Probably 80% of the asks I receive are from people who are in remote locations/ donât have access to a community with a rabbi. I think this is one of those things that has always plagued potential converts and it certainly plagues diasporic Jewish folks, and I think itâs been amplified by living in the digital age; now anyone can access information on Judaism and digital Jewish communities, but the synagogue/rabbinic system still relies on the presence of physical communities and teachers for conversion.Â
The reason Iâm not answering these posts is because any answers I could provide are seriously based on that individualâs needs and specific situation. I canât do much with âI donât have access to a rabbi HELPâ except for assure you that youâre not the only one in that positionâfar from itâand that there are still options.Â
For those of you who have sent in these kinds of asks (againâabout 80% of my inbox right now), Iâve received your questions and I see you, but I think Iâm going to work toward creating a masterpost with a list of resources/options/strategies rather than try to respond to each and every individual and be in the position of constantly pinging followers for additional feedback.
In general, though, I think we need to de-emphasize the state of being âfully convertedâ and focus more on the process of Jewish becoming. Itâs okay if it takes time. I understand the desire to be out in the world proclaiming ourselves as Jewish and I know itâs difficult to be in the liminal space of no longer quite a goy but also not yet a Jew. But the point of conversion is not to earn the ability to just call yourself Jewish, the point is to be Jewish in a deeply committed, deeply felt sense. The waiting is not only worth it, for many of us (me included), it is part of the process. If you need a Torah example, remember that Yisrael lingered on the edge of Canaan for forty years developing a sense of peoplehood before they could actually enter. Waiting, being displaced, being in the wilderness, being in between, are inherently Jewish states. I think we do a disservice to the people and tradition we are trying to join when we let ourselves think of this as a race to the finish line and not as a process that requires our sincerest patience and careful thought and intentional labor.
To my fellow conversion students, or those who wish to begin the process:
I get you. Itâs hard to be in a liminal space.Â
But as someone who is almost finished with the process –Â
Donât rush it. Never rush it.Â
Iâve been converting for a year and a half. Thought about it for 12 years before that.Â
Important things have happened in that time that you should never diminish:Â
I have thought about this decision so thoroughly that I know it is right. You shouldnât rush into conversion. Rushing into conversion may allow you to make a choice that isnât actually right for you. I know it feels diminishing and belittling to have this said to you – trust me, I do. But itâs important to remember that this is a difficult decision to revert. In fact, you canât.Â
I have been given time to wrestle with it. Being a member of Bânei Yisrael literally means to be the people who wrestle. As Iâve converted, Iâve had my moments of doubt, my moments of laxing in observance. And that doesnât make me any less serious of a convert. It makes me human. It makes me a person. If you donât have enough time in your conversion to doubt, to give yourself room to wrestle with your decision now that youâve made it, you may have trouble when the decision is done and youâre forced to do that wrestling laterÂ
The longer you go, the more observances you can add gradually. The point of the Jewish conversion process is slowly, slowly becoming a Jew. You canât adopt all the mitzvot at once. Itâs too much, and itâs too overwhelming. Jewish children canât do it either – they train, slowly, and adopt things at their pace prior to bar or bat mitzvah age. A good example of this is Yom Kippur – they start off with small fasts, growing in fasting observance until theyâre a bar or bat mitzvah, and then they are able to do the full fast. You have to do that process in a much shorter period of time – children have 12 or 13 years. You have 1 to 3. Why would you want to make it even shorter?Â
The longer you practice, the longer you work at it, the more comfortable youâll be calling yourself a Jew when itâs time. Trust me, it feels like it should be so easy when you start out, because itâs what you want. But you shouldnât be just starting out and calling yourself a Jew – and it shouldnât feel right if you do so. Practice and study will make it feel more authentic. You donât want to rush that.Â
You want to be able to build a relationship with a community and a rabbi. I know this doesnât apply to the specific question of âI canât have one!!!â but studying will make you feel more confident entering a space when you do have access to one. And, when you do, you donât want to rush adjusting to that space.
Antisemitism is rough. Give yourself time to get used to dealing with and processing antisemitism from the point of view of a prospective jew. Donât brush that seriousness away.Â
And, most importantly of all:Â
More time means you can read more books!!!!!!!!!!!Â
Itâs fantastic that youâre interested in Judaism, but youâre also in
such a transitional period in your life (adolescence). What you want now
may be completely different than what you want in four or even eight
years. How long have you been considering Judaism? Give yourself a year
or two to deeply contemplate this change, possibly longer, because
Judaism will always be there for you. Start off by reading (I suggest To Life by
Harold Kushner), and then start attending Shabbat services to see how
they feel. Study the different denominations. Most importantly, give
yourself time. Donât rush.
To answer your question, youâd
need a parentâs permission to begin any conversion classes. Conversion
is an intensive (and individual) process that demands a large sum of
time, dedication, even money. Here are some factors to consider for anyone who wants to convert:
Mobilityâdo you have reliable transportation?
(With school), will you have enough time to complete required reading, attend events, go to synagogue, etc?
You
will often need to spend some amount of money during the conversion
process, be it synagogue dues, book fees, etc, but you can absolutely talk to your Rabbi about this if you arenât in a position to spend this money.
Are you in a safe environment, physically and emotionally, to pursue conversion?Â
Here are some resources I personally used when I first started learning about Judaism:
BOOKS // nonfiction
Choosing a Jewish Life – Anita Diamant
Living a Jewish Life – Anita Diamant
To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking – Harold Kushner
Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs & Rituals
– George Robinson
To Be a Jewish Woman – Lisa Aiken
What is Kosher?: An Introduction to the Laws of Kashrut – Dr. Juan Marcos Benjarno-Gutierrez
Is It Kosher? – Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz
How to Keep Kosher – Lise Stern
The Sabbath – Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Jewish Holidays – Michael Strassfeld
Finding God: Selected Responses – Rifat Sonsino
The Shabbat Table Companion – Rabbi Zalman Goldstein
Well. It really depends on who you ask, but most agree that thereâs no way to know for sure what happens when someone dies until we ourselves die. Because of this, the answer youâll get from different sources will often be really vague and may even contain several different answers.
There is a belief in âheavenâ and âhellâ in Judaism, but theyâre very, very different from what Christianity believes, and fairly little attention is paid to them. It should also be understood that, in Judaism, there was no âfall of Satan.â That story is taken entirely as a metaphor for a really arrogant Babylonian king, and thus no belief in a âKing of Hellâ who tortures souls for all eternity. And as far as Iâm aware, thereâs no belief in a difference of what happens when a Jewish person dies and when a goy dies.
A popular theory is that when we die, our soul goes to a place called
Gehinnom, or âhell,â technically. Itâs not a place of punishment, but rather a place of cleansing. Everyone goes there, regardless of what they did in life. Some people might be there longer, but most are only there for about three months, and often no longer than twelve months. While there, our sins are burned off so that we may enter Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden,) often believed to be âheaven.â
Though, many Jewish people also believe in reincarnation. Some believe that the soul goes through reincarnation -I think- seven times (more, if needed,) in order to be perfected and refined for entrance into Gan Eden.
When someone who is considered truly evil dies, like Ted Bundy for example, they wouldnât go there. Instead, their soul would be considered far too corrupt to be able to cleansed, and thus destroyed.
There are some references in Torah to a place called Sheâol, where the dead âlive,â though it may also be believed to be more of a metaphor for oblivion; the idea that nothing happens when we die.
Some believe that our relationship with G-d will be reflected in how our soul is treated and what happens to it after the body dies.
Youâd have to do a lot of digging to fully understand all aspects of Jewish ideas about âwhat happens when we die?â And often, even when someone favors a certain idea, theyâll likely take it more as a theory than a firm belief.
I think the only thing really agreed on is that what happens after we die doesnât really matter until weâre dead. What matters is what what we do with life.
I hope this helped, at least a little. I might try to tackle this topic in a future post, when Iâm able to dig into it deeper.
What is an ethical will? An ethical will is a non-legal document
that, traditionally, details the deceasedâs last wishes, such as
funeral/burial arrangements, instructions for debts and other
obligations, and post-death requests to family and/or friends. Many also include letters to loved ones that impart
thoughts, wishes, lessons, and regrets from the deceasedâs life. This
is different from a legal will, in that a legal will details what
will be done with monetary assets and physical possessions. Also
unlike a legal will, ethical wills can be shared with loved ones
prior to death.
A Jewish Tradition I donât know how common ethical wills
are in modern Jewish communities, but the practice is believed to
have originated in Biblical times, with Jacob imparting blessings and
last wishes to his children shortly before passing away. The Talmud
also has references to verbal ethical wills, often given on the
deathbed, by sages and scholars.
There are centuries-old records of
Jewish people leaving behind tzava’ot for others -be they family
members, students, or other loved ones- as a way to summarize their
values, their wishes for their family, and so that their loved ones
may continue to learn from them after theyâve passed.
While this is believed to have started as a Jewish tradition, wider society has in recent years begun taking up the practice of writing ethical wills.
What does it look like? As a tzavaâah is not a legal document,
there is no standard script for how to write one. Which means they
can really look like anything. However, some synagogues, chabads,
hospices, and colleges may have classes in how to go about creating
one.
listen up, goyim, because iâm gonna say this once and once only.
antisemitism is a form of oppression, but it relies on a different mindset. it is a different ballgame than ANY sort of prejudice you know. yknow why? because to antisemities, jews arenât lesser (well, we are, but thatâs not the important thing). weâre successful.
thatâs the kicker.
antisemities WANT you to believe that jews are doing well, because if weâre doing well, weâre not REALLY being persecuted. it all goes back to the protocols of the elders of zion: the jews are taking over. the jews are a threat. therefore, if theyâre a threat, itâs only right to kill them. itâs only right to ghettoize them. itâs only right to have exterminated 40% of the worldâs jewish population in the 40s.
nevermind the fact that antisemitism makes up nearly 50% of all religious hate crimes in the us. nevermind the fact that jews make up less than 2% of the worldâs population. nevermind the fact that jews, historically, have been scapegoated and killed and othered for literal millenia. i mean, who cares, because jews are rich and powerful, right?
donât fall for it. donât fall for the centuries-old claim that jews are just faking it. listen to us. support us.
and the next time you brush off antisemitism because âoh, itâs not a big deal, jews are successfulâ, take a good hard look at yourself and realize that youâre spouting the same nazi propaganda that killed six million people.
Also because we arenât successfulâŚtime for some fun data:
K’vod Hamet(×××× ××ת) â respect for the dead
Petira â passing
Onayn â the day the news of a death is first heard
Kâriah(קר×ע×) â the rending of a garment; Jewish custom of tearing oneâs clothes in grief
Chevra kadisha (×××¨× ×§××׊×) â a Jewish burial society
Shmira (׊××ר×) â (verb) watching over a body
Shomer (m. ׊××רת) / Shomeret (f. ׊××ר) â watcher; someone who watches over a body
Kittel (ק×××â – Yiddish) â A white robe worn by Ashkenazi Jewish men, which they are buried in. Also often worn by married men at certain times, such as Yom Kippur, when leading the Passover seder, or -in some traditions- on his wedding day.
Tachrichim(ת×ר××××) â white burial shroud, made of %100 linen, which Jews are dressed and buried in.
Taharah (××ר×) â the ritual washing of the body
Levaya (×Ö°×Ö¸×Ö¸×) â funeral; âto accompany the deadâ
Seudat havra’ah (ץע××ת ××ר××) â a meal of consolation eaten after a funeral; lit. âmeal of comfortingâ
Kever(ק×ר) â grave
Kevurah (ק××ר×) â burial
Hepsed(×֜ץְפ־֟×) â eulogy
Beit almin (××ת ע××××) â a Jewish cemetery; lit. âhouse of eternityâ
Beit kvarot (××ת ק×ר×ת) â a Jewish cemetery; lit. âhouse of tombsâ
Matzeivah (×׌××) â a gravestone/headstone/grave marker
Avel (×××) â a mourner; (pl. aveilim)
Nichum Aveilim (× ×××× ×××××) â comforting mourners; the practice of visiting a family sitting shiva
Avelut (×Ö˛×Öľ××֟ת) â bereavement; the overall period of mourning
Aninut (×× ×× ×ת) â intense mourning; the period before the funeral and lasting until after the burial
Shiva (׊×ע×) â the first seven days after a funeral during which the immediate family mourns
Shloshim (׊××׊××) â a 30 day mourning period after the burial, including shiva
Shneim asar chodesh (×Š× ×× ×˘×Š×¨ ×××׊) â the first year after a death, counted from the day of death
Nachala (× ××× – Hebrew) / Yom HaShanah (××× ××Š× × – Modern Hebrew) /  Yahrtzeit (××ר׌××× – Yiddish) / Meldado or Anyos (Ladino) â the anniversary of a death*
Kaddish Yatom / Mournerâs Kaddish â a prayer recited for the dead
Hashkaboth â a Sephardic prayer for the dead
Yizkor (××××ר) â a prayer recited four times a year for deceased loved ones
*The Hebrew term Nachala is more commonly used among Sephardim than the Ladino terms.
The book Settings of Silver provides an overview of many different denominations. Denominations and movements coalesce and disagree in lots of complicated ways that no one resource is going to be able to articulate.Â
I genuinely do not understand this unrelenting insistence that we compare every horrendous thing the United States does to the Holocaust, when there are much better comparisons to be made toâŚwell, the United fucking States.Â
The United States has a long, sordid history of separating families: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the families impacted by slavery for generations after being stolen from their homes and sold to the highest bidder, for one. The Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, where Native children were ripped from their families in order to have their language, culture, and beliefs stamped out of them through forced assimilation and conversion to Christianity, for another.Â
The United States has an awful history of putting people in detention centres: Japanese and Native Alaskan internment camps during WWII, Fort Cass, Fort Snell, and other Native American internment camps that Indigenous Peoples were forced into throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, not even to mention Guantanamo Bay, and the camps so-called dissidents in the places like the Philippines, Vietnam, and other nations Americans had occupied were put into.
The United States has always been horrible to its immigrants, specifically non-white and/or non-Christian refugees. My own grandfather, an immigrant form India, couldnât become a citizen of the United States despite being a college lecturer and the spouse of a US citizen due to Asian Exclusion, and had to continuously enrol in university courses he never actually took despite the fact that he was teaching them, just to stay in the country on a student visa. The one truly valid comparison to the Holocaust era you could make would be to the United States turning away Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe aboard the St Louis and sending them back to their deaths because that same law used to keep my grandfather from becoming a citizen had been put in place specifically to keep more Jews and Asians from coming into the country.
Like, the United States is not âbecoming Nazi Germanyâ all of a sudden. This is not some aberrant âUnAmericanâ behaviour. This is the United States being the United States, doing what the U.S. has always done from the moment of its inception.Â
Also, as one of my FB friends said on this topic recently:Â âNazi Germany was not famous for cruelty toward asylum seekers, it was famous for making millions of asylum seekers and then murdering millions including many from my family.â
There is no good reason to constantly trot out bad Holocaust comparisons when we know damn well this is the same inhumane bullshit America was fucking built on. Hitler, Nazis, and The Holocaust are not just shorthand for âthe government being really bad.â It was a specific atrocity that devastated the Jewish and Romani communities of this world, and you donât need to constantly devalue it and re-traumatise Jews and Roma over and over again when you can just as easily condemn the heinous way asylum seekers at the US border are being treated by saying the United States is still in the business of systematic oppression and has not learnt anything from its own appalling history.Â
Iâve said it before and Iâll say it again: non-Romani goyim donât get to drag out the proverbial corpses of our people and use them in a macabre puppet show in order to give their issues weight.
^plus non-gays and able-bodied people pls
No.
We have explained this a million times over: Only Jews and Roma were target for total annihilation by the Nazis, and are therefore the only groups who have intergenerational trauma related to the holocaust. Some LGBTQ and Disabled people certainly were targeted (though not in the same way), but there plenty of individuals fitting that description who werenât at all. In fact, there were gay and disabled people in Hitlerâs inner circle, so to suggest members of those groups outside of Jewish or Romani contexts are entitled to reference the Holocaust like we do is really in poor taste.
Basically, with disabled and LGBTQ individuals who were not Jewish or Romani, there were plenty of instances where people just just chose to overlook it. However, if an LGBTQ and/or disabled person was Jewish or Romani, there was no looking the other way; they were killed.Â
Please stop inserting yourselves into our trauma, kthanksbai.
First, a note on finding actually Jewish books, and not evangelical Christian ones â Reliably Jewish publishers include JPS (Jewish Publication Society), any of the major Jewish movement publishers (Reformâs CCAR, or Orthodoxâs OU as examples), ArtScroll, Koren. If youâre not sure, double check to see if you can find it on the Jewish Book Council Website.Â
Specific text for this: What I wish My Christian Friends Knew About Judaism (Shoen)Â
Resource One – Tanakh or Torah:Â
Recommended: JPS The Jewish Study Bible*, Robert Alterâs The Five Books of Moses*, or a Chumash version (like organized Torah portions and commentary), like the Stone Chumash or Etz Hayim (for example.)Â
+ Understanding Torah: Who Wrote the Bible? (Friedman) and Essential Torah (Robinson) or Biblical Literacy  (Telushkin)Â
Resource Two – Introductory Guides:
Jewish Literacy (Telushkin) *Â
Essential Judaism (Robinson) *Â
Judaismâs 10 Best Ideas (Green) *Â
The Jewish Book of Why (Kolatch)
Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism (Wylen)
Resource Three – Theology Books:Â
Finding God: Selected Responses (Sonsino)*
What do Jews Believe?: The Spiritual Foundations of Judaism (Ariel)
The Sabbath (Heschel) *
God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (Heschel)Â
I Asked For Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (Heschel)Â
Resource Four – History:Â
Either of the books âA Short History of the Jewish Peopleâ (or whatever that title is. Thereâs two different ones. People seem to prefer the shorter of the two, with the blue cover)
 The Jews, God, and History (Dimont – dated but a compelling read imo.)*
The Story of the Jews (Schama).Â
Above * are my personal prioritiesÂ
Shoah History:Â
The Holocaust: A New History (Rees)Â
Nazi Germany and The Jews (Friedlander, 2 volumes or abridged edition)
Denial: Holocaust History on Trial (Lipstadt)
Websites:Â
Canât go wrong with MyJewishLearning.com, honestly!Â
– For reference, there is one scholarly Jewish contextualization of the Christian New Testament. It is NOT an evangelizing text – it is a scholarâs commentary. This book is published by Oxford University Press, and is called The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Jewish scholars and scholars of Judaism annotated/commentated the NT in Jewish historical/cultural perspective.Â
đĽ There is beauty in destructionđĽ 