Considering conversion to Judaism but not sure where to start?
That’s incredibly common. The early stages of exploring Judaism can feel overwhelming—there’s a lot of information out there, and not all of it agrees. You might be unsure what’s expected of you, worried about doing it wrong or offending someone, or simply wondering what the first steps should be.
In this video, I’ll walk you through how to begin your journey with clarity and confidence. We’ll cover what to learn first, how to ease into Jewish community, and what to expect along the way—without pressure to have it all figured out today.
If you’re thinking about conversion, you’re in the right place. 💙
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Thinking about converting to Judaism, but you’re not sure where to start? You’re not alone.
It’s one of the most meaningful journeys you can take, but also really confusing to get started.
You type a question into Google.
You fall into five Reddit threads. Here are 10 different opinions
and somehow still don’t know what your first step should be.
And if you’re anything like me when I was getting started, you’re really worried about doing it wrong,
missing something, offending someone,
getting rejected before you even begin . You don’t need it all figured out today.
So let’s walk through how to get started
with clarity, calm, and real next steps.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert and the voice behind Building a Jewish Life.com.
I’ve been helping conversion candidates since 2010 get clarity, support, and real answers for every step of the conversion process.
Whether you’re just exploring or already ready to meet with the rabbi, this video will tell you where to begin.
First, let’s clarify your why. What are you doing here? How did you even get here? Not many people consider converting to Judaism. Clearly, something has brought you here. That makes you different. What is it?
Judaism isn’t just a set of beliefs. It is those things, , but it’s also a life and a culture. It’s a people, a peoplehood.
So the path starts by understanding why you are drawn to Judaism and this peoplehood.
Most people go through life never reconsidering their religious beliefs. Much less their culture. This is a big deal and not everyone is capable of doing it.
Most people, it never even occurs to them to do this.
So reflect or journal a bit.
What’s pulling you in?
What does Judaism offer to you, your values, your future? Don’t worry if your answer isn’t polished. This is just for you right now, not for anyone else.
The conversion process is hard and messy sometimes, and can be confusing. You need these why’s to help you get through those bumps on the road.
The next step is probably one you’ve already been dabbling in a bit: learning the basics. What is Judaism all about anyway?
So start learning about Jewish practice, belief, and community. Start small. Shabbat, the holidays, Jewish history,
core concepts like the mitzvot.
That’s Mitzvahs. You might’ve heard as like good deed, but it actually means commandment.
And one of the key questions that might be on your mind, do you need to learn Hebrew? Kind of. Not a lot, but enough to get by. You need to be able to read the alphabet. You don’t necessarily have to understand what it is that you’re reading. But if you are someone who’s dyslexic or neurodivergent or have learning disabilities or other things that make it difficult for you to learn a foreign language. It’s not a big deal. These are things that we can work with. It comes up. You’re not alone.
No one expects you to be fluent in Hebrew. And most Jews you meet are not fluent in Hebrew, but you’ll find that you learn a lot of words just through osmosis.
We use Hebrew and Yiddish words a lot in conversation, and you’ll pick them up.
Most people are able to learn how to read Hebrew (just reading the alphabet aloud) with only about six weeks work. There’s often six week classes for learning how to read Hebrew, And you don’t have to be fast.
And this is true across all movements.
So what resources can you use to help guide you? Obviously books. YouTube is another good source. There’s a lot of good Judaism 1 0 1 content on here. There are websites that have a lot of Judaism 1 0 1 style content. One of those is mine: Building a Jewish Life.com, which is where I’ve been blogging about conversion since 2010.
There may be beginner classes in your community . You can contact places like the JCC, the Jewish Community Center. You can contact different synagogues locally. One of those two resources will be able to tell you if there’s an intro to Judaism class in your community.
Don’t try to learn everything at once. That is just going to make you disappointed in yourself.
One of the core values of Judaism is lifelong learning. It is expected that you will never know everything there is to know about Judaism. You will never finish. You will never be there, wherever there is.
So take in information at the speed that works for you. Don’t push it and burn yourself out. Burnout is one of your major enemies on the path to conversion.
As you’re learning in these early stages, if you don’t have a Jewish Bible, a Torah. Or a chumash, then I would get one. Or you can use the website, Sefaria, S-E-F-A-R-I A.org. Sefaria is free .
You don’t wanna use any old Christian Bible that you have laying around because the translations aren’t gonna be right. And there’s been a lot of edits over the years, so you wanna make sure that you’re only getting your information from Jewish sources.
On the Sefaria main page, you’ll see right at the top it says Tanach. That is another word for the Hebrew Bible.
The classic book that just about everyone starts with for conversion is called Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant. I hope I’m pronouncing that right.
It’s pretty dated these days.
The biggest debate you’ll find over this book is that it is not Orthodox.
If you haven’t learned it yet, there are three main movements or denominations within Judaism: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. The majority of the people that you have known who were Jewish were usually reform.
That’s the largest group in the United States. Conservative, it falls more in the middle ground, and orthodoxy is traditional Judaism.
So this author is coming at conversion from a non-Orthodox perspective. Reform and conservative often get lumped together as what’s called “liberal Judaism” as opposed to “Orthodox Judaism.” I tend to come from a traditional standpoint, but I think it’s still a great book for giving you the lay of the land, and quite frankly, the majority of Jewish converts are not Orthodox. And most of the Orthodox converts do have a prior non-Orthodox conversion, myself included.
I had a conservative conversion and then an orthodox conversion.
I just find this to be the most beginner friendly and gentle introduction to Judaism for people who are thinking about converting.
Okay. After you get a little bit of the basics under your belt and you’re starting to think, okay, this might be for me, it’s time to start dipping your toes into the community.
You don’t have to join a synagogue right away. You don’t even have to go to a synagogue right away. But maybe learn a little bit about it. Nowadays, post COVID, I, you have so many options of synagogue services online. You are able to see what a synagogue service is like without even walking in the door.
And I would’ve loved that when I was in my conversion process. ‘ cause it was terrifying to walk into a synagogue the first, second and 10th time.
Yeah, that was all in my head. The people were perfectly nice, but it was frightening.
Start joining some online communities. Start poking around in the Jewish sub threads of Reddit. Find some Jewish conversion groups on Facebook. There’s a really healthy ecosystem of Jewish conversion groups on there.
If you haven’t already, consider talking to your friends who are Jewish about what you’re thinking about. I will warn you. They will probably tell you that you were crazy, which is actually why my blog was originally titled You’re Not Crazy. Because everyone told me I was crazy for considering converting.
The people most likely to discourage you from converting to Judaism is Jews. And in fact, it is required for the rabbi to try to dissuade you. So don’t be surprised if that happens, but no one should ever be rude or cruel to you. If they are, that’s a them problem. That’s not a you problem.
If you’re ready to reach out to a rabbi, email one. Call the local synagogue. Ask if you can set up a meeting.
That’s when that journaling you were doing about why you’re here will really come in handy because that’s where you’re gonna start talking with a rabbi.
And going back to the earlier suggestion, this is a great time to join the Intro to Judaism class.
Remember, you’re not auditioning for belonging here. You are exploring whether this place feels like home to you. You have a right to be here.
Don’t apologize for yourself.
You’re doing something really cool.
If you’ve started feeling out that maybe this Jewish thing really is for you and these things that you’re learning are really speaking to you. Then that’s when you should start learning more about the conversion process.
The conversion process looks different based on which movement you decide to go with within Judaism. There will be the least requirements in reform, middle of the road requirements in conservative. More difficult process for the Orthodox.
In case you haven’t already heard it before, I’m gonna introduce you to the foundational Jewish phrase, “two Jews, three opinions.”
It means we disagree a lot.
So one of the ways that this matters for you considering conversion is that not all conversions are recognized by everyone else. In fact, this is a truth you need to accept early on. There is no universally accepted conversion. Orthodox conversions are widely accepted and generally accepted, but not every Orthodox group accepts every Orthodox group’s conversions.
It’s messy and it’s political, and we get stuck being the pawns in those power struggles. It’s not great. It doesn’t feel great either, I’ll tell you.
But as we’ve been talking about, like everyone kind of imagines Judaism as a spectrum with the reform on one side, the conservative in the middle, and the Orthodox at the end, and that’s kind of how the recognition of conversions works as well.
Reform conversions are generally accepted by other reform, communities. Conservative, conversions are normally accepted by both reform and conservative communities and orthodox conversions are generally accepted everywhere.
People generally wanna get the most widely accepted conversion that they can.
But also know that there is the possibility that you may never be “Jewish enough” for your spouse’s Aunt Edna,
and that’s just life. There are prejudices against converts, and I, I feel like they’re not as bad as they used to be. There’s just a lot of us now, so everyone knows converts, usually many converts. But there are still stereotypes. There are still people who say thoughtless, mean things. So
these are some of the things you’re gonna encounter in living a Jewish life as a convert. It’s still worth it though.
You can break down the requirements for Judaism in a lot of ways. The way I personally break it down is learning it, living it, and being it.
So we’ve already talked about the learning it part. That’s all that learning you’re doing and you’re gonna do for the rest of your life.
And living it. You can’t just talk the talk. You gotta walk the walk. If you’re gonna be a Jew, you’ve gotta do Jewish things.
And for all movements, this does include living in a Jewish community or otherwise having access to a physical in-person Jewish community.
I’ll put the video up there and down below, but I’ve already covered whether you can convert online, and the short answer is no. You can do parts of the conversion process online, but every movement requires an in-person community requirement and community integration. In short, you should have Jewish friends.
Most people do not already live in a Jewish community when they start converting to Judaism. Most people have to make a move. It sucks. and it can be really disruptive and it can be expensive. This requirement is what knocks a lot of people out of the conversion process.
If that’s you, i’m sorry. Life can change. You never know what the future holds.
Even if you’re not able to move for a really long time, there are still things you can do. You can continue learning. You can make connections online. You can take trips into a nearby Jewish community and start building relationships that way, or the community where you expect maybe one day you’ll be able to move.
It’s not hopeless, but for many people it feels hopeless.
We’re all just trying to do the best we can with the resources we have.
Looking at other mitzvot, if you’re in the conservative movement or the Orthodox movement, you’re going to have certain mitzvot requirements of mitzvahs you should be observing before you finish the conversion process. And there may be rules about which mitzvot you can’t do until your conversion is complete.
This is one area where it’s really important to be on the same page as your rabbi and really understand what the requirements are for you as you move through the process.
And everyone starts with small things. Just because you hear that you’re gonna need to observe Shabbat doesn’t mean you have to do it all today. Everyone starts from a little bit and builds up from there. And again, I’ll put another video up there and down below, where I walk you through an easy way to start observing Shabbat.
It applies also to holidays or any other Jewish mitzvah that you want to take on in your life. So now the last thing: being it.
Do you feel at home in the Jewish people?
Do you enjoy hanging out with other Jews? If you don’t, maybe it’s not for you. Judaism is a communal religion, and that is for good and for bad. It has very good aspects and very bad aspects. Like any large family would. Speaking as an only child who doesn’t understand sibling relationships at all, I’ve learned a lot about sibling relationships from my experience with Judaism. And part of “being it” is do you actually spend time with other Jews? Do you spend time doing Jewish things? Do you spend time learning Jewish stuff? Does your home look like a Jew lives there? Do you have Jewish books? Do you have a mezuzah on the doorpost?
I’ll put a link below for, more information about mezuzot.
As you’re doing those things, you’ll eventually start working with your rabbi and also a beit din, which is a rabbinic court of three people. Generally men. The conservative movement and the Orthodox movement both use only men on their batei din.
And one of the major parts of the conversion process is you’ll undergo basically a final oral exam, kind of like getting your PhD.
You will sit or stand in front of the beit din and they will ask you questions like, why are you here? But also what do you do Jewishly and why.
If you have reached the point of the beit din meeting, they have agreed that you seem to be ready. It’s supposed to be more of a final stamp on the process. So don’t freak out about it. It’s not meant to like trick you or trip you up. They want you to succeed if you are sitting in front of them. If you pass the beit din, then you would be approved for the mikvah, which is a ritual immersion into a special pool of water. There’s a lot more details about that that I won’t get into today. And men will have to deal with the circumcision question. I have to admit, I am not experienced in this area, but the majority of American males are circumcised at birth. That’s changing today, but if you are an adult at the time this video is made in 2025, you probably were circumcised as a baby. If not, you do have to undergo a full circumcision.
It is a medical procedure that will be done by a doctor. Generally mohels are also doctors , so don’t worry. It’s not a light undertaking and I have known people decide to not pursue conversion based solely on that requirement. I can’t blame you. Makes sense. So what if you already are circumcised? First you gotta get checked to make sure that you’re fully circumcised because not all medical circumcisions meet the requirement of a halachic legal circumcision. Most people get the “go ahead” at that point.
The majority of men going through the conversion process will get what’s called a hatafat dam brit, and it is essentially taking a needle and making a pin prick on the circumcision area to make a drop of blood. And that little drop of blood is what is required .
I’m told it’s not really a big deal. It’s the anticipatory anxiety of it. You’re scared of it actually happening, but then it’s not actually a very big deal when it’s done. So if that is your situation, I hope that’s the case for you. My understanding is that the reform movement doesn’t require circumcisions, or it’s more of a, each community does their own thing on that, but they do normally do the beit din, and mikva . The conservative movement will require all three, and the orthodox movement will require all three.
Don’t stress about memorizing all of this. You’ll come across it 87 million times before you finish the end of your conversion. You don’t need to worry about memorizing it all now.
On my blog, I’ve created a Resource Library that’s free for people who join my mailing list. And there you’ll find a Jewish conversion timeline sheet that kind of walks you through these steps and the process as a whole.
But the Resource Library has lots of other things you might want on your journey. It’s growing all the time as I make more things. But it includes trackers and printables and other resources that I wish I had had when I was going through the conversion process.
So you can get that easily and free if you just go to Building a Jewish Life.com. And on the right sidebar, you’ll see a little place to put in your email, just like every other website. Easy peasy. It’ll come right to your inbox.
One of the most underrated resources in there, I think is the rabbi meeting prep sheet that like helps you plan for your meetings with rabbis. I think that one’s really good.
So. mazal tov, welcome to the journey! One filled with questions, doubt, beauty, and transformation.
It’s not linear and it’s not always easy, but you don’t have to do it alone.
Whether you’re just starting or you’re already in the messy middle, this is a place for you.
I’m here. And so is a growing community of other converts who are stepping forward to mentor the people in the way that we wish we had been mentored when we were going through the conversion process.
You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to have all the answers. You just have to get started and keep going.
If you want extra support, please join my mailing list at Building a Jewish Life.com.
I also do coaching and consulting to help people find clarity and next steps. You can find all that on the website.
Drop below the coolest thing you’ve learned about Judaism so far. I’m very curious to find out what you’ve been learning about,
and I bet I’ll learn a few new things too.
Good luck and welcome to the mishpacha.
