Three people are sitting across from you, asking questions about your Jewish life. And at some point, they’re going to decide whether you’re ready to convert.
That’s a lot of pressure. Especially when you’re not entirely sure what they’re looking for, how much you need to know, or what happens if things don’t go as planned.
And when you’re working toward something that matters this much, uncertainty can be exhausting. Especially when you’re hearing different things from different people, and you’re not entirely sure which advice applies to your situation.
I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010, and one thing I’ve seen over and over is how much unnecessary anxiety comes from simply not knowing what to expect.
That’s why I made this video. I want you to go into the process with your eyes open, knowing what questions to ask, what to prepare for, and when something deserves a closer look.
And if you’re looking for more practical guidance, download my free Jewish Conversion 101 ebook. It’s full of the tips, tricks, and dirty laundry you probably won’t hear about in your Intro to Judaism class.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
There’s an important meeting that every Jewish convert has to prepare for. Three rabbis, one room, and a decision that changes your life.
Today, we’re talking about the Beit Din, a rabbinical court. But why a court? Are you on trial? Is this an exam? What if they say “no”? Who are these people, and how much power do they have over my future?
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 want the real deal about conversion, I’ve got a free Jewish Conversion 101 ebook. It’s full of the tips, tricks, and dirty laundry you won’t find in your Intro to Judaism class. You can find it down at the link in the description below.
Beit Din literally means “house of judgment.” You may also hear or see different ways of writing Beit Din. Beit Din is the modern Hebrew, Sephardi Hebrew style of Hebrew. Beis Din would be the Ashkenazi pronunciation.
And particularly in older sources, like from the 50s, you’re going to see Beth Din. I don’t know if people actually pronounced it Beth Din, because I’ve never heard anyone say Beth Din, even though it’s written all over the place, like in synagogue names. If you know the answer to this, put them down in the comments below. But it does seem wildly suspicious that I’ve been here like 20 years and I’ve never heard anyone say that.
Without fail, every client I’ve ever had is terrified of the Beit Din. In short, it is an oral exam at the end of a Jewish conversion, and these three people who sit on the rabbinical court either approve your conversion or don’t.
And if they approve you, you move on to the other steps of conversion, the circumcision and the mikvah. But it’s also possible circumcision could be done before the Beit Din. Different places do different things.
So if you aren’t aware, Judaism has three primary movements, which is what we call denominations. And I’ll link up here and down below to my video that goes through the different movements and how they treat conversion differently.
So we have the Reform; the Conservative, which is also called Masorti in most of the non-American world; and the Orthodox. And within the Orthodox, there are many styles of being Orthodox. On the other side of Reform, you have things like Renewal and Reconstructionist.
Difference 1: Who sits on it
Almost all descriptions about a Beit Din that you come across will be based on the Orthodox model, which is the traditional model and the ideal model. Ideally, three rabbis sit on this rabbinical court, like a panel of judges.
In the non-Orthodox world, in practice, usually only one of the members is a rabbi, and it’s usually the rabbi of the congregation where the person is converting, the rabbi that they have been working with.
Now, there’s something that I’ve been told about Conservative batei din, but I’ve had a hard time confirming how widespread it is. And I’m not sure whether it’s anything that someone has put on paper, or if it’s just kind of a pro tip that has spread through the ranks.
But my understanding is that in the Conservative movement, when possible, they try to have an all-male Beit Din panel to try to increase the acceptability of the conversion. Because under traditional Jewish law, only men can be witnesses to legal paperwork. I don’t know if it was on purpose, but that is how my Conservative Beit Din was set up: a rabbi and two laypeople who all happened to be men.
The people who sit on a Beit Din are called a Dayan, which means judge. And the rabbi who works with you is called the sponsoring rabbi. In the Orthodox world, there is usually a difference between the Beit Din and the sponsoring rabbi. So there would actually be four rabbis total involved, at a minimum.
The sponsoring rabbi’s job is to oversee your process on the ground. They’re boots on the ground, basically. They give periodic reports to the Beit Din.
Are you coming to services? Do you look like you know what you’re doing? Are you integrating into the community? Do you have friends? Are you showing up to classes?
They may even be meeting with you, but not always. And it is possible to have more than one sponsoring rabbi. Usually there’s an official sponsoring rabbi, but the duties can be separated between usually two people. But that’s getting kind of into the weeds.
Difference 2: Institution or ad hoc
The other main difference you’re going to see between Orthodox and non-Orthodox batei din is, for lack of a better word, institutionalization. In the Orthodox world, it is usually going to be an organization, an institution, whereas in the non-Orthodox world, it is usually ad hoc, put together for a specific time and purpose.
So you may find that the same three to five people sit on the Beit Din for all of the converts of a particular congregation in a Reform synagogue. But they’re not actually like an organization with paperwork and taxes and things like that. The rabbi just calls up two of the people and asks if they’re free.
On the Orthodox side of it, you’re usually dealing with an institution. And batei din have more jobs than just conversion. They do function as a form of court. And you can dig into the history of Jewish communities around the world and how these were essentially the court system for Jews through most of our history.
But today, you will see them dealing with religious divorces for the Orthodox and Conservative movements. Usually, Reform people don’t seek out a religious divorce, though they can. They also deal with financial disputes or other business disputes. They can even handle neighbor disputes. Literally anything you could bring to civil court.
And they also handle questions of Jewish status. This is very similar to the conversion piece, but it’s for people who believe they are already Jewish, but they’re having a hard time proving it. This most often happens with people who become religious later in life, especially when they are trying to make Aliyah, immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, when they need to prove that they are a Jew.
People will gather all the genealogy and paperwork and photos of gravestones, all of these things that they can, to try to prove the uninterrupted maternal line of their Jewishness. And the result of that process is a certificate very similar to what a convert gets, that says, basically, this person is Jewish.
It makes life a lot easier in a lot of ways when you just have a really nice piece of paper that says, “By the way, so-and-so is Jewish.” It’s really hard to get these pieces of paper. But once you have them, it’s so much easier.
A related function that you might see a Beit Din doing, but usually it’s a separate organization, is Kashrut, keeping kosher, like certifying kosher restaurants, grocery stores, meat packing plants, things like that. In theory, a Beit Din could oversee that. And batei din do generally get involved in a lot of disputes having to do with Kashrut.
The question of when to take a case to Beit Din versus a civil court is extremely complicated and extremely controversial in certain circles. But if you’re looking for a good rabbit hole, that’s one.
Difference 3: How often they’re called
Now, the third major difference between Orthodox and non-Orthodox batei din is how often they’re called. In the non-Orthodox world, you are almost always only going to have one Beit Din meeting at the end of your process, unless there’s some sort of problem, or they say that, in retrospect, they think maybe you’re not ready and something else needs to be taken care of.
Then you may have a second Beit Din set, which is not terribly unusual. It’s pretty unusual, but even though it will feel like it, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not something you should be ashamed of. It’s going to be disappointing, but it’s not necessarily bad.
Now, in the Orthodox world, you are generally going to meet with these people every three to six months for potentially years, however long it takes you to convert.
The question is, when do you get the Beit Din involved? Because there’s the problem of the clock. I’ll link up here and down below to my video about how long it takes to convert to Judaism.
In general, it has to be a minimum of a year. Some batei din have put in a minimum, either officially or unofficially, of two years. Conversion usually takes between one and three years, although it’s not unusual for things to take longer, especially if there are other life circumstances going on.
But the question is, when are they starting your clock? From when you hooked up with the local rabbi, who’s your sponsoring rabbi? Or are they measuring it from when you applied to the Beit Din? Or the first meeting with the Beit Din?
In my experience, I have found that they are not particularly willing to disclose this information of where they measure or how. Honestly, I think a lot of it’s just gut feeling. I don’t think many of them are actually thinking that seriously about it.
But I want you to act conservatively. I want you to have the best chance to move forward as quickly as is reasonable for you, which will not be as fast as you want, but hopefully it’s faster than you would have otherwise. And so to me, I want to see you applying to an Orthodox Beit Din as soon as possible.
I want you to hook up with a local Orthodox rabbi, attend a few times, get their agreement to sponsor you, and then immediately request an application from the Beit Din. Some of them have their applications available online. Some of them, you have to write to them to request.
For example, the London Beit Din, obviously in England, has a procedure where you write a letter to the Beit Din to request an application. And the letter needs to cover certain specific points. But whatever it is, do it as soon as you can, because we want the clock to start ticking.
One of the things that frustrates me most is something that happened with someone I’ve worked with. And she was fully Orthodox observant before her rabbi told her, “By the way, we should involve the Beit Din.” I’m guessing he probably hadn’t overseen a conversion before.
That is usually the problem with sponsoring rabbis making mistakes with contacting the Beit Din. It’s usually because they just don’t know, and they also understand that you are a reflection on them in some sense. And they don’t want to vouch for someone, essentially, that then, like, ghosts the Beit Din or something equally bad.
So I find that rabbis want to be more conservative and go to the Beit Din later. So you often need to talk to them and explain the reasons for going sooner rather than later.
And so for me, I’m worried about this woman getting the clock ticking when she’s already spent a couple of years becoming observant. And that doesn’t seem very fair to me. Her story is not over yet. I don’t know how long this will go. I guess I’ll learn something new from it, at least about this particular Beit Din.
Once we start talking about contacting a Beit Din, I see two major issues come up that we need to talk about.
Issue 1: Costs
First, I’ll link up there and down below to my video about how much does conversion really cost. Usually, most of the official costs come for the Beit Din. Those costs should be completely transparent. They should be written in writing, and they should be given to you when you start the process.
None of that used to be how it was done. But you know, maybe all the financial craziness of Bernie Madoff and those other people did something good, because people started demanding transparency. And for the most part, the batei din have complied, because it makes sense.
So if you are not given straight, clear, written answers about costs from your Beit Din, that is a major red flag to me. I feel pretty comfortable saying that this is the standard of batei din around the world.
But of course, your mileage will vary. And the more remote and the less utilized a Beit Din is, the more likely they are going to have lackluster procedures. So it’s not necessarily a deal breaker. But I would be extremely cautious with a Beit Din that isn’t transparent about costs. Because what else might they not be transparent about? What other requirements?
Issue 2: A psychological test
The second thing people never think to ask about, because they don’t even know that it’s a possibility: your first meeting with a Beit Din may involve a psychological test.
And I’ll not link up there, because it’s not a video. I will link down there to my blog post from forever ago, because I’ve been doing this blog since 2010. I think it’s from 2011 or 2013, about psychological testing as a prerequisite to acceptance to a Beit Din.
They’re not universal. And honestly, I argue how valuable they are. Because I bet most of the rabbis reading the results of these tests are not psychologists or otherwise trained to administer and evaluate psychological testing.
The second reason is because, at least in the case of the one that I took, the answers are obvious. It was very similar to the psychological exam that I took before becoming a cashier at the Kroger supermarket when I was 16.
“Do you think that it is okay to take money from a cash register? Yes or no?” Do you think you could answer that? Most of the questions are that obvious.
But being a first-year law student, I could not just take a question at face value. I had to use the lawyer’s mantra: “It depends.”
And I won’t get into it in this video, because it’s a bit of a distraction, and this video is already going to be a lot longer than I planned it to be. But I’ll link down there to the story of the sexual harassment that I faced from a rabbi because of that question.
And I’ll tell you that I reported it to his superiors at least three separate times over seven years. And only the time seven years later did they finally make him remove that question from the psychological test. So if you want to learn more about that, you’re going to have to go read the deets down in the description below.
What else is the Beit Din going to ask you, other than this psychological test thing that you may or may not have?
Meetings with the Beit Din are pretty similar, whether it’s Orthodox or non-Orthodox, the beginning of your conversion or the end of your conversion. They’re going to be asking about how you’re doing. They’re going to want to know what your practice looks like, what you’re learning. How’s your social life doing? Your family taking it okay? Are you involved with the community?
And often there will be somewhat of a real oral exam feel to it in some ways, because they may ask you questions about certain practices that you’ve recently learned. Or, especially at the end of the conversion, you will be asked to read aloud some Hebrew from a prayer book. It doesn’t have to be fast. Even in the Orthodox world, the standard is far more lenient than you would expect.
If you want to learn more about how to prepare for this meeting, I’ll link up here and down below to my video about how to prepare for your first Beit Din meeting.
Now here is a side path. If you have a Jewish partner, especially in the Orthodox conversion, but sometimes in non-Orthodox conversions, they will also sit in front of the Beit Din, maybe with you, maybe alone. Different places do it different ways.
And especially in the Orthodox context, they’re essentially going to be interviewing your Jewish partner the same way that they’re interviewing you. Because your Jewish partner also has to be up to Orthodox observance in order to approve your conversion. Because if you’re going to get married, you’re going to build an Orthodox Jewish home.
So just in case no one has warned you about this before, your conversion will move at the pace of the slower partner. And that is almost always the Jewish one, for obvious reasons.
Now, can a Beit Din say no? Yeah, it happens. It’s rarely a final no. That almost never happens. I have not personally seen that happen.
Because if they want to get rid of you, they normally do that between meetings with a letter or an email. They don’t usually do it at a meeting. But those letters and emails will often come pretty soon after a meeting. And every time that I have seen that happen, there was a lot of miscommunication on all sides.
And I’ll tell you, it’s only a handful of places, because some batei din suck more than others. Some of them are bullies. Because remember, that’s the theme of our channel here.
Jews are human. Rabbis are even more human. People make mistakes. And sometimes people are jerks, including rabbis.
And there are definitely some known offenders in the Orthodox Jewish world. I will refer you to my video up here and down below about red flags in the conversion process, so that you can spot these charlatans and bullies when you come across them.
But now that we’ve gotten the bad, scary part out of the way: most of the time, if they’re not saying yes, they’re saying not yet. They thought you were further along in some area than you really were. And so they want you to take a little time and shore up that area.
So, as I said before, it’s frustrating. It’s disappointing, because you were ready to be done. But people put way too much shame and guilt on themselves for this.
Most of the time, again, it was a problem of miscommunication. They weren’t asking good enough questions, or maybe you didn’t explain yourself very well. Probably both. But it’s not a no. They want you to come back. They want you to finish.
And in those cases, they should tell you what it is that you need to remedy. If you don’t, that is a big red flag. Because how else are you supposed to fix it? I have not seen rabbis do that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened somewhere.
Your readiness to convert is not a reflection of your worth as a human being or as a Jew. It’s not personal. And it’s going to be okay.
Will everyone accept your conversion after a Beit Din? There are no guarantees in life. I will link up there and down below to my video about the recognition of conversions and invalidating conversions.
In general, most conversions are good enough for wherever you want to be. It’s fairly rare to need or want a second conversion to a stricter level. And I think I’m out of cards to tag videos up there, but I’ll put down below in the description of the video about why someone might want more than one conversion.
So what happens after the Beit Din? Usually the mikvah.
In my experience, men generally get a circumcision prior to the Beit Din. I’ll link down below too to the video that’s all about circumcision. Because they want to make sure that everything is healed, and so when you get the approval to move forward with that step, you know that you’re towards the end of the process, usually within a month or two.
Because for logistics reasons, maybe also halachic, Jewish law, reasons, I’m not sure, batei din prefer to do the Beit Din and the mikvah on the same day, right after one another.
So for instance, if multiple people are doing a final Beit Din meeting that day, they will see each person one after another, approve who’s going to be approved, then take all of the approved people over to the mikvah and go one by one, dunking in the mikvah and getting everyone done. It’s just hard to organize four people at once.
So schedule it one day and make a day out of it. It’s usually not a full day unless you have a large group of people converting at the same time. And if you are civilly married to your Jewish partner, that same day or the next day is usually when you will have a Jewish wedding to create your new marriage.
If you want more of these practical kind of details about the conversion process, definitely click below to get my Conversion 101 ebook. It especially covers a lot of these specialized situations.
Now that you know how and why someone goes through the Beit Din process, watch this video next to find out why they might do it again.
