Converting to Judaism

Want to become Jewish? Rabbi Patrick explores the meaning of conversion in Kehillah and Progressive streams of Judaism—everything from Jewish identity, practice, bet din, mikvah, and ultimately belonging. Whether you're on the path or just curious, this episode (hopefully) brings clarity, compassion, and insight.

📚 Follow along with Rabbi Patrick's show notes on Sefaria.

Transcript

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I'm Rabbi Patrick, and welcome to Kehillah. One more thing, I hope you'll consider donating for this podcast. Go to kehillahrva.org forward slash donate. I appreciate you listening to the commercials. And one of those things can involve becoming Jewish, right? Because maybe you love Kehillah, and you're like, I want to fully invest myself in this. My heart is here. Maybe this has been a years-long journey of yours. Maybe you already are Jewish, and you know someone where the idea of converting is on the radar for some reason or another. This podcast episode is for you. A few announcements. Shabbat dinner at the Rabbi's in Midlo. That's my house Friday, June 13th. Would love to have you. Shabbat morning, Torah study at the VMFA, Saturday, June 14th. And then, probably because of the timing of this episode, ask a rabbi anything at Kava Club. So would love to have you. It's kind of like a game. So everybody comes, I have a hat, we put questions in there, mix it up, I answer the questions, and then everyone votes if they think I've done a good enough job. And if the majority inclines, and that's a very Talmudic thing, and decides that I just kind of fake Right. I just kind of, you know, didn't really do my job well on that one. And then whoever asked to the stump, the rabbi question, uh, when's the point, whoever gets the most point points gets two free tickets to anything they want to come to. So it's a free event and maybe you win something and at a minimum you make friends. So let's talk about becoming Jewish. This is something that I have a certain amount of expertise in because shockingly enough, not a lot of Jews named Patrick, certainly to my knowledge, no Rabbi's name, Patrick. And you know what? There can only be one. All right, let's get into it. I decided to give you a safari sheet. So this is something you can follow along with. Let's set our cover note with this midrash on Lech Lecha. So Rish Lakish said, the one who converts is more beloved than Israel when they stood at Mount Sinai. Why? Because it So, setting your intentions for listening to this podcast episode, what does it mean to be beloved? What does it mean to accept the yoke of Torah? Torah, the yoke of heaven, and what do we do with that and with those people who wish to become one of us? And that was me at one point. So if you want to hear that nice long story, you need to come to my house, you need to come to an event, you need to corner me and say, tell me everything, because that'll take a minute. But let's talk a little bit about what it means to convert to Judaism. So I'm going to give you the definition and significance of conversion. version in Judaism, and I'm going to give you some reasons why individuals may choose to become Jewish. So, definition and significance, okay? So, it really fits into these three categories, okay? Belonging, behaving, and believing. Now, these are not original to me. There's whole religious ideas around this, like from a sociological perspective. But in Judaism, I've reordered this. Belonging, behaving, believing. So here's what typically happens in religions. It goes the other direction, right? Believing, behaving, belonging. So you think about anything that you might come to believe in. You might read a book and you go, oh my gosh, this is me. I'm now going to act a certain way. And by virtue of that, I will then belong to a group, right? That makes perfect sense. And that's a very Western way of thinking about things. Judaism, you know, it's the joke about we read in the other direction. It goes, It was belonging, behaving, believing, right? So instead of you believe something, you act a certain way, and then we accept you, it's opposite. It's we accept you, you learn what the behaviors are and the beliefs that underlie them. And that's Judaism. That's conversion right there. Belonging, behaving, believing. You belong to a Jewish peoplehood who do something that is Jewish and it is connected intimately to Judaism. Okay? Okay, there's Jews, there's Judaism, and there's Jewishness, right? Those are three kind of different categories, and they all kind of overlap each other in a Venn diagram. But what it means to convert to Judaism is to become part of the Jewish peoplehood. That's actually the number one thing, to be included in the Am, to be included in the tribe, the peoplehood. And so this gets very hard in a secular Western context because we're used to, but like, what about the class I Right. Well, what about the form I sign? Well, what about the ritual that I do that means that I get to be part of the group? Yeah, all that stuff is kind of true. But like, really, it's about showing up. And that's the hardest thing today, because I think that the greatest currency that we have in post-COVID Western society is our time and energy. What we put our time towards and how much energy we put into it, that speaks volumes. And I think that's actually the hardest part of converting with Kehila, because if someone comes to me and says, hey, I'd like to become Jewish, we say, great, come to something. And then they'll say, well, but I have anxiety. And I'll go, okay, yeah, me too. Yeah, I get nervous too. You know, you think I'm an extrovert? Nah, I'm totally introverted. I'm sitting at home right now. I'm hanging out my pajamas. I'm drinking my coffee and I am in heaven. Okay. So yeah, I get it. It's tough to come to stuff, but you still have to. because this is a communal effort. Reasons why individuals convert to Judaism. Boy, those vary. Of course, we take as sort of our model, our archetype for conversion as Ruth. And this is a really famous line. It's used in a lot of literature, movies. This is sometimes read at lesbian weddings. It's this. It's the book of Ruth. It's Ruth's conversation with her mother-in-law. law, Naomi. And I've added those brackets just for context. So, but Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. So without getting into the whole story about Ruth and all that, although it's very appropriate because I'm taping this immediately after Shavuot. And Ruth is intimately connected to the Shavuot story. This idea was that Ruth could have just left her mother-in-law after the deaths of all of her sons, and she decides not to. There are people who actually read the book of Ruth as an anti-xenophobia, as an anti-racist literature, which is interesting, because Ruth is a Moabite. And so there's sort of a cultural protest going on in this story. But nonetheless, she wants to be part of the peoplehood, right? She doesn't say, oh, I believe in the God of Israel, and therefore I'm going to learn how to be Jewish and do this with you, right? She starts with, wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people. So in other words, she is setting herself up as part of the fate of the Jewish people. The secular humanistic Jews actually will say this. It's the, who is a Jew? They will define a Jew is anyone who has essentially decided to connect themselves to the fate of the Jewish people. And so there's two sides of it. And I believe Soloveitchik was the one who said this, that you have history and you have future, right? So what Naomi is, or excuse me, what Ruth is doing here with Naomi is she is saying, your future is my future. And by virtue of that, I am part of the Jewish people. And then also says that your God is my God. Okay, and that's it. That's the whole thing right there. If you would honor the Jewish people by saying, I will take all of the risks associated to be part of this group, to be part of the tribe, you will be welcomed. There's some myths about turning people away and refusing and whatever. I'll get to that later. But this intimacy here, this human-to-human connection, and that the human-to-human connection actually brings Ruth into the spiritual connection, right? It is through the peoplehood that Ruth becomes Jewish, ultimately through something spiritual, your God, my God. So we're not, this isn't atheism, right? This isn't just humanism, right? It's a religious humanism, certainly, but it starts with the people. You might convert for your own personal, moral, spiritual reasons. You might convert as part of becoming part of a family, and that's what Ruth is doing here, right? In a certain kind of way. She's been part of this family. Now that she has every reason to consider herself not part of the family, that's when she joins in full. And you see that sometimes. I remember this one story, this couple had been married for like 30 years, right? Jewish wife, non-Jewish husband. And like 25 years or so into their marriage, he's like, I'm going to convert to Judaism. Now, where was that energy, she would probably say, when like we were raising kids in the synagogue and blah, blah, blah, blah, like now, like now you want to become Jewish after all these years? And it's like, yeah, sure. And that's a very Ruth-like thing to do. So maybe it is part of being a family. In fact, I had one student I remember I was talking to and I said, well, this particular way that you're going to convert, you know, that's going to mean that you sort of limit access to certain Jewish spaces and communities. How do you feel about that? And she said, well, I see this family that I'm joining as my community. And if they accept me and this path is part of what they accept, then I'm going to do that, which I thought was very interesting. There are plenty of other reasons why people convert to Judaism. There is a sort of a technicality form of conversion. So let's say, you know, your mother's mother's mother was Jewish, okay? Ancestral connection, then okay, right, you're Jewish technically. But maybe someone So then you ask yourself, well, am I really Jewish? And there are, interestingly enough, the most traditional people would say, yes, you are, because you can never leave Judaism, even if you convert. The less traditional people are the ones who say, eh, you should probably convert, right? And then there's another kind of technicality Jewish conversion, which is patrilineal descent, right? So certain communities will say you're Jewish because one parent is Jewish and you practice Judaism your whole life. You know, countries like Israel, it's a little bit kind of mixed about how that works. If you want a class on how you can be both Jewish and not Jewish in Israel, it's an interesting thing. I'll talk to you about that some other time. Maybe Aliyah is part of it. And so conversion is part of that, too. Maybe you're a patrilineal Jew and you go, you know what? Like, come on, like I can just formally convert and I know it's not really converting, but I'll just go through it. Some people do that, too. Some people convert children. So you can have a situation where non-Jewish mom, Jewish dad, mom doesn't want to convert, so they convert to kids. So all kinds of different reasons why people might convert to Judaism. But in my experience, and of course there's selection bias, in my experience it is because people have a heartfelt desire to be part of the Jewish community and to follow the traditions and have that spiritual container within which the divine can dwell. So I've talked before about this idea of what is progressive Judaism, but I'm going to give you something a little bit more intense than what I did last time, because you have to kind of understand what it means to convert in progressive Judaism, right? Now, a funny thing about people when they're converting, and I was this way too, you go right for the hardcore Orthodox stuff, right? Like that is like you, you, you like skip the Torah and you go right to Kabbalah, right? It's that kind of thing. You're reading like hardcore philosophy and you're like scrolling rolling on your phone constantly and looking at like all these like Orthodox influencers and like it winds up. I mean, that wasn't my things that didn't exist yet, but you get what I'm saying, right? Um, and so the problem is if you then decide to convert with like a reform community or conservative community, you kind of have to understand what the difference is there. Um, this is a more fleshed out way that I think about it other than what I've already told you. So the first thing I think of is that God is a lived experience. Uh, In Judaism as a whole, I think progressive Judaism more profoundly, we understand that God is a lived experience. God is a verb instead of a noun in some ways. And so how you sort of have a theology, it's something that's very composite. So different Jewish peoples have had different experiences of the divine, and we accept all of them as part of our canon. And we also accept that human beings today can have different experiences. kinds of experiences with God. Prophecy is closed, right? We literally closed it with the book of Micah, with Micah. But at the end of the day, people experience the divine in all sorts of ways. I love this line from a Reconstructionist rabbi named Les Bronstein. Shout out to Rabbi Bronstein. The Torah is the Jewish people's response to God's presence in the world. So the Torah, we could say, is divinely inspired, if you could say that when you are looking at Torah and you're looking at the commandments, the mitzvot, and I have a bullet point on this, it's like an alignment towards God. So it's our way of being God-centered is Torah. I heard an interesting way of thinking about chosenness, which people will say like, oh, the chosen people, yeah, you're so high and mighty. No, no, no, we were chosen to receive Torah. We make no claim about what anyone else was chosen And so that's another way of looking at it. who we include in that process of doing mitzvot. So there's a kind of polydoxy, meaning we're inclusive and accepting of different expressions of Judaism. Then, of course, there's this typical Orthodox progressive divide. A lot of this, I think, is more sociocultural than it is religion, because I can sit down with an Orthodox rabbi, and we can talk about what do you really believe, and I would say 90% of it we're on board for. There's a song, poem called Yigdal So Yigdal, which used to be banned. There's a story behind that. It's now in our Siddur. It's now in our prayer books, but it was banned for a while. It lays out these different Jewish principles of belief. And I would say there's not a single one of them that I disagree with. So a friend of mine who is a Satmar Hasidic rabbi would say, well, if you believe all those things and you converted, you went to the mikvah and a Jew was there, a rabbi specifically, then like, okay, like the then you're basically orthodox. You're just kind of heretical about it. Yeah, so this idea of there being this great divide, it's cultural. It's cultural, it's political, some of it's economic. I don't think that it's as religious as people think it is. But if you want to have an understanding of the difference, I think that it goes back to polydoxy. Progressive Jews do not hold one another accountable to a particular expression of Judaism, and therefore you don't have strong of an in-group, right? If I go to an Orthodox friend's house for dinner, I know what is expected of me, what we'll be serving, basically. I know what things are acceptable and what are not as far as like plates and, you know, sort of normal type stuff. I know if I'm bringing a hostess gift, what I can and can't bring. It's very obvious, right? Progressive Jews don't know that about each other. And I think that there's ultimately a belief that being a progressive Jew means almost like performative Jew. Like you do the holidays at a bare minimum and then that's it, right? I get texts during Jewish holidays, right? When I'm not using my phone, you know, and people will say like, well, but you're not Orthodox. So like, that's okay, right? And so sort of being progressive is problematic because people will assume in some ways a bare minimum and then in other ways not. And people don't know what to do with you. And sometimes it actually makes people more uncomfortable, at least when With Orthodoxy, you sort of know what is expected. With progressive Judaism, what am I supposed to do, right? And that can be a problem for people. And there's why I think there's a certain population that should convert with Orthodoxy and live an Orthodox lifestyle. It's designed very well for them. Another conversation for another time. We all know about Kehillah, so I'm not going to go into that. But what it means to convert with Kehillah, it's a unique approach. My experience with people who want to convert to Judaism, they tend to be pretty brainy people. And so they tend to ask like, well, when does the course start, right? Derach Torah, where is the like, you know, class that we're supposed to take for a year? And I tell them, look, you've got YouTube, you've got libraries, you've got books, you can download anything. Amazon will send you a book in a day. Let me give you some recommendations. Tell me about the things that you want to learn about that you don't instinctively learn about, right? And that tends to happen. People have their subject matter. Some people are more text. Some people are more social justice. Some are more history. And so you have to help people fill in the gaps. But really, it goes back to coming to things, participating in things. It's integration. Can you naturalize into this Jewish community? There is learning and study, packets of that stuff, and then integration into a broader Jewish community. I always tell people, hey, even if you're converting with us, go to Temple Bethel, go to Chabad, you know, go to Britachim, go to, you know, Beth Hava, wherever, go to Ormi, right? Now I've named them all, Oratid, right? You got to make sure you don't forget anybody. You know, go to these things and have the consistency of a more structured, not necessarily traditional, but a more structured community. Of course, go to KBI, right? Go to an orthodox service and understand how it works. Go to a class or a social function. Integrate yourself into a broader community. Go to the JCC, participate in federation stuff. See that you're part of something bigger than a little shtetl, a little Jewish community called Kehillah. And then, of course, there's Jewish practice. So what does that involve? Well, you have to embrace the Jewish rituals, and it's kind of that, right? Like, it's not Christmas, it's Hanukkah, right? It's not Easter, it's Pesach, right? It's all those things. You have to really embrace it, incorporating those Jewish values into daily life, right? So what does tefillah, what does prayer mean? What does it mean to have ethical commandments, right? There are certain things that Judaism teaches that I think are antithetical to sort of a typical way of living your life, and it's a pushback, and that's a good thing. And then, of course, there's observing Jewish holidays and life cycle events. We're really lucky at Kehillah. We've had some, you know, involvement where families have gotten together for life cycle events. I do think that, and this goes back to the whole sort of thing of a heterodox community, we do tend to privatize those life cycle events, but we've had funerals, right? We've had these moments where we've all kind of come together to bear a loved one as part of our community. And of course, on the more fun side, you know, all the Jewish holidays we do together. Then, of course, there's the thing that no one likes to talk about, and this is the big three. So what do you have to do? So if you want to look that one up, look that one up. It's circumcision. If you are not circumcised, there's a sort of an alternative ritual called and it's a ritual drop of blood. I will tell you that this is the least painful part of being Jewish, even if it's a little bit scary. Another part is the Beit Din. So the Beit Din, it literally is house of judgment, but that's really terrible because no one's there to judge you. What happens is that you sit down and there's the three rabbis, or maybe it's two rabbis and a cantor, maybe it's a rabbi, a cantor, and a lay person. That's generally how we do it. And just ask questions, right? Why become Jewish? How are you going to deal with the persecution, right? How are you going to deal with your family, right? How do they feel about this? And it's not meant to suss out whether you're genuine or not, although that is its origin story. It's really about getting to know you. It's also about asking people, what are you going to do after this, right? So you're going to convert. You've been through this process. It's a big deal. And now you're just kind of a Jew and like, best wishes. And there's a moment that people have, I call it the parking lot moment, where you've been so psyched up for so long about this and fucking Finally, you become Jewish, and it's like, okay, well, see you Friday, right? And there's people who actually kind of get depressed and bummed out afterwards because they feel like they're supposed to feel different. But you do the mikvah, the ritual bath. We do it here in Richmond and at Temple Bethel. Shout out to Temple Bethel. And that's that. And then, hey, see you at the next thing. See you at the next class. It's that simple. You're Jewish now. some more questions. Rapid fire. Are you becoming new or sinless after mikvah? No, it's not like baptism. If you've done anything bad in the past, you did it in the past as a non-Jew, and now you do it as a Jew. It's a change in identity. There are goyim, there are nations, and then there are non-goyim, which is us, right? So, uh, shout out to, uh, Mendel over at, uh, Hidor, uh, Meats, Virginia, uh, for, uh, coming up with that one. Um, How much do I need to participate in organized religion to be Jewish? Well, I mean, you joined it, so you're part of it. How much of my old life do I need to give up? Not much. You just need to give up anything that violates sort of Jewish practice, right? So you give up the old religion, right? That's actually one thing that you swear by, that you won't practice the old religion anymore. But that doesn't mean that you can't have, you Because they're not religious, right? They're part of meaningful human connection, and you don't need to give those up. How much do I need to know? You take the classes online, you read, you'll know. But again, it all comes back to participation. It's hard to learn the Shabbat dinner table rituals if you're by yourself. Will they accept me as a Jew in the future? If this circumstance, that circumstance, you know, people will come up with all of these like, what if, what if, what if? Just talk to me about the what ifs. Why don't Jews proselytize? This goes back to why we have baited in the first place. Being Jewish has meant persecution. So the question is, why would you want to join a persecuted group? Now, I will add a little something to this. This is a new phenomenon, I've noticed the past couple of years, which is a heightening of persecution And I don't just mean anti-Semitism, but there is a kind of person who gets into Judaism because they feel persecuted, like just as a person. They feel anxious and scared, and they feel like the world's after them for one part of their identity or another. They feel like the world is against them. And so there is a relatability factor to anti-Semitism, meaning there's a relatability to the idea of being persecuted. This is where it gets a little tough. And this is where I will push back a little bit on people and just try to make sure, are you sure you're not joining the Jewish people? Because it helps to give you that sense that you are a persecuted person and to concretize it, right? Because what we hope for as Jews is that we're never persecuted. We want to come to a time where no one will hurt us for who we are. So there is no sort of nobility in that suffering. There is no joy. There is no, like, yes, I'm persecuted. Let's all talk about how terrible it is. Like, that's not... That's not a thing. We don't want that. No one wants that. So you have to make sure that your interest in Judaism is not connected to that. If it is, if you're like, I believe in protecting communities that are under threat, great. You can be a great supporter of the Jewish people in whatever other life you have. It doesn't mean you have to become Jewish. Do you have to know, speak, or be fluent in Hebrew? No. I just said no. know. It helps. It helps to learn the Siddur, the prayer book. And from there, you're good. Do you have to speak Ivrit? Do you have to actually be able to speak Hebrew? I think it's a fun thing to be able to do. I'm terrible at it. You'll notice that when I talk to Israelis in our community, it's like in Henglish, where it's like a few words here and a few words there, because I don't want to embarrass myself. And I know I will. But then, you know, if you give me religious text, I'm good. And so that's kind Kind of what I think is important. What about your partner, parents, spouse, children, children to be? Yeah, you got to think about that stuff. That's important. What about your parents? Yeah, you got to talk to them about it. What about your partner? You got to talk to them about it. Your spouse, right? The kids, right? If you're telling your kids you're converting, what about them? Do they need to convert? I think if the kids are young, the answer is yes. That's a whole other conversation. You just have to work that out. And then finally, what about Israel, Aliyah, and anti-Semitism? Right, you're becoming part of the Jewish people, and that includes a connection to Medinat Yisrael, right, meaning like the state, and Eretz Yisrael, right, the land of the Jewish people. So yeah, you have an intimate connection. Now, I encourage you to go to Israel to meet the people. Those are your cousins now. Time to meet the mishpacha, right? Can you make Aliyah? Okay, that's That's where you have to get an Aliyah advisor. Um, and you may have to convert in a particular kind of way. I do not do conversions for the sake of Aliyah. Uh, and the reason why is that the revenue, the, uh, religious authorities in Israel and Knesset, the, uh, national assembly, the, like the legislature, they go back and forth all the time. The courts go back and forth all the time on who and how and why and what. So you get an Aliyah advisor and they will help you with that. Not my, not my thing. Um, I would encourage you, if you've converted with me and you want to make Aliyah, to convert with someone else. Is it a do-over? Is it annoying? Do you feel like it's terrible? Absolutely. I'm with you 100%. I want you to have the best experience possible, and that's not going to be through me. Very hard to send paperwork to Israel with the name Patrick on it. Let me just tell you. And anti-Semitism, yeah, welcome to the club. You're part of it. And again, I always get a So when do you know you're Jewish? And here's what I tell people. It's when you turn on the History Channel, right? A.K.A. the Hitler Channel. Because it's like always about World War II, right? And it's when you turn on the History Channel. And you see those images, you see those videos of Auschwitz, right, or Dachau or wherever. And you see the starving Jews, right? And you say to yourself, that's so terrible what happened to them. And that's what you say before you're Jewish. Once you're Jewish, you say, it's so terrible what happened to us. And when you have that moment, when you go from them to us, you have now connected yourself to the Jewish past. There's a reason why, you know, the Amidah, our standing prayer, starts with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's an understanding that this is an ancestral and salvational religion. So once those people become your ancestors, albeit in a spiritual way, you don't have to deny who your people are. My people are French and Irish. Like, it just is what it is, right? I love the food of the French because I grew up around it because my parents were in the continental cuisine. And that was the stuff my ancestors ate. When I was in Quebec, I got to see where the first French ancestor came over. I mean, he was a colonizer. That's a whole other problem. But I got to see where he was buried. And that was a very meaningful thing to me. And it was at a Catholic church. And I did that as a Jew, right? But Avraham Avinu is my father, is my ancestor, right? Those two things can be true at the same time. But it's when you have that moment, when you read Jewish history, when you watch videos when you listen to podcasts and it goes from them to us. When you have the them to us moment, that is when you become Jewish. The rest, that's all paperwork that we can figure out some other time. So if you're interested, we'd love to have you. All you have to do is come to Kehillah and remember you matter.