Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 5, 2014

New to the community, converts often have no place to go for Shabbat or holidays. Image via Shutterstock.com

There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriends rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only hed dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter shed be going to hell because she became a Jew.

The road to conversion can be long and difficult for many prospective converts to Orthodox Judaism, filled withuncertainties and fearabout gaining final rabbinic approval. Yet even once they emerge from the mikvah as newly minted American Jews, many find the challenges hardly end.

Most of my negative experiences were after the conversion, said Aliza Hausman, a 34-year-old writer and former public school teacher in Los Angeles.

I was really excited about [attending] my first bar mitzvah. But when I got there the rabbis shtick was that he would tell the most derogatory jokes about goyim he could think of, Hausman recalled. My first Pesach was listening to someone whose daughter was in a matchmaking situation, and out of nowhere she starts talking about shiksas, a derogatory word for non-Jewishwomen.

One Yom Kippur, Hausman, who is of mixed-race parentage, said she was stopped at the door of her in-laws synagogue by people who assumed she couldnt possibly be Jewish. She ran back to her in-laws home in tears.

Many Orthodox converts contend thattheOrthodox community is less accepting ofJews by choice than the more liberal Jewish denominations, where convertsare far more numerous.

In the first couple of days after the arrest last month ofRabbi Barry Freundelon charges that he installed a secret camera in the mikvah at his Orthodox shul in Washington, Kesher Israel, many of Freundels converts expressed concern that the legitimacy of their conversions would be challenged. TheRabbinical Council of America, the nations main centrist Orthodox rabbinical group, quickly announced that it would stand by Freundels conversions, and Israels Chief Rabbinateeventually offeredsimilar indications.

Orthodox converts say its not unusual to be asked to produce their conversion papers either by Israels Chief Rabbinate, if they seek to marry in Israel, or by a Jewish institution, potential matchmaker or prospective in-law.

One woman who asked to be identified only as Sarah due to the personal nature of her experience said that when she became involved in a serious relationship with a man from a Chabad family, his fatherdemanded to see her conversion papers and decided her conversion wasnt kosher. Thus began along odyssey to convince her future in-laws that hers was a bona fide conversion. (Sarah did not convert through the RCA system, whose certified conversions are broadly accepted, because she said RCA rabbis refused to meet her or respond to her inquiries.) Eventually her future father-in-laws concerns were assuaged.

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For some Orthodox converts, biggest challenges come after mikvah

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