If you’ve ever been told that getting an Orthodox conversion is the “safe” choice – the one nobody can question – I need you to sit with me for a minute.
Here’s the thing: there is no universally accepted Jewish conversion. Not Reform. Not Conservative. Not even Orthodox.
I know. That’s a lot.
It doesn’t mean your conversion won’t be recognized. Most of the time, it will be. But “most of the time” and “guaranteed” are not the same thing, and too many people go into the conversion process believing they are.
You deserve to know the truth before you start – not after you’ve already made decisions based on bad information.
In this video, I break down how Jewish conversion recognition actually works, movement by movement. What each denomination accepts. What the RCA system means for your paperwork. And why even the most airtight conversion carries some risk.
Watch the video below, or keep reading.
Ready to go deeper? Join my mailing list for practical, no-nonsense conversion guidance.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Will your Jewish conversion be accepted by everyone in the Jewish community? Maybe, but probably not.
Let’s dig into it.
Why does it matter if other people in the Jewish community recognize your conversion and accept it as valid?
The Jewish people is a people, a tribe, a civilization.
You cannot truly be Jewish by yourself.
You rely on the community and the community relies on you.
And in a conversion, you are accepting Judaism, but the Jewish community is also accepting you. It’s a two-way street.
In practical terms, that means if you move towns, will your next congregation recognize your conversion as valid and allow you to become a member and participant in the community?
Even if they don’t recognize your conversion, I don’t see any reason why they would kick you out or something. You’ll still be able to do some things in the community and able to attend, that sort of thing, but there may be certain things you can’t do. Like they may not be willing to marry you to another Jew.
They may not allow you to enroll your kids in the Jewish school or the Hebrew school program.
You may not be able to become a voting member of the congregation.
Then of course you have Jewish law implications because sometimes the law is different depending on whether the people involved are Jewish or not.
It’s not the end of the world if someone doesn’t recognize you as Jewish, but it’s annoying. It hurts your feelings too, and it’s also annoying as a practical matter.
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.
And if you want more content like this, you should join my mailing list. The link is down in the description below.
Judaism can be broken down into a couple of movements, which you might be more familiar with as denominations.
The Jewish spectrum is wide, and for lack of a better term, we’re gonna go from left to right.
Let’s start with humanistic Judaism, which is an atheistic, more cultural group. Then there’s Reconstructionist and Renewal, which are two different movements that are both small and relatively recent.
Then you have the largest Jewish group: the Reform movement. Don’t make the mistake of calling it reformed. It’s Reform. No -ed at the end.
Then there’s conservative, which is kind of the halfway point between reform and Orthodox. And Orthodox is at the end. The conservative movement and the orthodox movement both hold by Jewish law, but in different ways. And in many conservative congregations, you may find that a lot of people don’t hold up to the same standard of Jewish law as they are supposed to on paper.
The Orthodox movement is where you’re most likely to find people keeping kosher, keeping Shabbat, and other laws that make them very visibly Jewish.
So in a sense, the spectrum does go a little from most lenient to strictest.
And even within Orthodoxy, there’s more breakdowns. There’s Modern Orthodoxy, which is the more lenient side. There’s Ultra Orthodoxy, which is the more conservative side. You might also hear them called Chareidi.
This is where you’ll also find Hasidic Jews.
Within Orthodoxy, modern Orthodoxy is the largest group.
We’re gonna start with the smallest group of all: Humanistic Judaism.
I am told they do some conversions. Not a lot, mainly because there’s not a lot of humanistic Jewish congregations in the United States.
Are their conversions recognized by the other groups within Judaism? As far as I’ve been able to find, no. Only within themselves.
Now let’s move into Reconstructionist and Renewal Judaism. These are also small groups of Jewish congregations.
They do conversions, and their conversions may or may not be accepted also at Reform congregations.
From what I’ve been able to gather, it’s a matter of that individual congregation’s rabbi’s decision.
Now let’s come to the reform conversions.
As I said, the Reform Movement is the largest religious Jewish group.
While it holds many traditions, it doesn’t hold Jewish law as binding. So because of that, only reform or “lower” on the scale will accept a reform conversion. I hate having to use the word like “lower,” but I don’t have good direction words.
But as a practical matter, a reform conversion will be recognized by most of the Jewish people.
But will it be recognized by the people you want it to be recognized by?
Maybe you’re getting married to a Jew, and you would like your in-laws to see you as a fellow Jew.
I don’t know what standard those in-laws will hold you to, because sometimes they’ll hold you to a higher standard than the one that they live in real life.
So now the next level “up” from the reform conversion is the Conservative conversion.
In the Conservative movement, you will find a wide range of what is required under Jewish law in order to qualify to convert. The movement itself on paper believes halakha is binding.
But you don’t see that in a lot of the congregations, and you don’t see that in a lot of the converts.
As a practical matter, there is often very little difference between reform converts and conservative converts. In individual cases, there might be, but as a whole, they’re fairly similar. But the conservative conversion is gonna be recognized by everyone in the reform movement and “below.”
Plus the conservative movement, which is also quite large.
Then you have an Orthodox conversion. This is the gold standard, right? You would think so, but it’s not necessarily. Because here’s the secret. There is no universally acceptable conversion. There will always be someone in the world who doesn’t like who you converted with and would not consider you Jewish.
There are some people who believe that conversion should not be done at all, which is completely against the Torah, but try telling them that.
If you’re seeking a conversion that’s gonna make everyone happy, you’re never gonna find it. You could get an orthodox conversion and never have it questioned, and it gets you by in every place you ever wanna go. That is most people’s experience, but you can never bank on that.
You should know that there is always the risk that someone could still question it. I mean, even the Rabbi could do something completely crazy and go off the rails in later years, and then your conversion gets retroactively affected because it turns out he was living some crazy secret life.
Like you have no way of knowing. The recognition of your conversion once you have an orthodox conversion is largely out of your hands. People are gonna take it or they’re not. Most of the time they’re gonna accept it, but I don’t want you to be surprised or shocked if you ever run into a circumstance where yours isn’t accepted. That will always be a risk.
It sucks, but it’s the truth. Too many people will tell you that an Orthodox conversion is bulletproof, but there are different types of conversions even within the Orthodox world.
Most orthodox conversions are modern Orthodox or like “mainstream Orthodox.”
But there are Chareidi conversions and there are Hasidic conversions.
Much smaller, especially within the United States and the UK. Both of those countries have a fairly standardized system under one governing body for the most part. So in the United States, that’s under the system run by the RCA, the Rabbinical Council of America.
And under that organization, there are satellite rabbinical courts throughout the country that each have a jurisdiction to oversee conversions within that territory.
That is almost all of the Orthodox conversions in the United States.
But literally anyone can put together a rabbinical court, a beit din, and do a conversion. What matters is the names of the rabbi on your sheet of paper.
That is what people in the future are going to read. Getting an RCA conversion is much smoother. I think someone is murdering a child outside.
Hope you’re not picking that up.
Big sisters are the worst.
Having RCA at the top of your conversion paperwork is helpful. It’ll smooth the way for you.
But you’ll still always have the issue of a potential renegade rabbi leading a secret life.
So nothing’s bulletproof.
Do the best you can with the resources you have, but don’t get a false sense of security.
If you wanna know how long conversions take, check out this video.
If you like more calm, practical guidance like this, you should join my mailing list. You can find the link down in the description below.
