You spent months, maybe even years, studying Judaism, attending synagogue, and preparing for conversion. You went before the beit din, immersed in the mikvah, and officially became Jewish.
So why do you still feel like an outsider?
For many Jewish converts, becoming Jewish and feeling Jewish are two very different things. You might struggle with imposter syndrome, feel lost when everyone else knows the prayers, or wonder whether you’ll ever truly belong.
I’ve been there. And even after nearly two decades as a Jewish convert, I still struggle with some of these feelings.
The good news is that belonging isn’t something you either have or don’t have. It’s something you can build over time.
In this video, I’m sharing 8 practical ways to feel more Jewish, build confidence in your Jewish identity, and find your place in the Jewish community.
Watch the video below for practical ways to start feeling more at home in Jewish spaces.
And if you’re struggling with thoughts like “I’m not Jewish enough” or “I don’t really belong here,” download my free “Jewish Enough” Self-Talk Toolkit. It’ll help you challenge those thoughts and build confidence in your Jewish identity.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
You spend months, maybe years, converting to Judaism. You study. You go to services. You celebrate the holidays.
Eventually you go to the beit din and the mikveh and boom, you’re Jewish.
So why can you still walk into a room full of Jews and feel like you’re the only person who doesn’t belong there?
If you’ve converted to Judaism or you’re converting and you’re waiting for that moment when you finally “feel Jewish”… let’s talk about that.
Because feeling like an outsider after your conversion doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong. And there are some things that can actually help.
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.
And if you’re building a Jewish life from scratch right now, and you’d like some people to build it alongside, that’s one of the reasons I created my membership, Bayit Builders. It’s a place for practical support, planning our way through the Jewish calendar, and asking the questions you feel like you probably already should know.
Because we’ve all been there. And you don’t have to do it alone.
So here’s the fundamental problem: Conversion can happen faster than your identity catches up. They don’t work in lockstep.
There is a concrete “before and after” moment to conversion itself. But psychology is a very different matter.
It’s not like your identity downloads an update!
And one of the understated big milestones of a conversion is when you go from saying, “Jewish people do X,” to, “We do X.”
But very few of us choose that moment when we start saying it. We just accidentally start saying it. And then we worry that maybe we shouldn’t have said it, and you try to take it back.
All perfectly normal.
Your identity is supposed to undergo a big change, but it’s not gonna happen on the calendar. But here’s the question, will it ever happen? In my experience, most people do go on to feel Jewish. Feel it at a deep identity level.
But there are a large number of people who don’t feel that consistently. Myself included. I’ve talked on here a lot about imposter syndrome and questioning yourself, and I teach what I am learning myself.
I converted almost 20 years ago. Do sometimes I feel like I don’t belong or I shouldn’t be here? Yeah. It sucks. But it’s also just part of my psychology.
I’m an anxious girl.
So when you struggle with those kinds of thoughts and feelings, you can talk back to them. You can look at the evidence. Show yourself, yes, you are Jewish. Look at all these Jewish things you do.
And if you want more tips on that, I do have a [free] self-talk toolkit called “Jewish Enough,” and I’ll drop a link down to that in the description below. It’s free. You just need to join my mailing list.
What I’ve found in my experience and my research is that people who suffer from imposter syndrome or other self-doubts like this rarely grow out of them fully. However, it can be greatly improved.
You don’t have to struggle with this as much as you are right now.
Secondly, you became Jewish, but you didn’t magically develop a Jewish childhood.
Conversion makes you Jewish, but it doesn’t give you Jewish grandparents, family traditions, a mom you can call for advice, summer camp, Hebrew school, all those songs that everyone around you just knows.
But you know what? You’re not the only Jews like that. People who become religiously involved later in life, they also often struggle with having very little Jewish background. And there are a lot more converts than you think there are. So you are very much not alone.
We just all kind of stand in the back and laugh like we know what everyone’s talking about.
None of this is evidence that you’re less Jewish than anyone else. Hashem put you in the situation you’re in for a reason.
And there are a lot of good things that can come out of this too. It gives you the empathy to sympathize with people who are also new. You can help people who are coming behind you. You don’t take things for granted as much. You definitely have a lot of built-in opportunities to learn humility.
It would be nice if we had a Jewish childhood. And it’s normal to miss that every so often.
But most of those things can be learned. And you can also build relationships with friends and mentors who can serve those sort of family-like relationships for you. ” Chosen families” are very much a big thing in conversion.
I can assure you there are a lot of Jewish grandmothers who will adopt you out there, whether you want to be adopted or not.
Three, and this kind of builds on what we were just saying, cultural fluency is not the same thing as Jewishness.
Judaism is a culture, and it has its own language and rituals.
Not knowing something doesn’t make you any less Jewish. Just means you’ve got more to learn. And Jews should always be learning.
Familiarity with the rules or the language does not necessarily mean authenticity. You can know all of these cultural things and hate Judaism.
Try to divorce your sense of self-worth from what you know. You are made Betzelem Elokim, in the image of G-d. You have intrinsic value. And there is no shame in needing to learn more.
In fact, you should be admired for continuing to learn in life. So many people are content to just float through life, never really learning anything hard. You’re doing something hard!
Kol HaKavod!
But the good news is that a huge amount of this cultural fluency just comes through experience. Just keep putting in the time. Year over year, you’re gonna learn more and more and more.
And you will look back and you will be amazed by how far you’ve come.
Four, your community matters. A lot. So far, we’ve been talking about the internal feelings of belonging. But those external factors matter too.
Sometimes you’re feeling like an outsider because you’re new or learning. But sometimes your community may actually be making you feel like you don’t belong.
The theme of our channel is that Jews are human, rabbis are even more human, and some people are jerks. Try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Not all communities are welcoming to newcomers.
And every community is going to have some subset of people who are not welcoming to newcomers, whether they’re just wrapped up in themselves and not paying any attention to new people, or whether they are actively making you feel unwelcome.
But no community is entirely bad. Most communities that have a hard time with new people are mostly clueless and being a little selfish, not thinking about how it feels to be an outsider. Very normal human flaws.
It’s much harder, but we can still build our sense of belonging anyway. There are always good people to be found, even if you have to dig a little deep for them.
And you can also advocate for changes. You can talk to the shul leadership about ways to make newcomers feel welcome.
You can also be the change you wanna see in your community. Going outside of your comfort zone to welcome new people and to make people feel included, maybe even those people who aren’t always so polite to you.
If people are constantly interrogating your background, discriminating against you because of your race or ethnicity, making weird comments about converts, treating you as less knowledgeable no matter how much you know, or even question whether you’re “really” Jewish, or repeatedly reminding you that you weren’t born Jewish…
I’m not gonna tell you that you need more confidence.
Belonging is partly something we create internally, and partly something that a community creates together.
And anytime you’re in a community that you’re not happy with, I really encourage you to try to look into other communities where maybe you’ll have a more positive experience. I know no one likes having to move, but sometimes it makes a really huge difference in quality of life.
And sometimes that can be the difference between whether you stay Jewishly involved or you walk away.
Unwelcoming, nasty communities is the number one reason why Jewish converts walk away. So if they’re making you unhappy, take it seriously.
But also remember that they are not Judaism. There’s an old phrase called, “Don’t judge Judaism by the Jews.” I don’t like it, because you can’t really do Judaism without the Jews. We’re a people and a community.
And I think saying that phrase allows too many people to get off the hook for bad behavior. ” Oh, we don’t actually have to do anything because, you know, this just happens.”
I think we need to do more work in our communities to make our communities better.
But sometimes that phrase, “Don’t judge Judaism by the Jews,” can be comforting to some people, so I want to include it in case that’s you.
Five, stop measuring yourself against the most culturally fluent person in the room.
You know that person: the one who knows all the melodies, is always on the right page in the siddur, and somehow always knows what’s going on.
But you don’t know what that person’s really like.
You don’t know what they believe, what they do at home, what they don’t know. Or even what they’re insecure about. ‘Cause I guarantee they have insecurities. Everyone does.
You’re seeing the best parts of that person.
But most of the time, those people have decades of experience on you. A few decades from now, you could look just like them. Maybe even less time.
Just in general, try not to compare yourself to other people. Everyone grows at a different rate. Everyone has different life circumstances that affect how quickly they’re able to learn.
A convert or conversion candidate who is caring for young children or elderly parents is gonna have a slower process than someone who’s 23 and fresh out of college and just has a job. So you can’t even compare yourself against the other conversion candidates around you.
You don’t know what’s going on in their life either. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we should be working on ourselves.
Six, build memories, not just knowledge.
I know y’all. You love books. You love watching classes on YouTube. Podcasts. You are a knowledge dragon, hoarding knowledge like a dragon hoards gold.
But it’s really hard to take that knowledge and put it into practice. You may feel like you’re not “ready,” which spoiler alert, you almost never feel ready for anything that you need to feel ready for. So you might as well just jump in and try it.
You’ll do it wrong the first time, maybe even the first few times, but that’s normal and natural and to be expected. And it makes for a really good story afterward that you can laugh at yourself.
You need Jewish experiences that belong to you: your first sukkah. The recipe you make every Rosh Hashanah. The friend you sit next to at shul. The ridiculous story that happened at a Pesach Seder. And your own preferred melody for Lecha Dodi. Because there’s got to be like 18 different melodies that people use.
You’re developing your own Jewish history.
You can’t manufacture a Jewish childhood, as we said. But the life you’re living right now becomes your Jewish past. You’re making future you’s life easier and more enjoyable.
Seven, and perhaps most important, let yourself become a regular.
Go back to the same places. Keep showing up. For classes, for volunteering, for services.
Start learning people’s names and build relationships.
And I know that a lot of you are socially anxious and this is really hard for you. But it’s like eating your vegetables.
Personally, I try to focus on the long-term outcome that I’m going to get. But more importantly is to focus on the short-term benefits you’re gonna get, the immediate ones.
When you go to the service, you can be proud of yourself that you went to the service afterward, even if it was hard for you. You got up and you did it. You can say hi to that person that you’ve been seeing around who looks nice. You can be proud of yourself for doing that afterward.
Doing the things feels terrible, but afterward feels really nice.
It’s very similar to the gym. The only way I’ve developed a gym habit for the first time in my life the last year has been that I hate the actual practice of doing stuff at the gym, but every time I walk out the door, I’m really glad I went and I’m proud of myself.
That dopamine hit is what keeps me able to keep coming back, because I can always point to myself, ” I will be glad I did this when it’s over.” You can use that same practice for going to shul or for introducing yourself at Kiddush to a new person.
Community feels very different when you’re no longer walking into a room of 70 strangers.
Most of community building is just repetition: being someone that people recognize, being someone that people know their name.
Eight, find other converts.
There is so much relief in talking to another person and saying, “Does this ever happen to you?” And they go, “Oh my God, yes.”
Some experiences are really particular to conversion.
Having people who don’t need an entire backstory for why the story is important or the factors that went into it is so valuable. You speak the same language.
You might find this locally with someone. But most people find it online. Facebook groups, Reddit, my membership Bayit Builders.
You’re gonna feel a lot more normal once you have other converts to speak to.
And if you have the problem that you’re not living near an in-person Jewish community right now, check out this video for what you can do in the meantime.
