Posted in Israel, Conversion on May 24th, 2009
If you are a Jew by choice or a person who is married to a Jew who would like to become Jewish, it’s a pretty crazy time to live in Israel. On the one hand, Jews by choice, no matter who performed their conversions, are eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. […]
Posted in Bar Mitzvah/Bat Mitzvah, Popular Culture, Conversion on Mar 3rd, 2009
It looks like Lindsay Lohan is interested in converting to Judaism. According to several news sources including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz Lohan announced her intentions on her Facebook page with a profile change. (By the way, InterfaithFamily.com has a Facebook fan page and you are welcome to join!)
Lohan and her girlfriend, Samantha Ronson, […]
Posted in Jews of color, Growing up in an Interfaith Family, Musings, Conversion on Jan 22nd, 2009
Here at InterfaithFamily.com, one of our missions is to encourage the Jewish community to be welcoming to people in interfaith families.
A key issue that we don’t often discuss in this connection is race, and this hopeful, inclusive moment seems like a great time to do it. Because the majority of Jews in the United States […]
Posted in Popular Culture, The Rest of the World, Musings, Intermarriage, Conversion, Uncategorized on Nov 3rd, 2008
If you are like me, you are getting ready to stay up all night tomorrow, watching the election returns. I do not remember an election in my adult life that seemed as important to the United States’ future.
As Americans debate the politics of the election, some are debating another matter. Some bloggers claimed to have […]
Posted in Shabbat and Other Holidays, Growing up in an Interfaith Family, Conversion on Oct 2nd, 2008
I hope all our readers had a good and meaningful Rosh Hashanah. I have some good and meaningful links for you.
Lilith magazine sent us a preview of some articles that they are going to run in their next print issue called Switchbacks on the Road to Judaism. The three writers of the articles in the […]
Posted in Conversion on Jun 27th, 2008
Julie Wiener at The Jewish Week has a nice column about non-Jewish women who convert many years after their intermarriage.
This phenomenon marks a change from the typical pattern 20 or more years ago, when women would often convert before marriage under pressure–either overt or subtle–from their partner’s families.
Posted in Israel, Conversion on May 2nd, 2008
Through this post at Jewschool, I learned about this Israeli High Rabbinical Court ruling that invalidates all conversions done by the State of Israel’s own Conversion Authority under the current head of that government agency, former Knesset member Chaim Drukman. The High Rabbinical Court ruled this because they examined a woman who had converted 15 […]
Posted in Conversion on Mar 7th, 2008
If you ever wondered why The New York Times is considered home to the best newspaper writing in the country, consider the following introduction from Dana Jennings’ essay “Religion Is Less a Birthright Than a Good Fit,” from last Sunday:
I WAS raised a Protestant in a Rockwellian New Hampshire village that was the proud home to stout, wood-frame […]
Posted in Israel, Conversion on Mar 4th, 2008
In a recent NY Times article about Israeli society, Gershom Gorenberg described the increasingly negative attitude of the Israeli rabbinate toward North American Jews. The story shows how a Jewish Israeli kibbutznik who was the child of an American immigrant had trouble getting the rabbinate to recognize that she was a Jew so she could […]
Posted in Growing up in an Interfaith Family, Conversion on Feb 13th, 2008
I want to share two stories about the strange priorities of the Orthodox today. One’s nasty, one’s nice.
The nasty one comes from London, where the JTA reports that an Orthodox day school has repeatedly refused admission to the daughter of a convert and teacher in the school. Says the brief, “The office of the chief […]
