Most people don’t struggle with Jewish conversion because it’s impossible.
They struggle because they’re following advice that quietly wastes their time, money, and energy.
In this post, we’re breaking down some of the most common conversion myths – and what actually works instead.
If you’re realizing you don’t just need more information… you need help figuring out how this actually works in your real life, I’ve got two ways to support you.
I’m running a small group workshop focused on the real-life conversations that come up during conversion – what to say, how to say it, and how to navigate those moments without guessing.
And if you’re looking for ongoing support, Bayit Builders is my membership where we build a Jewish life step by step, in a way that’s actually sustainable. Doors open to new members May 5-14, 2026.
Part 2: Coming 4/29/26
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Some of the most common advice for converting to Judaism is just plain wrong.
Not just unhelpful, but actively harmful. It wastes time, drains money, and makes the process harder than it needs to be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the process is usually pretty hard, but it doesn’t have to be unnecessarily harder.
So today I’m gonna walk you through some of the most common myths that trip people up in the conversion process. And what actually works instead.
Unfortunately, I’m only covering part of it here. It’s a long list. We’re gonna handle three of the categories today, and the next video will handle the other three categories, so don’t miss it.
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’re realizing that you need more than just information, you need help figuring out what this looks like in your real life… I’ve got two ways to support you. This May, I’m running a small group workshop where we’re gonna focus on handling the real life hard conversations in your family. What to say, how to say it, and how to navigate those moments without guessing.
And if you’re looking for more ongoing support as you build a Jewish life, Bayit Builders is my membership where we work through it as a process, step by step together. Doors only open to new members three times a year, and your next chance is May 5th through the 14th, 2026. You can find both of these opportunities linked down below.
All right. Category number one is the delay and hesitation myths.
They all boil down to, “I’m not ready yet.”
You need to feel “ready” before starting the conversion. You should wait until your life is more stable to begin. Wait until you finish college. Wait until you move to that new city. You need to learn everything before talking to a rabbi. Wait until you move into a Jewish community. I am gonna link up here and down below to my video about what to do when you don’t have a Jewish community at hand. ‘ cause there’s a lot you can do before the circumstances are perfect.
And we think of this as a problem at the beginning of the conversion process, and it is, but it’s gonna recur throughout the conversion process for you. I need to learn everything about this topic before I go to the rabbi with my questions. It boils down to you don’t feel “ready” yet, so you delay.
You think that there is a magical point in the future where you will have had enough time, enough work, enough information to where you’ll finally feel ready.
But the truth is you will never feel ready. You will keep moving the goalposts. You have to read three books before you talk to the rabbi. You finish them. You don’t feel ready yet. So you say, “maybe I need to read five books before I contact the rabbi.” It never ends. You have to say, “no. We’re gonna go forward on imperfect information today.”
So whatever next step you’ve been delaying, take action on it today. Drop down in the comments below what that action is for you.
These delay myths are going to cost you so much in the missed time, but also in some monetary ways. We’re gonna focus more specifically on costs in the next video, but there are real costs here too.
Like for instance, if you think that you can’t start until you’ve moved into a Jewish community, you could make some really foolish decisions trying to get out of your lease. You could sublet to someone who’s a bad fit. You could pay lots of fees for breaking your lease. All because you think you can’t do anything and you don’t wanna lose six months until your lease is up. But there’s a lot you can do in that six month period. You don’t have to break your lease to get started. And that’s just one way that these delay myths can cost your wallet.
Myth category number two, the all-or-nothing myths. These are the ones that burn you out or just make you quit altogether.
First, this idea that there is a clear, predictable timeline to the conversion process, and you can plan around it. In most cases, that’s not gonna be true.
The conversion process is personalized to you and your life circumstances and your community, and that’s a good thing. But it does mean that there is inherent uncertainty in the system. And this can be really hard if you’re someone who’s in a relationship with a Jewish person and you’re hoping to finish this conversion before you get married. There may be other timelines around there, or you may be feeling your biological clock ticking or feeling like you’re being left behind by your peers. Time is going to feel pressured.
The best you can do is ask explicit questions about the timeline of your rabbi. The worst they can say is, “I don’t know.” That’s an answer you’re gonna hear more often than you’d like. Because this is a process made up of humans, and your rabbi doesn’t want to commit to something that they may not be able to follow through with. So they are very, very hesitant to put timelines on things.
The next myth is that there is a right order to go about your conversion. There is no right order. Start with what interests you the most and work from there. And over time, sprinkle in the things that you don’t care about as much. ‘Cause you’re human. There are gonna be pieces of this that don’t really get you excited.
Follow your interests and follow the resources. If you have a resource available to you on this particular topic, like someone is willing to lend you a book or there is a person someone wants to introduce you to… run with it. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t learned the “beginner” stuff first… dive in. You’ll catch up.
If you wanna start with Shabbat, start with Shabbat. You wanna start with kosher food? Start with kosher food. Just like the rabbis don’t like committing to a timeline, you also don’t have to commit to a certain timeline or a certain order.
Yes, there will be certain topics that you will need to get eventually, but you can choose what order those are in unless your rabbi has a curriculum or you’re in a course. And in that case, let other people do the planning for you for a little while. That can be nice and you can feel like you don’t have as many holes.
But I’m gonna tell you, you’re gonna have holes in your knowledge. Just like you graduated from high school with holes in your knowledge. Every person has holes in their knowledge. The foundation of a Jewish conversion is knowing how to fill the holes when you come across them. Who do you ask? Where do you look? That is the most Jewish question you can be asking yourself.
And these all-or-nothing myths are gonna cost you so much money because you are going to say, “I want to learn about kosher.” And you are going to buy six cookbooks and three books on how kosher works, and then you’re gonna get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking halfway through the first book. And then never read any of those books.
Go slow, use the library. Borrow books from a friend. Don’t just go plunking down hundreds of dollars on whatever the latest interest is.
Now another big myth: you need to change your life overnight. You have found the Truth with capital T, you immediately must throw out everything that is against that. Gotta throw out your old skimpy clothes. Gotta throw out all your secular music. Gotta throw out all your cookbooks that include non-kosher foods.
People love to go on throwaway sprees. Decluttering is not your answer. It feels really good in the moment, but 99% of people go on to regret it. You will throw out things that you wish you hadn’t thrown away and that you realize you really didn’t have to throw away.
Maybe you do decide to dress more modestly. There are ways to make skimpy clothing more modest. You don’t have to throw away your favorite shirt. You can work with it. You don’t have to throw away your secular music. Lots of Jews of all kinds listen to secular music. I personally know multiple chareidi moms sitting in the carpool line listening to punk rock. And as for the cookbooks, it’s very easy to alter recipes to make them kosher These are just some examples, but it’s true of everything.
Some people go so far as to throw away pictures of themselves where they feel like they looked immodest. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that.
Whatever it is that you feel like you need to get rid of, put it in a box somewhere you don’t see it. Let it sit there for at least a year, and yes, I do mean a full year at least. Let the honeymoon period wear off. Because yeah, you’re in a honeymoon period. You are so in love, and you are not thinking straight.
Do not change yourself overnight. It’s unsustainable and you’re gonna be unhappy with the outcome later. It’s not a good foundation to build a new life on, but fundamentally, you’re not actually building a new life. You’re building on the life that came before that. Don’t throw away Old You because Old You is necessary for New You. There is nothing wrong with Old You. Old You did the best they could with the resources they had at the time.
The next myth that people struggle with is ” if it isn’t perfect, it doesn’t count.”
Sure you stopped eating pork, but you still eat shellfish or meat with dairy. That counts. Maybe you put away your phone on Shabbat for one hour, but you still get on your phone and do all your normal stuff all the rest of Shabbat. That still counts.
Every step counts. Do not let all-or-nothing thinking sabotage you into ending up doing nothing instead.
And a myth related to this is “if it doesn’t feel meaningful like a spiritual high, then you’re doing it wrong.” Judaism is made up of Tuesdays. It is gonna be downright boring here.
You might still be in that honeymoon phase, as we said, but even in the honeymoon phase, there’s stuff that just doesn’t do it for you, and that’s normal. Judaism should speak to all people, and people are different and need different things at different times in their lives. Some things are gonna be boring or confusing or you don’t even like them. And that’s okay. Judaism doesn’t say you have to feel any certain way about it. All your feelings are okay here. ‘ cause also your feelings will change over time as your life changes. What doesn’t speak to you now might speak to you in the future or vice versa. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That is just life.
Now, the last category of myths we’re gonna cover today is the relationship myths. These are the myths that quietly damage your relationships. Or not so quietly, as the case may be.
The biggest one is your partner “will come around later.” Nine times out of 10 they don’t. However they started this process, that’s usually how they finish it.
For a lot of you, that’s bad news. But it’s gonna save you a lot of trouble trying to change someone who doesn’t wanna be changed. Whether your partner is not Jewish or your partner is Jewish, and either way they are not interested in this conversion thing, you’re gonna have to come to peace with that.
On the off chance they do come around in time, let that be a pleasant surprise. People know when you wanna change them, and that is going to cause them to sink in their heels and resist you.
But at the same time, looking at this situation realistically and realizing the most likely outcome and being realistic about how your partner is reacting to this. You have to ask some hard relationship questions. Is this really the relationship for you?
Judaism would never ask you to divorce or to end your relationship. We don’t seek converts out. But if your relationship was already not a great one, something like a big life change like being interested in Judaism can bring some of those problems to the surface.
Because most of your fights about Judaism are not actually going to be about Judaism. They’re gonna be about how you communicate with each other, about each person’s hangups and biases and prejudices, about the unequal distribution of work within your relationship. There’s a lot of underlying problems that will come to the fore, given this new lens, new perspective on your relationship.
So if it’s a bad relationship, maybe this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back for you.
A broader myth is that people think they can do this and avoid the hard conversations. This is especially a thing I notice with WASP Americans, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. That culture, uh, which I’m a part of, we are very conflict averse. We do not like having hard conversations. We will do what we can to avoid them.
But Judaism is a lifestyle, a culture, a civilization. You cannot escape having these hard conversations because Judaism is going to become a big part of your life. It’s eventually gonna bump up against the expectations or desires of the other people in your life.
You can hide it for a while, but you can’t hide it forever. And really, you wouldn’t want to. No one wants to live that way.
We talk about it a lot in the context of family, especially parents or adult children, but it’s also siblings, friends, your roommate, your great aunt, your boss, your coworkers. It’s everyone. Tackle these problems while they’re still molehills, before they grow into mountains.
There are three more categories that I didn’t get into in this video, and they’re just as important. I’m breaking those down in the next video, so watch that next. Once it’s up, I’ll be sure to link it here and down below for you.
And if you want help applying this to your real life, I’ve got two options. My relationships workshop is focused on these real life conversations we just talked about. What to say and how to handle them.
And my membership Bayit Builders is ongoing support for building a Jewish life in a way that actually works for you. Both are linked down below.
