Building a Jewish life doesn’t just change what you do. It changes how you relate to the people around you.
For many converts, one of the hardest parts isn’t the learning or the rituals – it’s the conversations with family.
The questions. The misunderstandings. The moments where something that feels deeply real to you doesn’t land that way on the outside.
In this video, I’m sharing what Jewish converts often wish their families understood, but don’t always know how to say out loud.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “I don’t even know what I would say in these conversations,” you’re not alone.
This is exactly why I created my small group workshop – to help you figure out what to say, how to say it, and how to navigate these conversations in a way that actually works in your real relationships.
You can learn more and grab your spot here.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
What I wish I didn’t have to tell my family about converting to Judaism. If someone in your family is converting to Judaism and it’s causing tension, this video is for you. This isn’t about blame. It’s about the gap between what this feels like on the inside and how it’s often received on the outside.
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’ve had one of these conversations go badly, or you’re avoiding one right now, I created a workshop to help you figure out exactly what to say. You can check it out in the details below.
Now, this isn’t about my family specifically. All things considered, my family handled things pretty well. There was a lot of, I, uh, no, I’m not even gonna do that.
So I’ve picked up some of the common threads throughout the years that I’ve seen with conversion candidates and their families. If you’re the convert, maybe this video might be helpful to share with family.
And if you’re the family or a friend, I hope you can listen and take this advice to heart and not take it defensively. These people are sharing this video with you because they love you and they wanna have a good relationship with you, but finding the words is hard. And it’s always easier when it comes from the mouth of someone who is not involved in your relationship.
So here’s what your Jewish converts wish you knew.
One: “This isn’t a phase. I’ve thought about this more than you think. This didn’t happen overnight.”
Believe me, by the time someone is telling their family, they wait a long time to tell their family. Because you know that once you tell your family, it’s serious, it’s real. So if they’ve reached the point of sharing the news with you, they’re past those initial stages.
This is not just a passing fancy.
Two. “I’m not rejecting you. I’m building something for myself. That’s not the same as leaving you behind.”
Yes, holiday celebrations might look a little different, but things were probably gonna change anyway. People change and learn new traditions and new ideas. You may not have expected it to be this change, but I feel pretty good that there was probably some change that was gonna come along, one way or another.
But that doesn’t mean they love you any less. and And it’s not intended to be a rejection of you. It’s an embrace of something else. And that’s not a judgment on who you are or what you believe or what you’ve done in your life.
Sometimes souls just take very different paths in the world. Just because I’ve changed my life doesn’t mean I’m judging you negatively for living your life the way you do.
Judaism’s not a proselytizing religion. We don’t seek out converts, honestly. We push them away. It is really hard to convert to Judaism. We found what works for us and we want you to find what works for you. Judaism doesn’t say you’re going to hell or anything like that. Our religious beliefs can coexist peacefully.
Three. “This is bigger than just a religion.”
Judaism is not a religion in the way you know it, especially if you’re a Christian, like most of my audience’s families. Especially not WASP, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans.
Judaism is a culture, a civilization, a people. It is about a lot more than a religion. Religious beliefs are part of it, but there’s a lot of other cultural pieces that come in. And Judaism affects every area of life. It affects how you eat, it affects how you spend your time, your priorities and values. It’s a full lifestyle.
Four: support doesn’t mean you have to agree with anything, and compromise might not look like you think it should. “You don’t have to understand it or do it with me, but I do need the space and respect to take it seriously.”
Like I said before, Judaism does not believe you need to be Jewish. You are fine. We don’t need you to believe the same religious beliefs as we do. You can continue to have your own beliefs. And we’ll support you in that. But we also ask that you respect our beliefs. And yeah, that means not proselytizing to us.
It does mean that maybe we don’t want to discuss religion with you. Maybe it’s too tense of a topic for us.
And especially for that WASP American culture, compromise can look very different. ‘ Cause normally you think of compromising in a situation that both sides give something up. But Judaism has certain rules, like it’s either kosher or it’s not. We can’t just give up part of the rules.
So when it comes to something like kosher food, we may not be able to compromise, but that doesn’t mean we can’t compromise in our relationship as a whole. Just because I can’t cut corners with my food doesn’t mean that we can’t come to agreements about sharing a kitchen while I visit.
Compromises are often not going to be situation specific. They’re going to be looking at how do we make a system that is fair to everyone as a whole.
There’s a really good analogy in parenting. Say if one partner is interested in Judaism and the other isn’t, one partner may need the other parent to step up for more childcare on Saturday mornings so that they can go to synagogue. Compromising doesn’t mean they leave synagogue early so that they have less time of solo parenting. The compromise is another day of the week, that parent takes over childcare and gives the other parent the night off. You find ways to make a peaceful resolution in the big picture.
Try not to focus so much on the individual circumstances and who’s compromising what, because when you start counting, no one wins.
But do understand there are certain situations where we cannot compromise. That may be something like, we may not go into a church with you. And that may be something we can’t compromise on, no matter how much we would really like to be able to make you happy and make peace in the family. Some rules are just absolute for us.
Five. Some of your questions hurt more than you think.
“Why would you choose this?”
“Aren’t you making your life harder?”
“Is this because of someone you’re dating?”
Or start prying into the relationship if they know you’re dating someone Jewish?
But it can also mean casual antisemitism. Antisemitism is so pervasive in our culture that you could accidentally say things that are antisemitic and not have any idea that you’re doing it. It could be as simple as a comment about how the Jews control the banks. That’s not actually true, but a lot of Americans believe it is. Or Jews control Hollywood. There are a lot of Jews in powerful positions in Hollywood, but the Jews don’t run Hollywood.
If they’re showing you this video, then they believe you have the best of intentions and that you wouldn’t intentionally do this and you wouldn’t intentionally hurt them. Just take a few extra seconds to think through the questions you ask and consider how they might make us feel.
And remember that some things are just private. Even if you’re my parents, some parts of my life are just off limits to you. That’s part of growing up.
Six: “I’m still figuring it out.” No matter how far through the conversion process someone is, there’s still a lot of, “I’m just figuring it out,” going on. And in Judaism, that’s okay. We view Jewish education as a lifelong task. There will always be more to learn. And we’re always working to improve ourselves and our Jewish practice.
We won’t have answers for every question you ask. That doesn’t mean we’re not serious, and it doesn’t mean we don’t know a lot. You just might have hit on a subject we don’t know a lot about. Or one that we know a lot about, but we haven’t decided how we feel about it yet. Because there are many traditions within Judaism, and a potential convert has to choose which of those traditions that they’ll embrace on a specific question.
“I don’t have perfect answers yet. That doesn’t make this any less real.”
Jews are called the People of the Book because we learn so much. ” I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out,” is an incredibly Jewish answer and one that we view positively. The word “Israel” means “wrestles with G-d.” In Jewish belief, we should wrestle with our learning. It’s a good thing!
Seven: “This matters to me. Even if it doesn’t make sense to you.” We know you have good intentions.
“ Just trust me. I know what’s best for myself, and if I’m wrong, then I should figure that out for myself. This is part of life: learning, growing, and changing. I want us to have a relationship where we continue to do that together.”
If you’re sitting here thinking how hard these conversations are for you to have and hoping that you can find some loophole to make sure that you never have to have them, that’s exactly why I created my workshop. It’s gonna be a small group, 10 people max, and over four weeks we will work through these relationships. Figure out what to say, how to say it so it actually works in your real life, in your real relationships. You can grab your spot below.
And if you want more help on what to say when these conversations happen, you should watch this next video.
