-empowered haredi rabbinic judge based in Ashdod—retroactively annulled a woman’s conversion to Judaism that had been performed by Conversion Authority head Rabbi Haim Druckman fifteen years before. The nine-page legal decision by Atia could be understood to invalidate thousands of conversions performed by Druckman, a Religious Zionist rabbi, and the rabbis with whom he’s worked over the years.

This reading of Rabbi Atia’s ruling was adopted by the Chief Rabbinate’s High Rabbinic Court, which heard the Atia case on appeal. In a fifty-five page ruling released in early May of this year, the lead rabbinic judge—another haredi rabbi, Avraham Sherman—ruled every conversion performed by Rabbi Druckman from 1999 onward invalid. Thousands of converts and their children are now deemed “goyyim,” their marriages void, their relationships with their spouses now “illicit.”

While Israel’s Modern Orthodox and National Religious rabbis invested their energy, time, and money into settling the West Bank and creating an ever-greater Israel, haredim used their resources to become the dominant Orthodox political force in the country—even as they remain ambivalent about the validity of a Jewish state. They took control of the country’s Chief Rabbinate and its entire bureaucracy, whose authority they now wield as a weapon to attack and delegitimize more moderate Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad.

America’s largest rabbinic group, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) which represents “Centrist” and Modern Orthodox rabbis, was negotiating with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate over the conversion issue when we spoke with its executive vice president, Rabbi Basil Herring, in January. The Chief Rabbinate wanted the RCA to set up formal “conversion courts” with American judges approved by the Chief Rabbinate, who would first travel to Israel to be “trained” by the Chief Rabbinate to “properly” supervise conversions. Herring described the RCA’s relationship with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate as “very warm and positive.” “And that includes [the subject of] conversion,” Rabbi Herring emphasized.

He was unwilling to comment on specific cases that might disturb that idyll—such as Rabbi Atia’s conversion revocation—because, he claimed, he was not privy to the specific details of the case.

But privy he would soon be. This spring, the RCA reached an agreement (labeled “capitulation” by critics, including at least one former RCA president) with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate ensuring that American conversions will be much stricter from now on, and will be done only through formal, pre-approved “conversion courts." On May 6, the RCA reacted with outrage to the High Rabbinic Court’s revocation of thousands of Modern Orthodox conversions:

“T]he RCA finds it necessary to state for the record that in our view the ruling itself, as well as the language and tone thereof, are entirely beyond the pale of acceptable halachic practice, violate numerous Torah laws regarding converts and their families, create a massive desecration of God's name, insult outstanding rabbinic leaders and halachic scholars in Israel, and are a reprehensible cause of widespread conflict and animosity within the Jewish people in Israel and beyond. The RCA is appalled that such a ruling has been issued…

The RCA also claimed it had been “assured” by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the haredi president of the rabbinic court system, that the High Rabbinic Court ruling “directly countermanded his instructions and policies” and had “no legal standing at this time.” Reports in the Israeli media noted that Rabbi Amar was “trying” to annul the ruling.

How Many Kids: do you have? On May 11, the Jerusalem Post reported that many of Israel’s marriage registrars—all Orthodox—are refusing to register marriages of converts until Amar clarifies the status of Sherman’s ruling. In a country without civil marriage and with no other recognized Jewish options, this leaves converts in a limbo that could continue indefinitely. Amar says he wants to have the Chief Rabbinate's governing council discuss the issue, but the council is not seated. Therefore, Amar plans to wait for elections to the council to be held. His spokesman claims to be unsure how long this might take.

HAREDIM SEE ULTRA-ORTHODOXY as the only true Judaism. They don’t view non-Orthodox Judaism as a theological threat, because in their minds Reform, Conservative, and post-denominational Jews are only a few years from irrelevance. In the US, for every 1.36 children a Reform Jewish couple have, haredim have 6.72, and Modern Orthodox have 3.39.

Although they still have Modern Orthodoxy to contend with, the reality is that haredim now control Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and rabbinic courts. They provide teachers for Modern Orthodox day schools, dominate Jewish outreach, and serve as rabbis in Modern Orthodox synagogues.

Through control of the conversion process, haredim can determine who is a Jew, who is an Orthodox rabbi, and therefore what traditional Judaism is. The pawns in this haredi power play are the thousands of Orthodox Jewish converts who, just like Sarah, woke up one day to find they are no longer Jewish, their marriages are null and void, and their children are forbidden to marry Jews.

Adams: Future Jew?Like Rosie O'Donnell and John Mayer, singer Ryan Adams is a celebrity who really likes to blog. Lately, posts on his Tumblog have hinted that he's converting -- and not converting like Madonna, who's just about Kabbalah, but converting like Mare Winningham, who genuinely became a Jew. From today's post:

5. I am not catholic nor baptist. I am quietly converting but by the books, to a much older and less mystic religion which seems to respect God as someone to be feared and not understood, as I fear and don’t understand.

"Less mystic" is kind of a nice and thoughtful way of describing it, no? Also, because I know you were wondering, he thinks Bryan Adams is "not a serious artist."

 

According to a recent survey, Americans are very likely to leave the faith into which they were born and brought up -- if you count shifts from one Protestant denomination to another, a whopping 44 percent of Americans have changed their religion. Our post about this a few weeks ago sparked some serious commentary, and ultimately inspired us to assemble a collection of American conversion stories. Below you'll find personal accounts of conversions to Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christian Science, and Islam. If you or someone you know has a conversion story to share, add to this collection in comments!

Torah Teresa Lane, United Methodist to Jewish: I converted to Judaism almost four years ago. I did a conservative conversion through a relatively formal class. As the only “non-coupled” person in the class, I was a bit of a novelty. It was kind of great, as it gave me an automatic air of sincerity, but it also meant that I got a lot of the question, “And why exactly are you converting?”

So here’s my answer: I grew up in a very Jewish area of St. Louis; I may be off on my stats, but I think my high school was about 40% Jewish. Then I went to a college, where, let’s just say, Hillel is a big deal. All my life most of my friends have been Jewish, so I felt somehow connected to Judaism in that way. Even though I grew up in the Midwest, I have very little concept of a world where Jews are an actual minority. Not long after college I dated a guy who brought me to a seder, and I was hooked (on Judaism; the guy didn’t last). I picked up books on Judaism (Heschel’s The Sabbath, Kushner’s To Life!) and decided to take an “Introduction to Judaism” class. The idea was just to learn some more, not necessarily to convert. But, to be honest, that statement about "learning some more" kind of sounds like BS now, even to me. I must have been searching for more than I consciously realized.

Four years after entering the mikveh, I’m not really observant. Which, it seems, a fair number of people find funny. All the same, there's a lot I love about Judaism. The way it celebrates life, the attitude of stumbling through life as best we can, trying to make it better, but having that mostly be enough. Even “Jewish guilt” (though because I don’t have a Jewish mother I may not be qualified to use that phrase) is so different from the Christian guilt of my adolescence that it’s hugely refreshing to me. I love the rituals of Judaism - lighting candles, hearing the same prayer over and over at services, the seder. I find them beautiful and comforting, even if they are still sort of foreign and a little bit stressful for me. Perhaps most of all I love the sense of belonging to a community, or at least knowing it’s there should I choose to become more involved.

I am sometimes jealous of people who grew up as Jews, who know all the little things that Jews just do, that they don’t teach you in a conversion class. But sometimes I know that I'm lucky to be without the baggage of memories of being shushed in services and dragged to Hebrew school; that I consequently have a unique opportunity to appreciate all the beauties of Judaism.

Daibutsu Buddha Brad Warner, Non-practicing Protestant to Zen Buddhist Monk: I'm not sure I ever really "converted" to Buddhism, because before I got into Buddhism I had no real religious affiliation at all.

When I was a kid I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for three years. There were a lot of Indian people and Indian culture around there. One of my dad's best friends was Indian and when we'd go over to his house I used to see all the paintings of Krishna and stuff. His wife and kids were vegetarians, which is something I'd never encountered back in Akron, Ohio, where I was from. I found all that fascinating. Later on when we returned to Ohio and I got to be a teenager, I started thinking a lot about death. That's what teenagers do, I suppose. But I had extra reasons since two of my aunts were, at the time, dying of an incurable genetic disease that I stood a good chance of inheriting myself.

I looked into Christianity but it all seemed so cheap and tawdry and fake. I was interested in Judaism as well, but it seemed too closed to outsiders. In college I looked for some kind of Indian religion to study, thinking that might be a more pure path. I could only find one course available and it was Zen Buddhism. I had no interest at all in Buddhism and would have taken absolutely any other Indian religion if it had been offered. But Zen Buddhism was all they had, so I took it.

The first day of the first class the teacher read this piece called the Heart Sutra, which contains the line "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." When I heard that I was hooked. I had no idea what the Hell it was supposed to mean, but I knew it was right. I'm still trying to work out what that line means...

The Golden Temple Sat Daya Singh, Roman Catholic to Sikh: I was raised Roman Catholic, and was first exposed to the Sikh path early in life, when a preschool friend was a Sikh. My next major contact was while living in New Mexico for a few months in 2005. Since I do not view Sikhism in purely religious terms, I do not feel like I ever left my previous religion. I look at my adoption of a Sikh lifestyle as an upgrade. Sikhism is not a religious-based dogma. The principles of a Sikh lifestyle (uncut hair, a vegetarian diet, constant meditation on God, selfless service, etc...) are used to illuminate the path to happiness. They are markers on a map up the mountain where the peak is unshakeable serenity. By being stronger in myself, my presence can help others.

My previous lifestyle was not bringing me as much serenity as I sought. I became much more stable and strong as a Sikh. It felt like upgrading from DOS to Mac OS/X. The most difficult part of my "upgrade" has been my dealings with my family. I can only compare it to experiences I have read of homosexuals coming out of the closet. Initially they were furious, and I can often sense their bewilderment in conversation.

Quran Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, Unaffiliated/Protestant to Muslim: A little more than a year ago, on February 19, 2007, I published a statement in Jewcy about my road to Islam. I have been asked to restate the story of my becoming Muslim in a simpler form. For many people in the U.S., it is obviously shocking to hear that someone with a “Jewish” family name became Muslim. (Elsewhere it is typically assumed I am of German Christian background.) Jews who react in this way often seem to forget that people with “Jewish” family names may not be halakhically Jewish. In my case, my mother came from a Protestant Christian family, and although my parents were leftist and antireligious, the first faith of which I gained detailed knowledge was Protestant Christianity.

I later explored Buddhism, Catholicism, and Judaism before becoming Muslim; my journeys took the form of travel, reading, and study. But I was not what we call in California a “shopper for God.” I was an intellectual with religious beliefs, not a compulsive joiner seeking a home. In my new book, The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, which will appear at the end of summer 2008 from Doubleday, I describe my encounter with the Jewish Kabbalah as a peak moment in my spiritual development. But my introduction to Kabbalah--which is so deeply influenced by Islamic mysticism or Sufism that it has been said that Kabbalah is Sufism in Jewish garments--proved a bridge to Islam for me.

My entry into Islam may be explained most basically as follows: the Islamic conception of God is simpler than that in the other monotheistic traditions; the Islamic path to God through Sufism is the most direct. I love Christianity and Judaism but Islam is rigorous in its rejection of anthropomorphism, i.e. equation of the form of the Creator with the form of the human being. This embodies, to me, a liberation of the mind. All the rest – the problems besetting the sacred Jewish people because of their small numbers, the infection of contemporary Islam with radicalism – are matters of human history, not religion. I found in Islam a purity very close to that in Judaism, but with a broader, more universal reach – Judaism for gentiles, as Saadiah Gaon argued. And since I was born a gentile, this path, which may seem more difficult to others but was simpler for me, beckoned. Finally, if I may be forgiven a bit of immodesty – Christianity and Judaism have a surfeit of modern intellectuals. Islam today needs intellectuals more than clerics, demagogues, or academics. And so in Islam I found a spiritual and rational place.

Star Of David Paul Widen, Protestant to Jewish: A few weeks ago I barged into the office of a shaliach that previously had declined to take my case before the special committee at the Ministry of Interior that decides who gets to convert (an illegal act, I later learned [his declination, not my barging into his office]). With his secretary as interpreter we were all sort of shouting for a few minutes, which I guess is what it took to make them realize that I'm serious and that I'm not giving up. However, they kept saying that I didn't have enough to show for myself ("What, you've only davened three times a day for six months?") and that my letters of recommendation were insufficient. I demanded that this shaliach see me again in a couple of months, at which time I assured him I'd have more to show for myself (e.g.,Yeshiva studies). He told me OK, to set up a meeting with the secretary. So the two of us went out of the rabbi's/shaliach's office and into the hallway, where we continued talking, and she asked, "What's the rush? Why don't you just wait for six months and then come back?"

I was incredulous. "I'm 30. I want to convert and get married and get on with my life." She wasn't convinced. "The Moshiach might come," I said, and this teenage, national-service excuse for a human being, started laughing at me. I got tears in my eyes and I said, "What are you laughing at? You know it's true, you know it's true." And I thought, "Wow, I almost believe this myself."

"Credo quia absurdum" as the saying goes. "I believe because it is absurd." To proclaim this impossibility, to demand this, to stay true to this hope every day when nothing in the world seems to ever hint that it will happen, that is how I see Judaism. Judaism tells me that there is something wrong with the world, that it's broken on a fundamental level. This appeals to me, because this is how I feel.

It is strange to long to be a part of religious community whose members are completely indifferent to my longing: It's even perceived as a bit suspicious, almost pathological. In one breath you can become a Christian or a Muslim: A simple prayer and you're a gold member. In Judaism, however, the potential proselyte is to be turned down thrice before being accepted: Thrice is the door to be slammed shut in his face. It's sort of like the movie Fight Club, where the candidates to Tyler Durden's nihilistic revolutionary club "Project Mayhem" are forced to stand at attention for three days while systematically being ridiculed by him for even trying to be accepted. Or, in a more tasteful metaphor, like Imre Kertesz's book Fateless, in which the Jewish protagonist is ostracized by his fellow inmates at the concentration camp because he doesn't speak Yiddish. "Di bist nischt ka jid, d'bist a shaygets. You're not a Jew, you're a Gentile," Kertesz writes. "That day I felt that I was struck by the same awkwardness, the same creeping insecurity that I remember from home, as if I didn't meet the criteria of the ideal, in one word: a little bit as if I were Jewish."

Christian Science Seal Kelly Riley, Catholic to Christian Science: I was raised Catholic, the youngest of eight siblings. We all went to Sunday school, we all went to catechism. At catechism they'd tell me that I was bad, that I was going to go to hell, just that I was inherently bad, and if you get hurt or sick, it's a punishment of some kind.

My oldest brother is nearly 20 years older than me, so I was still very young when he got married. They were Catholic also. His first child was born healthy, but his second child got very sick when he was one. Doctors were baffled, and despite taking the child everywhere, no one could heal him. Getting desperate, my sister-in-law remembered someone from her college days--one of her roommates--who was a Christian Science practitioner. She tracked her down and said, "My child is going to die in six months, can you help me?" Her old roommate, who was in New York, said she could help. She flew out to Michigan, stayed with them, and within a week she had healed the child. After that, my brother and sister-in-law said, "That's it, we're turning to Christian Science." My sister-in-law even became a practitioner. They had six kids, raised them all in Christian Science, and they all turned out super successful.

I remember times when I was a kid and I would get ill, and my parents--even though they were Catholic--would send me to my brother's house. My father just knew that something was good there. My sister-in-law would tell me that I was good, that God loved me. She was purely positive, which was confusing because it contradicted everything I'd been taught in Catechism and Sunday School. It was really hard to comprehend.

Eventually I grew up and moved out to California. I was in a horrible relationship--I was 22, living the good life, very rich in a big mansion, but I was living in hell. I was getting beaten by my husband. We're talking broken arms, broken legs--you name it, I've had it all. I had watched one of my sisters transform her life through Christian Science as well, and I would call her, locked in the bathroom after a beating, and she'd heal me over the phone.

Finally I said to myself, "That's it, I'm going to do it." My brother flew out, helped me get out of that marriage, and I came to Christian Science.

Jewish Symbols Michelle Golland, Psy.D., Catholic to Jewish: I was raised Catholic. We were religious when I was younger but even when my family really stopped attending church, I continued on after college. I even found a Catholic church when I moved away from home and up to San Francisco. In a way I was searching for a community but it seemed not to be found for me within Catholicism. I loved the pageantry and ritual but could not find comfort or peace in the dogma and lack of debate.

As a sophomore in college I started to explore different spiritual paths. I finally settled on Judaism because I felt inspired and challenged at the same time. I realized that while in Catholicism I was "being good" to get into heaven, Judaism was about "doing good" to experience "heaven on earth." I respond to the focus on the present, which is grounded in tradition and ritual.

My parents were supportive of my interest in and eventual conversion to Judaism, in part because they loved my boyfriend, Michael, who was Jewish. They were happy I was going to marry a "nice Jewish boy." This was important, because I tended to bring home more rebellious guys that frankly scared them a little. The struggle I have with my family of origin is not specifically religious, but more an issue of making different life choices overall. Inviting them in and creating a sense of inclusion was essential to fostering a happier relationship with them.

I have been a Jew for sixteen years. Soon I will have been a Jew longer than I was a Catholic. I actually look forward to that year, I guess because I believe I was waiting to discover my Jewishness my whole life. Who I am as a person, the things I long for, how I fight authority, the way I question things and want answers, the experience of having a personal connection with God which requires no middle man—whether that is Jesus or a Priest—feels at home and honored in Judaism.

I was always the child in the room pointing out the big elephant that nobody wanted to see. My catechism teacher—who finally kicked me out of class for asking too many inappropriate questions about birth control and abortion—would agree I am a much better Jew, because I failed miserably as a faith-filled Catholic. My spiritual awakening within Judaism has many layers that are still being discovered. The Torah for me is one big storybook that I choose to attach myself too. I gain insight, wisdom and hope from the reading of these stories, which are so beautifully filled with human flaws and struggles. As a Jew I don’t believe that any one religion or spiritual path is better or “true,” it’s just personal.

Jason Zengerle has a really worthwhile piece posted at TNR online (subscription required, I think) in which he details the growing number of converts to the Orthodox Church in the US, a large number of which are former Evangelicals. He charts a general disillusionment with the materialism, politics, and anti-intellectualism of the Evangelical church that has a lot of younger believers turning to the Orthodox Church: 

 This is an appealing idea, particularly to younger Orthodox converts who view evangelicalism as corrupted by the generation born right after World War II. "Baby boomers had an overweening confidence that our creativity and spontaneity was fascinating and rich," says Frederica Mathewes-Greene, a one-time charismatic Episcopalian who's now a prominent Orthodox speaker and author. "The following generation sees it as not all that rich. They find the decades of the rock band onstage performing songs kind of shallow. They're looking past their parents for something earlier."

 In the past year, two friends of mine, both from reform (if that) Jewish families, have graduated rabbinical school and, to the confusion and chagrin of their parents, become conservative rabbis. Along with Zengerle's article, I think this too hints at a nascent conservatism in my generation that is not so much political as it is private and personal. It's not necessarily at odds with political liberalism, though I think that's because one aspect of it is a disillusionment, if not a disgust, with political promises (which is often then realized as a sort of reactionarily willed ignorance). Zengerle writes of one young convert:

 But it wasn't just the foreignness of the Orthodox Church; it was its bigness that appealed to DeRenzo, as well. Indeed, as she continued to talk, it became clear that, as an evangelical, she had felt very small and alone. It was a surprising sentiment to hear from someone about the evangelical movement. After all, ever since the rise of the Moral Majority, American evangelicals have arguably been the most politically powerful religious group in the country. But perhaps the most telling revelation of the Orthodox conversion trend is that this political power has not translated into a sense of spiritual power--or belonging. For these converts, it seems, the Orthodox Church has solved the unbearable lightness of being evangelical. "When I was in [an evangelical church], I was thinking, This is great, I love this,'" DeRenzo said. "But I thought, and I don't mean to be morbid, but eventually some day this pastor is going to die or I'm going to move away, so if this is the only place in the world where the truth is, that's tragic." DeRenzo paused and looked around the sanctuary at the icons and the candles. She went on, "Coming to the Orthodox Church means that I am in communion with that church no matter where I am in the world, that I can go into that church wherever I am and have the same liturgy and celebrate the same way. I'll be in communion with other people. And that is so huge. That hugeness is so exciting."

 In truth, I think that the thirst for this "hugeness" is much more evident in the careerism, obsession with dating and marriage, and general "life plans"--which evoke an undynamic and conformist conservatism more in tune with the political Evangelical brand--that mark my generation than in any sort of general turn towards a deeper, more meaningful, more individual religious experience rooted in the authority of tradition. Still, it has me rethinking my initial contempt for my ex-hebrew school buddies turned conservative rabbis, though also wondering whether their new conservatism (which lets them wear NY Yankee yarmulkes) shouldn't be considered next to the more drastic, and, arguably, subversive, turns towards Orthodoxy. 

Writing about your life is dangerous. The only thing easier than putting your audience to sleep (“I remember the rich aroma of my grandmother’s delicious matza ball soup”) is shocking your audience so thoroughly that you’ll never get hired or go on a date again (“I remember the rich aroma of my grandmother’s delicious matza ball soup the night we first made love.”) A good personal essay has to tell a good story, and most of the time, the best stories are the most personally incriminating. Which is why we’re always so excited when Jewcy users respond to a personal essay—or a feature, for that matter—with long, nakedly honest stories of their own. They’re not ...

With a decree he released “motu proprio”—that is, without the counsel of others—on Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI authorized a wider use of the old Catholic rite known as the Tridentine Mass. Officially abandoned in 1970, this traditional service is conducted by a priest who faces away from the congregation and mumbles the prayers in Latin. With this decree, Benedict, like the Tridentine priest, has turned his back once again on the modern Church, to sayMumbling The Prayers in Latin: The Tridentine Mass is back nothing of the modern world. The apologetic Catholic in me is constantly trying to defend ...

So you wanna be a Jew? The Talmud says:

Our Rabbis taught: One who comes to convert at this time, they say to him: 'Why did you come to convert? Do you know that Israel at this time is afflicted, oppressed, downtrodden, and rejected, and that tribulations are visited upon them?' If he says, 'I know, but I am unworthy,' they accept him immediately…" (Yebamot 47a).

Apparently, if you want to be a member of the Tribe you gotta want it bad, and you have to prove it, too. But if you prove it, you’re in, right? Um, not so much. The next page of the Talmud contains a fairly unsavory comment, “Rav Helbo said: Proselytes are as hard for Israel [to endure] as scabs'" (Yebamot 47b). Ouch.
Ruth Converted: And we're sweet on her...
So what’s the deal? How are those of us born Jewish supposed to react to converts (or Jews-by-choice, as they’re often called today)?

Well first of all, we have to be nice to them. Rav Helbo or no Rav Helbo, the commandment to welcome the ger, the stranger, is all over the Torah. Take, for instance, Deut 10:19 which says “And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.”

Beyond just a general precept on being a mensch, I’ve heard a number of rabbis speak about precisely what one can and can’t say to a convert. It’s generally accepted that referring to their conversion or to their life pre-Judaism is verboten, because it may cause them shame, or cause them to lose credibility in the community. Basically you don’t want to say anything that will cause the person to be seen as a non-genuine Jew.

To some of this that may seem like a fairly obvious ruling. The law against embarrassing people clearly stands here as it would anywhere else (although I struggle with the concept of Jews-by-choice being ashamed of their past to begin with). But the sad truth is that there is plenty of evidence of the Jewish community being less than welcoming to converts. In the book The Intermarriage Handbook: A Guide for Jews and Christians by Judy Petsonk and Jim Remsen, Petsonk and Remsen write about dealing with negative Jewish attitudes about converts:

Try to let someone's first insensitive comment or glance roll off your back. You are an emissary for all converts and need to keep your image in mind. At first, if confronted, be abstrusely polite or disarmingly direct: "Yes, I was born Jewish, but to Episcopalian parents." "Yes, I'm a convert. Have you known others of us?" "I converted and I'm trying to settle into it. Have any pointers?"

If the person is well meaning, it should be easy to fall into pleasant conversation. But if she is scornful, you can turn on a bit more tartness. Tell her there are Irish Jews, Chinese Jews, blond Jews, black Jews--and there always have been. Tell her that Judaism honors you as a righteous convert.

As this is happening, remind yourself of the many people who have welcomed you into the religion. Try to redraw your friendship circle for awhile so that it brings you into contact with the welcomers and not the rejecters. Gail has felt suspicious glances from some parts of the community, but she has tried not to let them penetrate. "To some people I will never be Jewish," she says. "That's the way they feel. But that doesn't mean that I can't consider myself Jewish, just because one Jew in the whole world doesn't feel that I am Jewish."

I wish I could write off Gail’s experiences as the exception, and not the rule, but I recently read Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner, a memoir about a woman from an intermarried family who converted to Orthodox Judaism in college and then became Anglican in grad school. I expected to hate the book based on its premise, but Winner is an unbelievably good writer, and she makes us face some hard truths about the Jewish community. She writes:

So anyway, when I tell the story of leaving Judaism, I can’t begin with the small space for women.

The story begins instead with a lacrosse-playing, Prada-clad college classmate of mine named Sarah. Sarah was a biology major from New Jersey. She had long curly black hair and a wonderful toothy grin. We were at a party one night, a party where I met a beautiful older man, a man who had moved from New York to Israel as a teenager and served in the army and was just returning, and was full of desperate, drunken, profound stories about violence and rape and suffering. I was standing with the men, over by the window, and Sarah leaned over to a friend and, just loud enough, said that I had only converted because I wanted to marry a Jew.

There were lots of Sarahs, lots of pretty Orthodox girls who snubbed me, the convert, never mine all the rules the rabbis piled up forbidding Jews to remind converts of their background. Those small snide remarks, which I should have been able to overlook, those, I think, are where this story begins.

Or possibly it begins with Hank Hirschfield. This was just weeks after the mikvah. He was the older brother of a friend of mine, and met twice, three times, at a bar near Columbia called The Abbey, and he introduced me to his favorite beer, a sweet-tasting red brewed by Belgian Trappist monks. We talked, at that bar, about Torah and God and Tolstoy and the Rolling Stones, and then one night he turned up at my dorm and said really h couldn’t do this, date me he meant, “Because of your conversion,” he said. “Because, you see, I want my parents to dance with my in-laws at my wedding, I want my bride’s family and my family to have giant holiday celebrations together, giant shared Passover feasts and Purim chagigahs. So I could never marry a convert.” I wept that night, cried myself to sleep for the first time ever, and when I woke up, I found that Beth had filled my wall with homemade, hand lettered signs: Lauren is a Jewess, they said, Lauren the Jew, to remind me that I was really Jewish, pay no attention to what Hank Hirschfield said, or how he acted, or how I felt.

It takes a certain kind of callousness not to find this heartbreaking. And yet I’ve heard my friends echo Hank Hirschfield’s feelings. For some reason many of us want a REAL Jew to join us under the chuppah.

I was talking about this with a friend, a Jew-by-choice, and she had a fascinating insight. She said she thinks about her non-Jewish life as an ex-boyfriend. This ex wasn’t an awful guy, they had lots of great times together, and they came from the same background and everything, but in the end the attraction just wasn’t there, and they broke up. And yes she still thinks about him, and she’s not ashamed of him, but she has a new beau now, and she’d rather not talk about the ex in front of the new beau because it seems rude.

That, to me, was the perfect guideline for situations where I’m unsure what I can and cannot say without offending someone. Think about their non-Jewish life as an ex. While it’s not inappropriate to remind one of something that happened while they were with the ex, reminding them that they were with the wrong guy (or girl) is uncouth. It’s a good rule of thumb for conversations with Jews-by-choice.

Winehouse and fianceAmy Winehouse's fiance Blake Fielder-Civil will convert to Judaism for a traditional Jewish wedding. The Mirror reported:

A friend of the couple said: "Amy has asked Blake to convert to Judaism. He isn't religious so it's no skin off his nose. He will do anything she wants and has spoken to her dad about it.

"Their wedding will be a traditional Jewish ceremony. For Blake and Amy, family is very important."

Awwwwwwwwwwwww! Whereas something as significant as conversion seems might have sparked a huge conflict for many couples it sounds like this was a relatively easily reached agreement. Couples who easily agree upon things are build to last. Then again, this is certainly the least he can do for the cheating that lead to their last breakup. Albeit it did inspire her increasingly popular album Back to Black.

Oh, breakups. Strength for the soul and a ticket to stardom.

 

• Courtesy FunkMonk At Devianart.ComCapitalists [& Men Universally] Prefer Blondes. Evicted overweight Asian sorority sisters don't. [The New Republic]
• That's right. Why Should Mel Gibson have all the fun? [PR Newswire]
• I really do miss John Ritter. And subsequently director Blake Edwards' need to overcompensate artistically for his marrying Julie Andrews. [IMDB]
• It's just as hard to be a Jew as to become one, apparently. [Ynet]
• Why is religion always the scapegoat for people's mishagas? [Ziontrain]
• Shalom and Willkommen Ernest Young. Bienvenue. [Zabaj: The Junk In Israel's Trunk]
• The Germans can be such damn Nazis. [Expatica]
• But then again, stupid headlines like these make me think it's universal. [Islamic Republic News Agency]

Editor's note: in the enormous (500-plus comments and still growing) threads to the Why are Atheists So Angry dialogue, one site user's comments have elicited a particularly strong reaction. We've invited that visitor, Christine Silk, to post to Faithhacker describing her unlikely voyage from Catholicism to Randian Objectivism to Judaism. Here's Christine...

For almost a quarter of a century, I was an atheist. Only since I turned 40 this year have I become a renegade by switching from the atheist camp to the organized religion camp. I’m an uneasy believer who goes to synagogue, even though I’ve not converted. It’s a strange place to be, after having spent most of my adult life arguing that organized religion is a delusion for people who can’t handle rationality.

When I was an atheist, I had this mistaken image that religious people find God in a blinding moment of epiphany, and then walk the primrose path forever more. Well, I’ve had no epiphany. I don’t know if God is real. And my path is not strewn with primroses. It’s full of obstacles and uncertainty. I was far more tranquil in the certainty of my atheism.

I became at atheist at 16, when I discovered Ayn Rand. My Italian-Catholic family was horrified, but I thrived on being a maverick.

Besides the rebellion factor, atheism had other benefits. It was, in some circles, a litmus test for admittance into elite intellectual company, as I found out during my college years.

Among certain students and professors, it didn’t matter how one came to atheism, whether through Rand, Marx, science, or the zeitgeist of modern intellectual life. What mattered was to avoid being branded as one of those naïve religious types. That was the ultimate stigma of uncool: to admit that you went to church or synagogue and actually believed the stuff.

For most of my life I considered atheism to be a hallmark of intellectual seriousness. No matter how smart or accomplished or wise somebody was, if he or she believed in God, that was a strike, in my book.

Atheism gAyn Randave me an excuse not to wrestle too hard or too long with transcendent issues, such as: What is the good life? Where does morality come from? Why does existence exist, as opposed to non-existence? Why order as opposed to chaos? Ayn Rand had worked it out, or so I believed, and whatever gaps she left, scientists would fill in.

Then I got married and had children. Eventually, they started asking questions. Is God real? If not, why do people believe in Him? Where do good and evil come from? What happens when we die?

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I couldn’t simply dust off my dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged and start reading passages aloud to them. So I did the sensible thing: I let my husband answer those questions. He had already moved on from his agnostic phase and was beginning to study Torah.

We had our kids converted to Judaism when they were very young. This was not a problem for me. My atheist reasoning was this: I’d been baptized. Holy water in my youth had not stopped me from becoming an atheist, and a mikveh would be no barrier to them if they chose to give up their belief when they got older. I don’t hold this viewpoint now, but it made sense to me at the time.

Eventually, my husband wanted to join a Conservative synagogue. I was willing, but nervous.

“They’re going to know I’m a shikseh the moment they find out my name,” I told him. “And then when we talk theology, they’ll kick me out when they discover I’m an atheist.”

“Don’t worry,” my husband said. “Nobody will care.”

He was right. Nobody at synagogue gave me the third degree about my religious beliefs, nor did anybody look askance when I said my name. In many ways, I found it easier to be an atheist among believers, than, I imagine, it was to be a devoutly religious person in a secular university.

Not long after we started attending synagogue, I ran into a distant relative entering her sophomore year at college. She announced that she was an atheist. She was glib about it, as if she were talking about pledging for a sorority. As an atheist, I should have felt happy that she was joining my camp.

But I wasn’t. I was taken aback. Had atheism now become a fashion statement among college students? When I was an atheist, it meant something. At least that’s what I told myself. There was a certain gravitas you had when you said it, and you had to be ready to defend your position.Richard Dawkins

But now that atheism was trickling down to the undergraduate masses, it was becoming so commonplace that they didn’t seem to feel the need to defend themselves, as we “old school” atheists did. Had any of these youngsters actually read Antony Flew, Richard Dawkins, or George Smith? Did they know about Pascal’s wager and the argument from design? No? Then they weren’t serious atheists. Or maybe nobody cared enough to challenge them.

But my reaction to this college student wasn’t really about her or her generation. It was about the fact that I was growing older and outgrowing atheism.

The great Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig was once asked whether he put on tefillin. “Not yet,” he replied. For me, those two words sum up where I find myself these days. I’ve had no direct experience with God, no extraordinary insight, no proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt of anything supernatural. Not yet. Still, I go to synagogue, celebrate Shabbat with my family, and read Pirkei Avot from time to time.

My kids occasionally ask me if I’m ready to convert. “Not yet,” I tell them. And it’s the best answer I can give right now.

Your friendly neighborhood Faithhacker is in San Francisco right now, to participate in a Jewish Book Festival (November is Jewish Book Month, dontcha know?) and I've met a lot of wonderful people here, and run into some friends too.

But since I was on my "faith" tear last week, and I'm still thinking about this issue (Joey's comments brought up some food for thought, and I'm still chewing) I was particularly interested to hear what Robin Chotzinoff had to say. Robin is the author of a new book, Holy Unexpected, about her experiences as a secular/atheist Jew, and then her conversion. Her Jewish conversion.

Listening to her, I wondered how many born-Jews make conversions. I mean, how many people who grow up Jew-ish decide they want "more" from their religious experience? And then too, of those people, how many make a shift in lifestyle, and go orthodox, and how many end up back at the synagogue where they grew up (or one like it) but with a stronger sense of faith.

And THAT got me to wondering something else...

If you really REALLY don't believe in the spiritual/religious part of Judaism... if you really don't buy the whole God thing, what is the experience of synagogue like for you?

I'm not certain what I believe. For me, faith is a lot like dieting, which is to say that I'm always working towards it. But I do want to believe. And so for me, synagogue is practice. I figure that exposing myself to the faithful is like going to a health food store-- it's getting me ready for "someday."

But when someone who REALLY doesn't believe in God goes to Yom Kippur Services, what does that feel like? What is it like to hear that particular kind of noise around you? Is it about nostalgia, or music, or history? Is there a meaningful atheist Jewish prayer experience? Or do you, maybe, think those people are foolish?