Most Jewish converts don’t get “outed” by a rude question.
They get outed by ordinary conversation.
If you’ve ever found yourself frozen mid–small talk, suddenly aware that the next question will push you into sharing something private you didn’t plan to explain, you already know how this happens. Jewish geography – the well-meaning, mildly competitive game of figuring out who you know in common and where your Jewish story overlaps with someone else’s – has a way of getting personal very quickly.
For born Jews, these conversations usually feel familiar, even comforting. For converts, they can feel exposing, disorienting, and high-stakes, especially on days when you just want to be “just another Jew.”
This isn’t about people being malicious. Most of the time, it’s curiosity, connection, and habit. But good intentions don’t cancel out the vulnerability these moments can create, or the spiral of second-guessing that can follow afterward.
In this post, we’ll talk about why Jewish geography so often outs converts, what’s actually happening in those conversations, and the options you have when you don’t want to disclose your story. Not to teach you how to hide, but to help you navigate these moments with more agency, clarity, and self-trust.
Because wanting privacy doesn’t mean you’re ashamed – it means you’re human.
A lot of the discomfort around Jewish geography isn’t really about the questions, it’s about the voice in your head that says you need to justify yourself. That you aren’t “Jewish enough.”
I created the “Jewish Enough” Self-Talk Toolkit to help you talk back to that voice. It’s free, and you can get it here.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Most Jewish converts don’t get “outed” by a rude question.
They get outed because Jewish Geography is a game you are doomed to fail.
And stay to the end ’cause I’ve got a free resource for dealing with the, “am I Jewish enough?” spiral that can happen because of this.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
A lot of people really want the fact that they converted to be private. And I get it. There’s a lot of stigma and a lot of prejudice out there still.
Less, even in my time in the Jewish community, but still a lot, especially when it comes to like dating.
So I get why people don’t wanna volunteer the information that they’re a convert.
And a lot of people wanna be seen as “just Jewish,” not “the convert.” Or being asked to speak on behalf of all converts, like we’re some sort of hive mind with one opinion on a question.
And some days you just don’t wanna talk about your private stuff.
Conversion inevitably touches some very private aspects of our lives.
People want control over who knows what and when. You are the one who has the right to determine who knows your story. And what parts of it they know.
Wanting privacy doesn’t mean you’re ashamed of being a convert, though certainly there are people who are ashamed of being a convert and wish that they weren’t.
But either way, you still deserve to have the privacy you wanna have.
But normal, everyday conversations are just determined to out you. So what can you do?
You don’t have to go to the other extreme like I do where I tell everyone and anyone that I’m a convert.
There are ways to get out of those conversations if you want to, without burning bridges.
The reality is it’s really hard to hide that you’re a convert, for most people.
Judaism is communal, relational, and historical.
That means it’s very easy to stand out.
Some people “pass.” They “look Jewish,” whatever that means in your particular community.
Personally, I pass enough. In the United States, I am white and I’m not blonde haired and blue eyed. That’s pretty much as far as it has to go in order to be able to “pass enough.” But if you’re not white, if you do have blonde hair and blue eyes, you are going to have more questions, and you’re gonna have people dig maybe a little bit deeper because they’re assuming that you are a convert.
And unfortunately, that’s the reality. I wish I could change that for you.
But hopefully every person listening to this video realizes that all of us can tend to make those assumptions, and we need to nip them in the bud. Jews come in all shapes and sizes and colors. Jews come from every ethnic background in the world.
And there have been so many converts in prior generations that you can certainly have a Jew of any appearance.
So what is Jewish Geography if you’ve never heard of it? It’s basically the Jewish version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And if you’ve never heard of that, it is the idea that two new people who are meeting exchange little bits of facts about themselves and then try to figure out who they know in common or what places they have in common.
It’s essentially mildly competitive small talk. Because some people do get like really competitive feeling about it, like they really wanna nail down some commonality between the two of you. And honestly, it can be kind of fun. But if you’re a convert, you’re probably going to fail most of the questions.
” Where are you from?” ” Oh, I know something about the Jewish community there. Do you know Joe Schmo?” ” No? Oh, which synagogue did you go to?” Uh, those questions. Eventually they drill down and you have to be like, “I didn’t go to a synagogue.” And then for some reason, when people hear that, they either tend to go, “oh, so when did you start going to synagogue?”
Like that’s a pretty personal question. Or they’ll go, “oh, well what were your parents raised as?” Assuming like, you know, conservative reform, orthodox whatever. Also, pretty personal question, but somehow it gets there so frequently.
Even though it can feel like an interrogation, it’s not intended to be that way. 99% of the time, it’s a form of bonding.
It’s curiosity.
They have good intentions and you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And that is true anytime these conversations get personal.
There are some other questions you might come across in Jewish Geography that’ll trip you up. ” Where’s your family from?” Usually meaning the “Old Country.”
” Did you grow up religious?”
” Where was your family during the war?” Meaning World War II and the Holocaust.
And if you are somewhat different from the norm physically, they may outright ask, “where did you get X physical trait?”
Though I can’t blame Jewish people for that one.
Being a redhead, I used to get that all the time. For some reason it, it got less the older I have gotten, but people just really wanna talk about red hair when I’m around. And Jews do that too.
It is what it is, I guess.
And when you have these questions, you feel such social pressure to answer quickly because you forget that the silence feels longer to you than it does to them if you take a minute to think.
You might be feeling surprised and vulnerable and caught off guard.
And maybe you say more than you intended, or maybe you respond in a sharper way than you intended when you tried to shut it down.
A lot of these conversations end in regret. ” I should have said this. I shouldn’t have said that.”
But you have more options than you think.
Broadly, I see four categories of answers.
One, the open and honest route. Maybe you just tell your story. This is the bucket I usually fall into. Though I’ve gotten more private the older I’ve gotten. Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks.
Two: short, neutral answers.
” I wasn’t raised Jewish.”
” I came to Judaism later in life.” Just very basic highlights-focused answers. And by making them short and very to the point, it doesn’t encourage digging in deeper. You get that vibe that maybe they don’t wanna talk about it. If you are a person who is good at reading social cues. A lot of us autistic and other neurodivergent people are out there, and we’re not always the best with social cues.
Three: polite boundary setting.
” I’d rather not discuss that right now.”
” That’s kind of private.”
” This isn’t the kind of place for that conversation.”
” I really don’t feel like talking about that right now.” I don’t really have enough time to talk about it.”
” That’s a much longer conversation.”
And then four, deflection and redirection.
You can deflect the question or you can turn it back around on them.
Redirection is often the easiest. “Oh, did you see they put out more food?” ” Oh, look what time it is!”
You could focus on an interesting detail that’s not very revealing.
You could segue into the story of moving into this new city.
Boundaries are not lies. They are navigational tools. Remember: if these people are asking you private questions, they’re not entitled to an answer. Your business is your business.
Some people certainly feel entitled to your business, but they’re wrong. And if they push, they’re jerks. And that tells you what you need to know about them. This is a person you need to keep at arms length.
An argument for even more boundaries.
Now deflection can be kind of cool. This is when you take some aspect of the story or question and go off on a different tangent.
So for instance, an example that I’ve used a lot over the years is the communities that I lived in before I started becoming Jewishly involved.
” Oh, you’re from so and so town. Do you know Joe Schmo?” ” No, I don’t. I wasn’t really involved in the Jewish community.” ” Oh, well how did you get involved in the Jewish community?”
” Well, did you know that the synagogue in that town dates back all the way to the Revolutionary War?” And then you start talking about the general Jewish history of that place. I am a nerd, so I guarantee you I would’ve done this anyway, but I have found it extremely valuable to learn the Jewish history of the places that I have lived.
It’s fun to know it, but it’s also really useful for when you don’t wanna have a deep conversation with some stranger at the Shabbat table.
Unfortunately, deflection may not last forever, and so you may be forced to put in boundaries eventually anyway.
Some people do a different type of deflection when you know the cat’s gonna get outta the bag that you haven’t always been actively Jewish. A lot of people give answers that would just suggest that they were born Jewish but became religious later.
What you might call a Baal Teshuva.
Baal Teshuvas have their own stigmas and stereotypes within the Jewish community. Not always positively, but on average, it’s gonna be better than being seen as a convert. So a lot of people deflect there to try to land a little bit higher than they might’ve ended up socially before. They don’t explicitly call themselves a Baal Teshuva, but the answers suggest it.
” Oh, I just wasn’t religious yet.”
It’s pretty easy to do if you keep your answers vague.
Probably depending on what you look like is how they will decide whether they think you’re a Baal Teshuva or a convert.
Now what do we do about that 1% who is actively being rude?
They’re pushy, they’re demanding, or they’re offering unsolicited advice.
This is where you kind of wanna be a gray rock. If you haven’t heard of that method before, it’s like being so bland and non-reactive to the person that everything just bounces off you. ” Oh. Thank you for that idea.”
” I’ll keep that in mind.”
Or the ever classic, “oh look at the time.”
Yes, people deserve to be called out for their being rude, but it is not your responsibility to do it every time it happens.
You are never obligated to call them out.
Sure it would be good if we did that as a society, but you have to also take care of yourself.
And if you don’t feel like having that fight at this moment, that’s your call. And quite frankly, I’d advise you to try not to burn any bridges you don’t have to. Because you never know when that person at the kiddish after shul is your rabbi’s mother or your boss’s husband.
You don’t have to “win” this interaction. You just have to leave it intact.
A lot of the discomfort we feel in these conversations isn’t about the questions themselves.
It’s about the voice in your head that says you’re not “Jewish enough,” not legitimate enough, or that somehow you need to justify yourself.
That voice is learned and you can unlearn it.
I have a free resource you can use to talk back to that voice.
It’s called the “Jewish Enough” Self-Talk Toolkit. It’s for converts, conversion candidates, and anyone who finds themselves second guessing, overexplaining, or freezing in Jewish spaces.
You can get it for free by signing up for my mailing list in the link in the description below.
If you want more practical, grounded conversations like this, subscribing and joining the mailing list are the two best ways to stay in touch.
