There’s a quiet myth embedded in Jewish conversion culture: that serious people feel sure.
If you doubt, pause, or step away, the story goes, you must not be ready – or worse, not sincere. But in real life, doubt is often a sign that someone is taking the process seriously, not avoiding it.
Before I converted, I walked away from Judaism twice on purpose. In this post, I’m unpacking why I did that, what walking away taught me, and how Judaism itself understands return, uncertainty, and discernment far better than most people realize.
You don’t need certainty to keep going.
And you don’t need to prove your seriousness by suffering in silence
If you’re wrestling with doubt, readiness, or imposter syndrome, my FREE guide “Jewish Enough”: A Self-Talk Toolkit offers grounded language to help you respond to those fears without shame.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
I am a Jewish convert, and before I converted, I walked away from Judaism twice. On purpose.
Not because I didn’t care.
But because I cared enough to be afraid.
I knew that if I converted, I’d be Jewish forever. And forever is a long time, y’all.
You don’t get to undo that.
And that terrified me. It still does, frankly.
What if I chose wrong?
What if I couldn’t live up to it?
Or what if I want out later?
What if I committed to a version of Judaism, a version of myself, that I couldn’t sustain?
So I tried to live a “normal” life.
I stepped away.
I got a job teaching English in France for a year, and then the second time I was in law school.
I wanted to see if I could live without Judaism, but it kept pulling me back.
The scariest part of conversion isn’t disappointing your rabbi.
It’s deciding who you’re gonna be for forever.
And I wasn’t afraid of Judaism.
I was mostly afraid of becoming the wrong kind of Jew.
In the end, I didn’t convert because I was sure. I wasn’t.
I converted ’cause I kept returning.
And a core teaching of Judaism is that Teshuvah, repentance, comes from the word return.
And that taught me something important. Maybe the key question isn’t, “am I sure?”
Maybe it’s, “can I live without this?”
Because spoiler alert, almost no one ever reaches certainty. That’s just being human. We always have doubts. And that’s okay.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog Building a Jewish Life.com. Back when I was in my own conversion process.
And I’ll link down below to my free guide “Jewish Enough,” A Self-Talk Toolkit.
It helps you deal with moments like this.
And I don’t see anyone out here preaching this, but it seems like so many of us have a self-imposed myth of Certainty.
The pressure to be sure before converting.
It’s very similar to the idea that I talk about all the time, that people worry about feeling “ready” to convert. ” Sure” and “ready” don’t exist.
It’s a lie that having doubts makes you not serious.
Doubts show how seriously you are considering something. That you care enough to cover all the angles and to make a good decision with all the facts available.
But a guiding principle of this YouTube channel is we do the best we can with the resources we have.
And you need to start seeing doubt as a resource.
It’s pushing you to be a better person, a better Jew, or maybe not a Jew. Who knows the outcome you’ll have.
But doubts mean you’ll work hard to find the right decision for you, and that’s what we care about here.
I got so freaked out at the permanent and irreversible nature of Jewish conversion that once you become a Jew, you’re a Jew forever. Whether or not you do anything “Jewish” ever again.
And I was afraid of choosing wrong, but it was fundamentally about being afraid to choose my future self.
Humans don’t like to close doors on opportunities. We want as many options as possible, but anytime you make a decision, you are necessarily cutting off other decisions you could make. Conversion just happens to be a little bit bigger than most decisions you make.
So I was worried about it from my side, but I was also worried about it from the side of the Jews because conversion is a two-way process. You have to have a Beit Din, a rabbinical court, approve you to convert. They’re standing in for the opinion of the community, welcoming you in as a member.
‘Cause we are a tribe. I really hope that the gurgling sounds my stomach is making are not being picked up by this video.
So just as much as you are choosing Judaism, the Jewish community is choosing you. It’s a two-way street. You both have to agree.
And I had so much imposter syndrome: was I good enough? Was I accidentally lying to them and didn’t even know it myself?
Did I have nefarious motives that I wasn’t even aware of? Yes, brains suck. Brains can tell you so many lies. And if you struggle with imposter syndrome, you can look up there. I’ve got a video about it. It sucks, but you can learn how to handle it better, even though it will never truly go away.
And if you’re someone who struggles with doubts like this, I’m gonna link down below in the description, my free guide “Jewish Enough” Self-Talk Toolkit. Which is all about imposter syndrome and doubts and how we can speak back to those lies that our brains sometimes tell us.
I worried that I would disappoint everyone around me, and quite frankly, I still worry about that. A lot.
It is not easy being a public Jew on the internet.
But there was also a third angle of worries that I had because yes, this is a hydra, a monster of many heads.
I had so many uncertainties about the process itself. I went through a conservative conversion and then I went through an orthodox conversion, and I dealt with these issues at both of those conversions. But especially when I was going through the Orthodox conversion, no one will commit to a timeline, and you know that it could take a year or many years.
All that time, you’re supposed to not date.
You’re starting to make changes to where you live. You’re starting to make changes to where you work maybe or how you work. And these were scary changes, and it was scary to think of my life in limbo. And yes, I did live in limbo for several years where I felt like all the rest of life was passing me by.
I wanted to date and get married, and I was in this process that had no end date and no clues when that end date would be.
That’s hard when your biological clock is ticking, especially in a culture that values making a family so highly.
All of these fears are real.
And if you’re watching this video this far, you’ve probably struggled with at least some of them.
And for me, it felt like the answer was to walk away. See if I could live without it.
But be careful because walking away can be a good tool for discernment, but it can also be avoidance.
If you’re considering walking away for a while, spend some time thinking about that.
It could be both.
So some of the signs that this is about discernment for you: you’re afraid of the permanence of it, and you wanna test how much this really means to you.
You’re overwhelmed and can’t hear yourself think.
Or you wanna know if this is desire or pressure from some outside source, especially if you’re in a relationship.
Now, on the flip side, some red flags. You are hoping that all your doubts will disappear if you stop engaging. Walking away isn’t gonna get rid of any of your doubts, sorry. You’ll still have doubts. You might have new doubts, but a human creature is a doubtful creature.
Maybe you’re so afraid of failure that you’re self-sabotaging yourself to fail before someone else fails you.
Or if you’re feeling rushed to make a decision right now, either by yourself or someone else.
Walking away isn’t quitting. It’s gathering data, and yes, you might feel relieved. I felt relieved. Suddenly I didn’t have a Sword of Damocles over my head anymore.
But of course that opened up new struggles. Okay. So right now we’re closing the door on a Jewish future, but now every option for a future is now in front of you. And which one of those do you choose?
Same problem, different day.
But if someone gives you guff over this, this isn’t about rejection or rebellion. This is a pause with intention.
You’re not abandoning Judaism necessarily. You’re not making any decision right now. That’s the point.
And you’re not here to prove anything to anyone, not your parents, not your rabbi, not your friends, not your partner.
You’re giving yourself space to notice what remains after the pressure is off.
Taking your foot off the gas pedal.
You don’t need certainty to move forward. You just need honesty.
And that’s honesty with yourself. You don’t owe answers to anyone. And anyone who feels entitled to answers about your most private thought process, it’s okay to lie to them. They’re asking you for something they have no right to.
Walking away can be one of the strongest acts of self care you might ever take.
It’s a form of self protection.
I have been helping people who are converting for a very long time now, and I can tell you that almost everyone takes a break.
At least one, sometimes several. I have never met anyone with a neat and tidy conversion story.
They just don’t exist because humans are messy. The people converting are messy. The rabbis involved are messy. We’re all a big mess.
That’s why it’s so important to take reality checks.
It’s more honest to walk away than to pretend certainty.
And the only one you’re coming home to at night is yourself. And so you better be honest with yourself about what you’re doing and why.
Because if you’re not, the real reasons will hit you eventually. The question is, do you go out and greet them or do they hit you with a car going 60 miles an hour?
So if you walk away, I want you to notice what you miss.
And you may not miss it immediately. It may take time, and that’s okay. Just like it’s okay to feel relief at stopping, it’s very normal to not miss it at first or to just miss it in a very superficial way, like, “oh, I really miss talking to Joe.”
But like that feeling, a lot of the pulls won’t be dramatic.
It could just be a general sense of dissonance in your normal life, like something is missing, even if you’re not sure what it is.
Jewish questions could be popping up in your head right when you don’t expect them.
You could miss rituals that you used to do. You could miss the prayer services. You could miss the prayers themselves.
You could find yourself Googling when the next Jewish holiday is.
All of this is information.
How strong is it?
Because even if you walk away and decide never to go back, it’s perfectly normal to miss some of those things.
Can you live without them or not? That is another area where you’re gonna struggle with uncertainty.
Because you’re probably not gonna be able to have a clear yes or no answer.
Can I live without this? I don’t know. It’s the same problem we’ve been having this whole discussion: what do I do with the rest of my life?
But here’s what I want you to take away: walking away is not a test of your worthiness. It has nothing to do with who you are as a human being or your worth as a person. In fact, I would argue that being willing to walk away and see if it’s really for you makes you a really good person. You don’t wanna waste your own time and you don’t wanna waste anyone else’s time either.
You wanna make good decisions for yourself and for the community.
But so many of us get caught up in the black and white thinking of, “if I come back from this, then I was meant to be here. Or if I don’t, I’m a failure.”
Neither of those is true.
They’re both valid choices.
Judaism does not require you to convert.
As I am sure everyone and their mother is reminding you.
If you return, I don’t want you internalizing any of the ideas you might be hearing from other people, like that you’re dramatic, that you wasted time, that you should have known sooner. We do the best we can with the resources we have at the time.
And if you don’t come back, or not in the same way, that also deserves dignity and respect.
It means you listened.
The other important takeaway that I want you to have is no matter which you choose in the end, you’ll probably live with doubts about that decision for the rest of your life. Did I make the right decision? What would my life have been like if I had done it the other way? These are perfectly normal and human.
Don’t beat yourself up about them.
If you’re thinking about walking away so that you can see if Judaism is really for you, here’s my advice: do it honestly. Do it intentionally.
And don’t turn it into a test that you’re trying to pass or fail.
Pay attention to what stays with you when you stop trying.
And remember, coming back doesn’t mean you were wrong to leave.
It means you were listening to yourself.
And that’s the good sense and intuition that G-d gave you.
If this video brought up doubt or imposter syndrome for you, or that quiet fear of not being “enough,” I’ve linked down below my free resource guide, the “Jewish Enough” Self-Talk Toolkit.
It’s there for those moments when certainty feels out of reach.
And if you’ve ever walked away from Judaism or circled it for years, post your story in the comments so that others don’t feel so alone.
And next, you should watch my video about Jewish imposter syndrome. See if maybe it helps.
