Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of conversion, the process by which those of other faiths adopt Judaism. Most streams of Judaism, unlike many other religions, do not evangelize.
Conversion
The Latest
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News A Fraught Journey To Judaism
I’ve spent most of my adult life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the reigning deity is liberal politics, and in Miami Beach, where the locals worship sun-bronzed physical perfection. Not that there’s anything wrong with either one. But there came a point — amid an array of midlife disjunctions, including an empty…
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Israel News Israel Deports Some Converted Immigrants
Within the next few weeks Martina Ragachova could be deported from Israel — for being too frum. Prague-born Ragachova, 37, moved to Israel a decade ago, and in 2004 converted to Judaism in the Bnei Brak rabbinic court of Nissim Karelitz, one of the world’s best-respected and most stringent Haredi rabbis. Karelitz was so moved…
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Books Raising an Ethiopian Jewish Child in Georgia
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of “No Biking in the House Without a Helmet.” Her posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November 2001, I…
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Opinion The Conversion Debate Gets Fiery in Jerusalem
The Israeli Presidential Conference, Shimon Peres’s vanity international blabfest, continues today with a series of panel discussions on the woes of the global economy and the future of the Jewish people. I don’t think we’ve solved the world’s economic problems, but there have been a few bombshells dropped into the field of Jewish identity. The…
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Books Evangelical Group’s Attempt To Convert Dominique Strauss-Kahn Misfires
If he’s getting bored under house arrest, accused sex offender Dominique Strauss-Kahn can at least look forward to receiving some Hebrew-language reading material. The former head of the International Monetary Fund, who pleaded not guilty yesterday to sexually assaulting a maid in a New York City hotel, was the intended recipient of a package of…
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Opinion Conversion Showdown: Rav Ovadia vs. the Ashkenazim
A nasty fight is heating up between Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the mentor of Shas, and the rabbinic leadership of the Ashkenazi Haredi world. The Ashkenazi rabbis have called for a mass demonstration against Ovadia this coming Wednesday, and tens of thousands are expected to attend. In retaliation, a kashrut crackdown has been ordered by Sephardi…
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Life Christmas as a Jew-to-Be
Today is Christmas. As someone who is in the process of converting to Judaism, — and blogging about it here — this is the first Christmas that I won’t be celebrating. Since just after Halloween — when the Christmas decorations started appearing all over stores, and when the Christmas music began playing everywhere from Duane…
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Life Does Tony Blair Sister-in-Law’s Conversion to Islam Highlight a Trend?
It didn’t come as a utter surprise to the British public when Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, decided to convert to Islam. The journalist, activist and all-around political gadfly demonstrated against the war in Iraq, and in 2008, she was on one of the first boats headed to Gaza…
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