Jewish law is pretty clear that a person who converts to Judaism is Jewish. Full stop. The Torah also repeatedly commands us to love and protect converts.
But Jewish law and the experience of actually being a convert in a Jewish community aren’t always exactly the same thing.
Converts can find themselves in a strange position. Some people treat us as incredibly holy and inspirational simply because we chose Judaism. Others make assumptions about our backgrounds, question whether we really belong, or ask wildly personal questions they’d never dream of asking someone who was born Jewish. And sometimes those two attitudes aren’t as different as they initially appear – both can reduce a whole person to the fact that they converted.
So what is it actually like after you convert? Are converts treated differently? Will everyone always know you converted? Can you ever just blend into Jewish community without your conversion becoming the most interesting thing about you?
In this video, we’re getting into the messy reality – because, as usual, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.
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Transcript below.
Transcript:
 Everyone’s got an opinion on whether converts are treated differently in the Jewish world.
On one hand, you get the, “Once you convert, you’re fully Jewish, full stop.” And then on the other side, you get the, “You’ll never truly be accepted.”
So what’s the truth? The answer is yes and no. Both. ‘Cause life’s complicated and people are complicated.
And one of our foundational premises of this YouTube channel is that Jews are people, rabbis are people, and people are imperfect, and sometimes people are jerks. So let’s talk about it and how you can navigate it.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, BuildingaJewishLife.com.
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It’s not just a book list, and it can help your rabbi understand how serious you are. You can get it free by joining my mailing list at the link down in the description below.
 Hey, future editing Kochava here I completely forgot to mention that my membership, Bayit Builders, is opening to new members August 27th through September 3rd, 2026.
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You can learn more at the link down in the description below. Back to our regularly scheduled program!
 So let’s start at the beginning, Jewish law. According to Jewish law, a Jewish convert is a Jew, full stop, no different from a born Jew… except when they’re not, which that gets complicated, and that gets into a lot of politics because in the Jewish world, there is a lot of opinions.
Famous saying, two Jews, three opinions. And there are some opinions in Jewish law that hold that there are limitations on converts.
But for the average person, they don’t actually affect your life. I’ll give you the CliffsNotes.
The Rambam, a very famous medieval Jewish teacher, goes into depth about the laws of kingship, and one of those laws is that a convert can’t be a king, and he takes that law and extrapolates it to other parts of life in leadership.
And so some people who hold by the Rambam in this, which notably we mostly don’t follow the Rambam, we usually take other opinions, but on this one, some groups do adopt this position where converts cannot be put in leadership roles over born Jews.
How they define leadership roles or kingship is the sticking point.
So for instance, if you have heard of the Young Israel group of synagogues, it’s a mainstream Orthodox, uh, institution, they follow this ruling. And how it plays out in real life is that a convert cannot be the rabbi of a Young Israel. They also cannot be the president of the synagogue.
Do I agree with this? Not particularly, not a big fan.
I think we have a lot to learn from having converts in leadership roles, including as rabbis and as leaders of our nonprofit institutions.
What’s funny is that most people don’t know that this rule exists. They know the rule that is derived from this rule, most notably with the Young Israel.
So about 15 years ago, I guess, there was a big hubbub about whether women could be presidents of synagogues, and Young Israel was kind of at the forefront of that, of ruling that women could not be president or vice president because then they would step into the role of president, but that they could be in other positions on the board.
This rule against women in leadership is actually derived from the rule against converts in leadership. The thinking goes, if a male convert can’t do it, certainly a woman can’t do it!
And I find that people are incredibly surprised to find out this rule about Young Israels and converts in leadership.
So yeah, it doesn’t affect most people But I think that our community is harmed by keeping converts out of these positions. We would be better for having their experience.
Now let’s go into the other area of Jewish law that people are always quoting about converts, and that is that the Torah commands us at least 36 times to love the convert.
No one can agree on what exactly the number is, but, um, it is one of the most commanded mitzvahs in the Torah.
And why? It’s because converts are vulnerable. The commandment often is with also protecting the widows and the orphans, also people who were socially vulnerable, who didn’t have inheritances within the land of Israel specifically.
And all of this continues to be great advice today. We should take better care of widows and orphans and converts.
But our communities are not always the most welcoming to anyone in a unusual position. People get awkward when things are not normal.
Maybe they have the best intentions, sometimes they don’t, but there’s also a definition problem.
It’s often phrased as don’t oppress the Ger, the convert. But what does “oppress” mean, and how do you define it? Is saying a good thing about someone who is a convert considered “oppressing” them? It is maybe if they don’t want you outing them to people they’ve never met.
And that brings me to my foundational issue of this video.
I find that Jewish people fall into two camps largely. Well, three camps. The converts, people who think converts are super holy and amazing and put them up on a pedestal, and people who think that being a convert is something you should probably be ashamed of and you should hide. There’s very little middle ground between those two groups, and I find that both groups dehumanize converts.
They don’t treat us as normal people with normal problems and normal behavior. We’re not all amazing people. We’re also not all bad people. We’re normal people. We’re not so different from you.
So you get a lot of people who think that they are being helpful to Gerim by being like, “Oh, did you know so-and-so is a convert? It’s amazing. Can you believe it?”
I’m like, “That’s not your business to tell.” People should have control over their own story.
We don’t want our entire existence being boiled down to we’re a convert, which is what so many people do. It becomes the only interesting thing about you, and the only thing people wanna talk to you about.
And yet having that conversation with your friend who does that is really hard because they mean it as a compliment, but they don’t realize that they’re hurting you, and you don’t want them to feel bad, so you put off having that conversation for a long time. And the longer it goes on, the more you feel like you can’t say anything because you’ll be upsetting the apple cart of how your relationship has always been.
It’s a complicated position to be in because you know the person means the best, but yet they are embarrassing you publicly.
Then there’s the other camp of the people who assume horrible things about you if you’re a convert. The best story I have about that for my own story was I was once at a Shabbat meal, and a person leaned over to me and said, “So, what drugs have you done?”
Because of course, if I was a non-Jew, obviously I’ve done drugs. It wasn’t even “have you done drugs,” it’s “which drugs have you done.”
And that comes down to a deep dislike of non-Jewish people in many of our communities, a deep distrust, stereotypes, all things that are unfair and against halacha, in my opinion.
All people are made Betzelem Elokim, in the image of G-d, Jew and non-Jew. Assuming horrible things of me because I used to be non-Jewish is just not a good look, and that often goes hand-in-hand with the people who put converts on a pedestal because they’re like, “Look, they had this horrible life, and look what they’ve made out of it.”
And it’s like two sides of the same coin. You should be ashamed of most of your life while also putting you on a pedestal, which is completely unrealistic for any normal human being.
So what I find is that most converts just wanna sidestep the whole conversation altogether. They don’t want people to know that they are a convert just because these conversations suck.
Like, let’s be honest about it. People get way up in your business, and either they put you down or they put you on a pedestal. None of that’s pleasant.
I do not blame anyone who tries to squeak by without anyone knowing that they’re a convert because, of course, the first thing anyone asks is, “So what made you convert?”
Or almost any time I am in a situation with my husband, people ask me if I converted for my husband. There is no good answer to that question. I don’t know why people continue to ask it because if I say yes which that is not the answer, then they’re gonna judge me and view me as a “bad convert” for converting for my spouse.
In truth, I’m one of the “good ones” who gets to give the “good” answer of, “No, I converted before I even met my husband.”
But a lot of people, though less than you would think, do convert because they were in a relationship with someone who is Jewish. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how tribes grow in most of history, and the Halacha is not as down on that as people assume.
We wanna make sure that they’re doing it for themselves, but being introduced by a partner is a perfectly legitimate way to enter Judaism. It’s how I discovered Judaism. I didn’t know you could convert to Judaism. I didn’t know that that was even an option until I dated a nice Jewish boy from Scotland, as you do.
But no matter what the answer is, the question was inappropriate. And I see a slight improvement in people over the last 20 years, but not a lot.
And I think that social media almost makes it worse because there is this idea that we should put so many of our secrets on public display for the entertainment of other people.
So here’s the question that people face: “Will people always know that I am a convert? Can I hide it?”
And I will tell you that most of the time, no, you can’t. For the average person, you came to Judaism as an adult. You came to these ideas and teachings as someone who already ha- These are not natural to you from childhood.
What you can hope for is often to blend in as someone who was born Jewish but became religious later in life. A lot of people “pass” that way, but honestly, most of that comes down to race.
If you “look Jewish,” whether that’s white Ashkenazi or someone who can pass as Sephardi, like especially people from Hispanic backgrounds or the Middle East, people are way more willing to assume that you were born Jewish and just became religious later in life.
But for instance, if you are Black, most people are going to assume that you are a convert, even if you were born Jewish, as many Black Jews are.
And then of course, race puts whole new angles in the issues of people assuming bad things about you and your pre-Jewish life. I have seen someone flat up assume that a Black convert must have been a drug dealer before conversion, because I guess that’s just what Black people do.
What was in this person’s brain? In the modern era, who says that out loud?
Increasingly, a lot of people actually, which if, if you know, you know.
Now, if you wanna know more about why you’re probably not gonna “pass,” you should watch this video about Jewish geography. It’s the game that every convert loses.
