This is the Forward’s coverage of conversion, the process by which those of other faiths adopt Judaism. Most streams of Judaism, unlike many other religions, do not evangelize.
Conversion
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Community Who Gets To Judge The Converts?
The law “ואהבתם את הגר,” and you shall love the convert, is mentioned over 36 times in the Torah. The prolific rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote that “As a matter of normative practice, one should know that the mitzvah (commandment) to love the convert obligates us to bring them closer and to be lenient on all…
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Community When Converts Are Commodities
If my Facebook feed is any guide, converts to Judaism are commodities, not human beings. In countless posts, and in real life too, born Jews of all stripes opine about — depending on their ideological outlook — whether particular converts have met proper conversion standards, or whether there should be any standards at all. Not…
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Opinion Is It Way Too Expensive To Become A Jew?
This essay is part of our ongoing series, Outside the Bubble: Class and Inequality in the Jewish Community. It explores the class divides in Jewish communities of all denominations, and the financial struggles that belonging to these communities can incur. Please email your thoughts and essays to [email protected]. In the world of Orthodox converts, there’s…
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Community Seriously, We’ve Got To Stop Obsessing Over Jewish Genetics.
The Jewish world has been obsessing over genetics recently. Are we or are we not white? Has the Khazar hypothesis been conclusively disproven? All these are interesting questions that are fun to discuss, but it’s time to take a breather. Not only are the tests that tell you your ancestry less reliable than people believe…
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Yiddish World Why Does This Moscow Shul Attract So Many Converts?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the center of Moscow stands the historic Choral Synagogue – a beautiful yellow-white Neoclassical structure, the most famous shul in the Russian capital. The building, which now belongs to the Lithuanian Jewish community and its “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia,” was built in 1891 by…
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Fast Forward These Rabbis Have No Idea Why They’re On Rabbinate’s ‘Blackllist’
NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2012, Rabbi Jason Herman wrote a letter to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate certifying that a friend of his who wished to get married was Jewish and single. The letter was declared invalid. But several months later Herman, spiritual leader of the Orthodox West Side Jewish Center in Manhattan, obtained a license…
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Opinion Diaspora Jews Deserve A Seat At Israel’s Table
Tensions between the Israeli government and Jewish leaders worldwide remain high, despite a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago to shelve a controversial bill that would have made the Chief Rabbinate the only body authorized by the government to perform conversions in Israel. The crisis over the new conversion law broke out…
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Fast Forward Rabbinate Claims List Of Rabbis Whose Conversions Are Not Kosher Is Not A Blacklist
(JTA) — The Israeli Chief Rabbinate says that its list of foreign rabbis has been misconstrued, and that the list does not imply that those rabbis cannot be trusted to vouch for the Jewish identities of their followers. On Saturday, JTA reported on a list of some 160 rabbis whose efforts to confirm the Jewish identities of immigrants were rejected by Israel’s…
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