Talking to your family about your Jewish life is often much harder than people expect.
Not because you don’t care or don’t know enough, but because you’re trying to explain something deeply personal to people who may be reacting from a completely different place.
In this post, I’m sharing what I wish I had known before having those conversations.
If you’re trying to figure out what to actually say when talking to your family about your Jewish life, I run a small group workshop focused on exactly that – real conversations, real scenarios, and language that actually works in your life. You can learn more here.
If you want more structured support beyond these videos, you can join my mailing list and get access to my Resource Library, with practical tools and guidance to help you navigate conversion and build a Jewish life that actually works.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
If you’re building a Jewish life and haven’t talked to your family about it yet, or the conversations keep going badly, these are eight things I really wish I had known before I opened my stupid mouth.
Talking to your family about your Jewish life is way harder than anyone prepared me for. I wish someone had warned me exactly how badly it could go. Thankfully in my case, it didn’t go that badly. It was hard. No one threw around antisemitic conspiracy theories, which happens to a lot of people actually.
These conversations go badly for a reason, and it’s probably not what you think.
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.
If you want help figuring out exactly what to say in these kinds of conversations, I’m running a small group workshop focused exactly on that, starting next week, May 3rd, 2026. You can find details down below.
First and foremost, you will not feel ready or prepared. No matter how long you wait or how much you prepare. There is no such thing as “ready.” And that is a theme that is gonna keep coming up in your Jewish life. You do the best you can with the resources you’ve got.
You think “I’ll wait until I can explain it better.” But that moment never comes. You’ll never explain it perfectly.
Two, that conversation you’ve been dreading is only the first conversation. There will be more.
You spend so much time focusing on this first conversation ’cause you wanna get it right. But you forget that you get more than one bite at the apple. It’s okay if things don’t go great this first time. You’ve got more chances coming along.
The pressure drops when you realize that. Everything isn’t riding on this one conversation. It unfolds over time.
You’re gonna be navigating and negotiating these conversations for the rest of your life. And even when you’re 80, you will still not feel ready or prepared.
Three, and this might be the most important thing to realize, you can’t control their reaction.
We spend so much time trying to figure out how to like sink our nails into as much control over the situation as possible. But this is another human being. They have their own wants, needs, desires, prejudices, biases. They might even just be hangry at the moment.
All of that is out of your control. When you realize that, you can let go of the responsibility in feeling like it’s your fault if they respond badly. It’s not.
People sometimes make bad decisions and react really badly toward you. That’s not your fault. That’s theirs. There is probably nothing you could have done differently that would’ve changed this outcome.
Four: you’re not just sharing information, you’re changing the relationship. This isn’t just a conversation. You are changing something fundamental about who you are and the way your life runs. You’re adopting a brand new lifestyle, a whole new culture.
This isn’t, “I just learned something new!” This is a significant change to who you are. It’s values, routines, identity. A lot of future decisions are now going to be different than your loved one expected. So they’re going to have fear.
Anytime a relationship changes significantly, we’re scared. Because we don’t know where we stand anymore.
Is the relationship okay? We don’t know. And that’s scary.
You don’t know what the holidays are gonna look like from now on. Something that was a foundational piece of your family has suddenly changed.
And it’s kind of thrust on you by another person: you. So have some compassion for throwing something that might be completely out of left field at them.
They’re not just hearing what you’re saying, they’re reacting to what it means.
And as much as it feels like it only affects your life, it does affect their life too. That doesn’t mean they get a say in it, but you can have more compassion from that fearful place they might be reacting from.
Five. Their questions might not be what they sound like.
Maybe they act sort of okay and they start asking you some questions. Maybe like, “why would you choose this?” ” Is this because you’re dating someone?” ” Is this something your partner wanted?”
You might be answering the surface question, but they’re usually asking something deeper.
There is probably fear, confusion, and loss behind that question, and if you’re not also addressing that piece of it, your answer is gonna be incomplete. You’re not actually going to deal with their concern.
Six. Some people will be antisemitic and you didn’t know it. Even if it’s the adult children you raised to know better.
This happens, unfortunately, quite a bit. Intentionally and not.
Some people are rabid antisemites. Some people just have picked up antisemitic stereotypes through the years but fundamentally mean well. It’s important to know the difference. You need different strategies for those two different groups of people.
Seven. You need to know what you need before the conversation even starts. Not just what you believe or what you’re doing, what do you actually need from this conversation?
Because as I like to say around here as a former theater kid, there’s an old playwriting rule that ” a fight about the curtains is not about the curtains.” A conversation or a fight about converting to Judaism is often not just about the Judaism. Which we’ve mentioned throughout this piece, but we’ve been focusing on the other person.
What are the deeper motivations for you? Are you trying to earn their acceptance? That’s not a good goal. They may not accept you. They may not accept this. Are you using fights about this issue to actually cover up deeper fights about maybe you two have difficulty communicating about other life decisions. Maybe it’s deeply about how they don’t like your partner who’s Jewish. Maybe you’re worried about disappointing them.
And yeah, I won’t sugarcoat it. There’s probably gonna be some disappointment there because it’s going back to this is gonna be a change in your relationship and any change in a relationship generally comes with disappointment because we want what we thought we had.
The only person who needs to be okay with your decisions right now is you. Don’t look for approval or acceptance from anyone else because you probably won’t get it. If you do, that’s a bonus, that’s great, but you can’t let it sink you when it almost inevitably doesn’t come the way you want it.
Before this conversation, you should be thinking about what support looks like for you. What are you asking them to do?
Are you asking them to not proselytize to you, try to convert you to their religion, or talk you out of converting? Are you informing them about this decision but you actually don’t wanna have ongoing conversations about this? And you’re just giving them the notification and then don’t plan to discuss it further?
What are these boundaries that you need to protect yourself? What’s non-negotiable to you?
If you don’t know what you need from this conversation, it’ll drift in whatever direction they take it.
But in general, try to be very open to negotiation, especially if you’re early in the conversion process. There’s a lot of ways that you can ease family members into changes. You don’t have to go zero to 60 overnight. And in fact, it’s a terrible idea to go zero to 60 in Jewish practice overnight. It’s unsustainable. You’ll burn out.
Eight. And very importantly: you’re allowed to stop the conversation. At any point you can say, “Nope, done.”
I mean, you should probably phrase it a little nicer than that, like “things are getting a little heated. Why don’t we table this for now and go back to the meal.” “Thank you for sharing that with me. I’ll definitely think it over.” “I put a lot of thought into what I’m doing and I’m not making an impulsive decision. I’d really appreciate if you would support me, but I understand if you can’t right now.”
There’s lots of ways that you can respond to this in a way to basically say, ” eh, I’m done.” And don’t feel bad if you do it. Self preservation is important.
So if you’re sitting here thinking, “I do not know what I would say in these conversations,” I’m running a small group workshop where we’re gonna work on exactly these kinds of situations tailored to your family and friends. We’ll work through real situations and figure out what to say and how to say it so that it actually works for you and your life. You can find out more down below.
Next up, you should watch the video on what to say when your family questions your conversion.
