Converting to Judaism is a big commitment. You spend months, sometimes years, learning, building a Jewish life, and working toward the day you finally become Jewish.
So you’d think that once you’ve converted, you could put that chapter behind you.
Well, Judaism is rarely that straightforward.
For some converts, questions about their Jewish status can follow them for years. And sometimes those questions come from other people. Sometimes they come from inside their own heads.
In this video, we’re talking about a side of Jewish conversion that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: why do people get multiple Jewish conversions?
And if you’ve ever struggled with feeling like you’re not “Jewish enough,” I’ve got something for you. My free Jewish Enough: A Toolkit for Talking Back to Doubt will help you challenge those feelings and start trusting your place in Jewish life. And it’s my most complimented freebie, so I hope it’ll help you too.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Wait, didn’t you already become Jewish?
It’s actually not uncommon for people to have more than one Jewish conversion. People do it for different reasons, and it usually doesn’t mean that anything was wrong with their first conversion. Sometimes the person hasn’t changed at all. Just the community they need recognition from has.
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 I converted twice. In fact, I shared the story of that in last week’s video, which I’ll link up here and down below. My two conversions story was a little unusual, and a little shocking.
So today, we’re going to talk about more of the “normal” reasons why people convert more than once. In my experience, it’s quite common. Most people do convert only once and stay in the type of community where they converted originally. But there’s nothing shocking or weird or worrisome about having more than one conversion.
So far, the record that I have heard is four conversions. That was a wild story, and we’ll talk about it a little bit later. Three is really unusual. Most people only ever have two, if they ever have more than one at all.
In almost every case, it comes down to a distinction between being Jewish and being recognized as Jewish.
There are a lot of people on the internet who will be happy to tell you that those are one and the same. That only if you have the conversion that they recommend, that is the only way you are Jewish, and you will automatically be recognized as Jewish because that is the correct way to do it.
That is not accurate, because even the most ultra-Orthodox conversion can be questioned and invalidated, not recognized. I go into a lot more detail on that in this video that I’ll link up here and down below about recognition of conversions.
So, basically, despite what you will hear in comment sections, there is no one Judaism. There is no Jewish Pope. Even within the Orthodox world, there is a wide variety of ways to be Orthodox, and those groups judge each other for being more or less Jewish, too.
And that’s the theme of our channel here. Jews are human. Rabbis are even more human. People make mistakes. And sometimes people are jerks.
But in general, you will largely find three categories of conversions: Reform, Conservative or Masorti, depending on where you live, or Orthodox. There are also smaller groups doing conversions, like Reconstructionist, Renewal, and even Humanistic Judaism, which is a non-theistic form of Judaism. It’s its own little thing. I don’t think anyone but themselves recognizes their conversions. I’ve certainly never heard of it that way.
And on paper, each movement only recognizes its own conversions or those of a higher group. “Higher.” So, if you want to join a Conservative community and you have an Orthodox conversion, they will recognize it because it’s higher. On paper, if you are a Reform convert and you want to join a Conservative synagogue, in theory, your conversion would not be accepted.
However, in practice, there is a lot of leeway and discretion allowed to the community rabbis. And what I have seen happen in practice is that if a Reform, Reconstructionist, or Renewal conversion meets all of the legal standards, the Jewish law standards of a Conservative conversion, they will usually recognize it. That means mikvah and circumcision and Beit Din.
Every conversion requires a Beit Din, which is a rabbinical court. It’s like an oral exam to finish up your conversion, and then they approve you or not. There is a circumcision for those who need it. I have a video up there and down below all about circumcision, including how much you can expect to pay for one. And then the last step for everyone is the mikvah.
But in the liberal streams of Judaism, a circumcision and a mikvah may not be required. My understanding is that on paper they are required, but that it’s left up to individual liberal rabbis to decide for themselves what standards they will hold. But if you take all three of those steps, odds are good that a Conservative community would recognize your conversion.
But of course, your mileage will vary. Don’t take it as gospel. We really need a Jewish version of that phrase. We also desperately need a Jewish version of a “come to Jesus” conversation. That’s one of my latest pet peeves.
So what about getting an Orthodox conversion? In most places in the world, the overwhelming majority of Orthodox conversions are done by the Modern Orthodox community.
However, for a long time now, things have been moving to the right, very similar to how Christianity and Islam have also been moving to the right religiously. So there is a basically ultra-Orthodox level of Orthodoxy that is often called “Black Hat” or “Yeshivish.” And so even though technically it would be considered a Modern Orthodox conversion in most cases, you may be held to a standard that is more Yeshivish. In the last 15 years, I have literally watched the Modern Orthodox communities of this country just dwindle.
So what if you want to be ultra-Orthodox? Say you want to be Hasidic. If you want to be Chabad: as a general rule, on paper, Chabad doesn’t do conversions. They refer you to the local, mainstream, Modern Orthodox Jewish community. It’s just not their mission. The mission of Chabad is to do outreach to born Jews and bring them into higher levels of observance.
But there are exceptions. There are at least a couple of Chabad rabbis in the United States who seem to love doing conversions, because I keep running into them doing multiple.
But let’s say you want to be Breslov. They’re probably also going to send you to the Modern Orthodox community, especially in the United States, which has a standardized Orthodox system called the Rabbinical Council of America, the RCA. Most groups are going to send you there.
If you want to join stricter, more insular strains of Hasidism (is that the right word? I don’t think I’ve ever had to say that word before), like Satmar, Bobov, Ger, or Belz, first off, you’re going to have a really hard time getting in the door. But it’s not impossible. And in the few times that I’ve seen that done, they did their own conversion. But the feeling that I get is that it’s so rare and unusual that they just kind of take each case as it comes and decide that way.
It’s a lot more common for someone to convert mainstream Orthodox and then try to move into a Hasidic community later, maybe marrying into it. Minus Chabad. Chabad’s always the exception. And Breslov, too, to a degree, at least here in the United States.
Will those groups recognize a Modern Orthodox RCA conversion? Honestly, I don’t know. I think so. But we’ll talk below about a situation that I suspect they might do.
Reason 1: Your Jewish outlook changed
So that’s kind of a breakdown of why someone might ask you to convert again: someone’s Jewish philosophy, Jewish theology, hashkafah, has changed. In those cases, you may be changing how you observe Judaism, perhaps significantly so.
The most common pairing of a double conversion is what I did: having a non-Orthodox conversion of some sort, followed by an Orthodox conversion. And as a general rule, having a prior non-Orthodox conversion doesn’t help you a lot in an Orthodox conversion. You’re still kind of starting from the same starting place as most everyone else. You’re probably not observant, and you have to learn it all from scratch, like every other Orthodox convert.
But that baseline of knowledge that you have is going to make it easier for you. Whether it will cut any time off, probably not. You’re probably looking at one to three years to convert. The average is two. I’ll link up there and down below to my more in-depth video about how long it takes to convert to Judaism.
Reason 2: You need it for a part of your life
The second major category of why people might get more than one conversion is that they need it for a specific part of their life. So what was never a question in one part of your life suddenly becomes a problem in another area of your life.
This could include marrying someone from a higher Jewish group, and you want to build your life in that new community. So you need to meet that community’s requirements. I think I’ve only heard of that happening once. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
Some people choose to pursue a higher conversion, particularly an Orthodox conversion, when they’re a woman and they’re getting serious about having children, and they’re worried about the Jewish status of their potential future children.
But again, nothing is certain. Just like your Orthodox conversion could, in theory, be questioned or rejected by someone, for whatever reason they want to reject it for, because again, there’s no Jewish Pope saying they can’t, the same could happen to your children because their mother is a convert. So their Jewish status depends on whether your conversion is valid or not, and that’s going to come up throughout their lives. Like if you’re enrolling them in a Jewish school, or one day they want to get married by a rabbi, they’re going to be looking into your paperwork to make sure everything is kosher.
A very few people do this for Aliyah, immigration to Israel under the Law of Return. This is a law based on Nazi laws that allows any person who would have been classified as Jewish under the Nazi party to be able to immigrate to Israel, to safety from antisemitism.
There’s a lot of worrying about whether your conversion will be good enough for Aliyah. The key is there are actually two recognitions of your conversion during the Aliyah process.
The first one is qualifying for the Law of Return, which any conversion in a recognized community can do. It’s more complicated when it’s Orthodox. But in a Reform or Conservative conversion, it’s usually pretty standard. So you would qualify as Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return.
An Orthodox conversion for the purposes of the Law of Return is a more complicated question, and we’ll go through the Israeli rabbinate, who also does the second level of judging conversions when people move to Israel. And that is for internal legal purposes of the State of Israel. Can you get married? Can you be buried in a Jewish cemetery? If you’re already married, can you go through the Jewish divorce court? It’s mostly a lot of family law stuff.
But if you don’t have an Orthodox conversion recognized by the rabbinate, you will not be classified as a Jew for purposes within Israel. So you would make Aliyah as a Jew, but live in Israel as a non-Jew. And yes, that is complicated, and people have very strong feelings about it.
Reason 3: A question about the first conversion
The third category of why people generally convert more than once is when there is a specific question about the original process. There is suspicion or knowledge that something is wrong.
Whether that means there was a problem with a rabbi on the Beit Din, which happened in Israel in 2008, when the rabbinate invalidated tens of thousands of conversions, all over a rabbinic beef with each other. Yes, rabbis are almost as bad as rappers with having beefs with one another. And they also destroy a lot of lives along the way by fighting with each other over petty things. Again, rabbis are human, and some of them are jerks.
But most of the time, it is a completely non-emotional part of the process. Usually there’s a problem with the documents. So, especially in these kinds of cases, there is what’s called a geirus l’chumrah. Geirus meaning conversion, l’chumrah meaning as a stringency. It’s kind of a just-in-case, CYA sort of thing. It’s a conversion when there’s a doubt. So you’re doing a new conversion in order to resolve it, so there is no doubt anymore.
This primarily happens in the Orthodox world. That is what I suspect may be happening in Hasidic communities, where Modern Orthodox converts join the more insular Hasidic communities. They might be doing a geirus l’chumrah for them to meet the standards that they want them to meet for a conversion. But it can happen in the non-Orthodox world, too.
The most common cause? People lost their paperwork, and there was no backup. The most recent case that I know of, someone lost their papers in a move. And their rabbi had died long ago, and no one had his records. So he got another conversion just to get his paperwork in order.
So that brings us to the story of the man with four conversions. I hope I’m remembering this right, because it’s been a very long time since I talked to him. I believe he had a non-Orthodox conversion. Then an Orthodox conversion. There was a question raised about that conversion, so he had a geirus l’chumrah. And then his house burned down, and he lost his papers, and there was not a backup.
And as annoying and as much bad luck as that is, I totally get why that had to happen four times. That sucks. But odds are extremely good that that will never happen to you.
Reason 4: To feel “Jewish enough”
Now, the fourth and last category of why people get more than one conversion: they hope it’ll make them feel “Jewish enough.” For whatever reason, they don’t feel Jewish. And they believe or hope that a higher level of conversion will finally make them feel Jewish.
That could be from an Orthodox perspective of viewing your non-Orthodox conversions as invalid and insufficient to make you Jewish. But I have seen it happen in non-Orthodox conversions too, going from a Reform to a Conservative conversion.
But if this is you, I want you to look carefully at this. There is the internal: not feeling “Jewish enough.” And the external: people making you feel like you’re not “Jewish enough.”
No matter how strict of a conversion you get, there will always be people who say you are not “Jewish enough.” So just go ahead and write off the people who don’t believe you’re “Jewish enough.” Most of the time, it’s nothing personal. It has something entirely to do with them and their insecurities, and needing to judge people to make themselves feel better.
What I worry about is the internal piece. And I talk a lot about imposter syndrome here: the feeling that you’re not “Jewish enough,” you don’t fit in, you don’t know enough. I’ll link up there and down below to a video I made about imposter syndrome and the conversion process.
But basically, what I want you to know is it’s extremely common. I mean, extremely common. Not every convert feels “Jewish enough” all the time.
I’ve been here over 15 years, and I still have moments where I’m like, I don’t belong here. Why would anyone let me do any of this stuff? Because I have anxiety. If you’re struggling with feeling “Jewish enough,” you probably are struggling with that too.
The thing about imposter syndrome is that it rarely ever goes fully away. But what happens is you can learn to talk back to it. To be your own lawyer. Find the proof, the evidence that you are Jewish. You’re doing Jewish stuff. You live in a Jewish home. Look at the mezuzahs you’ve got.
Talking back to those doubts can help quiet them and make them not as strong, making them less frequent. It can be a lot better than it may feel right now.
If that’s something you’re struggling with, I’ll also put a link down in the comments below to my freebie, a guide that I wrote called “Jewish Enough”: A Self-Talk Toolkit. It basically gives you a lot of strategies for how to talk back to those doubts and tamp them down. It’s free. You just join my email list. And surprisingly, it is the freebie that I get the most compliments on. So maybe it would help you, too.
A second conversion can’t guarantee belonging, confidence, or freedom from other people’s comments.
In reality, the most common cause for this in an engaged situation is the Jewish in-laws. Your partner’s parents don’t believe that your prior conversion is good enough, and they want you to get a stricter conversion.
And what really surprises me is that almost every time I have seen this happen, they have demanded that that person go through an Orthodox conversion, even though no one in the family is observant at all. I don’t have good answers for why that is. I’d love to hear your theories down in the comments below.
Obviously, in most cases, that Orthodox conversion never happens. Maybe they do a middle-of-the-road option, like going from a Reform to a Conservative conversion. But in the end, the in-laws either learn to live with it, or they ruin their relationship with their child because of it. And I’ve seen them go both ways.
Before a second conversion, ask yourself
So here are the questions I want you to ask yourself if you’re thinking about getting a second conversion.
Who specifically doesn’t recognize my conversion, and why?
Do I actually want to build my life in that community? You shouldn’t pretend to go along with a community for a little while to get some paperwork. Obviously, that would be immoral.
What would this process change in practice, meaning in your life?
What will it require emotionally, financially, and logistically, as well as Jewish requirements?
And most importantly, am I choosing this, or trying to satisfy someone else?
These are obviously not easy questions. You may be asked to make some pretty painful trade-offs. But I hope that’s your choice, not what something forces you into.
Know what problem you’re trying to solve before committing to another conversion.
And if you want to hear my story of converting twice, and the insane things that happened along the way, check it out right here.
