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Converting to Judaism has defined my high school experience
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — During the pandemic, my mom decided to start baking; my friend Reagan learned Osage, a Native American language; my brother taught himself how to skateboard.
I decided to channel my free time and energy into converting to Judaism.
Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was only ever exposed to Christian theology. Almost everyone around me was a Baptist. Although my parents intentionally raised my brother and me without a focus on religion, I grew up going to Christian preschool, Christian summer camps, and being surrounded by other Christians–just because there weren’t other options. While this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I always knew that Christianity wasn’t right for me.
At first, the idea of eternal life and an all-knowing God provided comfort, but as I got older I started to feel disconnected from Christianity. Concepts like the Holy Trinity never made sense to me, and by age 12 I thought I had given up on religion entirely.
I first started looking into Judaism towards the end of 2020. I’m not really sure what led me to this; I just stumbled upon it and found that its emphasis on making the ordinary holy, repairing the world, and the pursuit of knowledge was a perfect fit for my already existing beliefs. My parents were a little bit shocked but ultimately supportive when I told them that I wanted to convert. My mom’s main concern was that I would become the target of antisemitism. “I’m happy for you and try not to think about the what-ifs,” she said while driving me to the Jewish community center so that I could board the bus headed to the BBYO Jewish youth group’s International Convention.
In the spring of 2021, I emailed the rabbi at a local synagogue about my potential conversion. During our first conversation, he asked me if I’d heard about the custom of rabbis turning away potential candidates three times. I told him I had, but that if he turned me away I would just keep coming back. After the meeting, I signed up for conversion classes and started attending services regularly — and I wasn’t alone.
According to a 2021 Tablet survey, 43% of American rabbis are seeing more conversion candidates than before. The reasons for conversion are diverse. Some candidates fell down an internet rabbit hole that led to a passion for Judaism. Others took an ancestry test and wanted to reconnect with their Jewish heritage. Many were raised as Reform Jews but weren’t Jewish according to stricter halachic, or Jewish legal, standards and decided to convert under Conservative or Orthodox auspices. Despite the common stereotype that Jews by choice must be converting for the sake of marriage, many rabbis said that converts are less likely than ever to be converting for a Jewish partner.
After meeting with a rabbi about the potential conversion, candidates are expected to learn everything they can about Judaism. In my case, that meant 21 weeks of hour-long, weekly conversion classes in addition to independent study on Jewish mysticism, traditions, and ideas. Candidates are also expected to become active members of their local Jewish community and attend services regularly.
Once the candidate and the rabbi feel they are ready to convert, a beit din, or a court usually made up of three rabbis, is assembled. They will conduct an interview, asking the candidate about what brought them to Judaism and basic questions about what was taught during conversion classes. When the beit din has guaranteed that the candidate genuinely wants to convert, the candidate immerses in the mikveh, a pool used for ritual purification. After submerging in the mikveh, the convert is considered to be officially Jewish and is typically called up for an aliyah, ascending the platform where the Torah is read.
According to Rabbi Darah Lerner, who served in Bangor, Maine before her retirement last year, the main difference between teens converting alone and teens converting with their family is the parental approval that’s needed, but otherwise the process is very similar. “I treated them pretty much as I did with adults,” she said. For me, the only parental approval needed was my mom telling my rabbi that she and my dad were fine with me starting the conversion process. She also noted that it was easier for teens to integrate into the Jewish community because people were excited to see young people interested in Judaism.
A mikveh, like this one at Mayyim Hayyim outside of Boston, is a ritual pool where Jews by choice immerse as part of the conversion process. (Courtesy Mayyim Hayyim)
She said that the Jewish community gave the teens a place where they could ask questions and not be shut down. “If they have a pushback, or a curiosity, or a problem we allow them to ask it and we give them real answers or resources,” she said.
“I feel extremely privileged when youth come to me with these questions and these desires,” Rabbi Rachael Jackson, from Hendersonville, North Carolina. Jackson has worked with three teens in the conversion process over the past two years. Like Lerner, she doesn’t require teens to wait until they turn 18 to begin the conversion process. However, it’s not unusual for rabbis to recommend that teens wait until they turn 18 to begin their conversion.
My conversion process has defined my high school experience. I’ve been able to connect with other Jews at my school through BBYO, which has helped me find a community at school and meet people who I might not have met otherwise. Although it’s made me feel farther from the Christian community I was once a part of, Judaism has given me spiritual fulfillment, a love for Israel, and a sense of community — both in my synagogue and my BBYO chapter.
Others who have gone through the process feel much the same way. “I wouldn’t even recognize myself,” said Haven Lail, 17, from Hickory, North Carolina. “My whole personality is based on being Jewish. That’s what I love.” Adopted into a Jewish family at age 12, Lail felt drawn to Judaism because of the loving and accepting community she found.
Raised as a nondenominational Christian, Lail attended church regularly with her biological parents, but not for the religious aspect. “It was all hellfire and brimstone,” she said. Neglected by her birth parents, she only went to church because she knew there would be food there.
Lail started the conversion process at age 12 through a Hebrew high school, and four years later, she submerged in the mikveh and signed a certificate finalizing her conversion. The process was simple, but she was shocked that so few Jews knew about the conversion process. “It was a little weird,” she said.
The Talmud says that because “the Jewish people were themselves strangers, they are not in a position to demean a convert because he is a stranger in their midst.” However, it isn’t uncommon for converts to feel alienated from the rest of the Jewish community. “There’s this fear of going to college and still being othered because you still won’t quite fit in with the people who have been raised Jewish,” said one high school senior from North Carolina.
He was shocked by how alienated he felt after making his conversion public, and wanted to stay anonymous because he worries that once people find out that he converted, they’ll see him differently. “I didn’t ever really explain it to anybody except for the people really close to me,” he said. But after his rabbi called him up for an aliyah — a blessing recited during the reading of the Torah — one woman from the congregation began to bring it up to him every time she saw him. “People don’t realize that it can be a touchy thing and very, very othering,” he said.
I usually don’t mind personal questions about my conversion, but asking someone why they converted or pointing out that someone is a convert is frowned upon by Jewish law. I used to feel like everyone could tell that I wasn’t raised Jewish, but after one of my BBYO advisors thought that my conversion was just a rumor and couldn’t believe that it was true, I realized that wasn’t the case.
All of my friends and peers who were raised Jewish have memories of Jewish summer camps, Shabbat dinners with family, and a lifetime of other experiences. I often struggle with not feeling “Jewish enough” or like I missed out, especially because so many Jewish customs revolve around the home and family. My parents will often come with me to Shabbat services, but don’t participate in Jewish customs or celebrate Jewish holidays with me. “Anything that is a ritual in the home, they don’t really have the ability to have that autonomy,” said Rabbi Rachael Jackson of Agudas Israel Congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Grace Hamilton, a student at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio, has struggled with imposter syndrome during her conversion. Ever since she started college, she’s been questioning her place in the Jewish community and hasn’t been practicing Judaism as much as she used to. “I haven’t prayed in a really long time,” she said. She used to tell herself that once she finalized her conversion she would finally feel Jewish enough, but after a conversation with her rabbi, she realized that wasn’t the case.
According to Rabbi Rochelle Tulik at Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, New York, many converts feel like they will never be Jewish enough. “That, no matter how hard they try, how many books they read or put on their shelves, no matter how often they come to services, or how many menorahs they light, somehow they’ll be caught,” she said in a Rosh Hashanah sermon she named “You Are Not an Imposter.”
Despite the struggles that many converts face, others like Rabbi Natasha Mann, who now serves as a rabbi at New London Synagogue in England, immediately felt at home within the Jewish community. “I felt like people were excited to have me there and wanted to hear what I had to say,” she said. After a family member mentioned that she might have Jewish ancestry, Mann began exploring out of curiosity. “I started looking into it, just because I felt that it was another piece of the puzzle,” she said.
Coming from an interreligious and intercultural family, she wanted to explore another aspect of her heritage, but ended up connecting with Judaism in a way that she hadn’t connected with any other religion. After two years of study, she decided to officially start her conversion process.
The Jewish community gave Mann a place where her ideas were taken seriously and she could have religious discussions, even as a teen. “I don’t know what my life would have looked like if I hadn’t found somewhere to really express and delve into that,” she said. “And luckily, I never have to.”
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The post Converting to Judaism has defined my high school experience appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew
This morning, when I woke up, it was the first time in my entire life that my spiritual leader, my rabbi and my friend, was gone. People are born and die every day, and we live totally oblivious to that fact, but I feel the absence of this one human being almost on a cellular level. And the very person I would call to help me make sense of a time like this is the one who is gone.
Rabbi Capers Funnye wasn’t your typical rabbi. How could he be, though? After all, his congregation was full of Black folks and people of color. There were also some white congregants, but for the most part, his temple was a place created for people like me to have somewhere to go and practice Judaism freely without suspicion or judgment. Beth Shalom was established over one hundred years ago by Black Jews who knew at that time that they could actually be arrested here in America, in Chicago, for daring to say out loud that they were Jewish. I know that sounds unthinkable, but it’s a historical fact: It used to be illegal in Chicago for Blacks to claim that they were Jewish.
Rabbi Funnye dedicated his life to ensuring that Black Jews wouldn’t have their Jewishness questioned.
White Jews love to reminisce about the Civil Rights Movement and their close relationship to the Black community, and this coalition brought about monumental changes to American society. But those same white Jews who marched in Selma and rode buses to Mississippi had little to no interaction with Black Jews. We were nonexistent. A myth, if you will. Some people had heard that there were Black people who called themselves Jews, but no one had actually ever seen one or met one.
We were there, but just as other Jews had hidden before, we were hiding too. We worshipped in basements, living rooms, and the backs of storefronts. We were in the shadows until Rabbi Funnye came along. He was born to leave the world a better place than he found it, and that’s exactly what he did.
Rabbi Funnye was supposed to be an AME pastor, but the church didn’t need him. The synagogue, the Jewish people, did.
I used to joke with him that I’d known him so long I could remember when he had a full head of black hair. And I did. I can remember going to services and seeing him on the bimah on Shabbat. Even as a little kid, I recognized he was different. He had a voice that could command the attention even of a pew full of antsy five-year-olds. But he also had a smile so warm that we never felt scolded. When he spoke, people couldn’t help but listen, and eventually he started saying what people wanted and needed to hear.
I watched him rise from assistant rabbi to leader.He could teach Torah in a way that held the congregation’s interest, imparting important lessons while adding levity with razor-sharp wit and perfectly timed humor.
If I’d been born male, I probably would’ve wanted to be a rabbi my whole life. I wanted to be like him. But I was a girl, and that was unthinkable.
But he made me believe I could do things.
I can remember when he started to integrate the Chicago Jewish community. When we’d go to events like Shabbat dinners or Black and Jewish seders, he was unfazed by the whispers and stares when he’d ask where the tables were for those who were both Black and Jewish. While this made the rest of us uncomfortable and, for some, unwilling to ever go back into any room where we were treated as oddities, he was undeterred.
He went back, over and over again. He would not allow the existence of Black Jews to go unacknowledged any longer. And many of us went with him. I was one. I saw how he was treated at times by white rabbis and even just by people who were white and Jewish and still felt that somehow they were better than him. It would infuriate me, but not him. He’d smile, tell a joke or one of his signature stories that would completely disarm them.
And while the behavior of some of my white co-religionists would thoroughly anger me, Rabbi Funnye understood how to deal with bigotry and hate in other ways. He grew up in it. He knew how to rise above it. Another lesson learned. He never met hate with hate or derision with derision. He met it with love.
He knew that was the only way he could move us from the shadows and out of the margins, into the mainstream. And it was also the only way that he could show white Jews we were nothing to fear or exclude.
At times, his message wasn’t popular with Black Jews who wanted nothing to do with white Jews or with white Jews who weren’t ready to accept the fact that G-d made Black Jews too.
None of that changed the fact that it was the right one.
Chief Rabbi Funnye wasn’t a Black Jew. He was a good Jew. And that is the lesson that I, and hopefully all who knew him, will learn from his life.
The post Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew appeared first on The Forward.
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All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close
(JTA) — DETROIT – The U.S. Senate race in Michigan, a deeply contentious contest that has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party, drew to a bitter close Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in a race that could shape which party controls the chamber.
At its center is Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement.
His uncompromising stances on Israel have also made him a target among pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, which has spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election. AIPAC’s rare entry into a general election race came to support El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
One of El-Sayed’s positions on Israel — to end all U.S. military aid — was once thought a far-left pipe dream. But that has changed. On Election Day morning, Trump announced that, under his watch, nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in agreement with the need to end aid and deny Democratic critics a point of attack.
In his announcement of the plan, Trump cited El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings like lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump said on Fox News, referring to Israel’s financial strength.
Representatives for the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, did not immediately return requests for comment on Trump’s new pledge. It is unclear whether it will be straightforward for the White House to halt the funding by the end of 2026, given that the existing memorandum of understanding that governs it extends to 2028.
El-Sayed’s campaign has galvanized young voters and a range of other constituencies, and he pulled ahead in the polls in the race’s final stretch. But his questioning of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and whether it or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, as well as his prior associations with figures such as Hasan Piker, the streamer who has spread extreme rhetoric about American Jews, have sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders.
So, too, did comments the candidate made following the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which El-Sayed appeared to link the attack to Israel’s war in Lebanon after reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior from some of El-Sayed’s supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently on display at the state party’s spring convention, have also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.
Some Jews who had long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, have cited such controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers. In some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods, yard signs proclaim that a vote for Rogers is a vote “against antisemitism.”
Accordingly, Rogers has made a play for the Jewish vote. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is “anti-Jew,” while running ads that played up El-Sayed’s tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Top Republicans have seized on the narrative, with President Donald Trump calling Jews “crazy” if they back El-Sayed, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calling him a national security threat. A Trump administration event to address antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election, though El-Sayed’s name was not mentioned there.
Jewish Democrats who had broken with El-Sayed found major validation in the race’s dramatic closing days. Democrat Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who had narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, flipped sides to endorse Rogers days after her Jewish fiancé, a Democratic megadonor, did the same.
The surprise move, which Jewish Democratic leaders joined many other prominent Democrats in criticizing, came after days of back-and-forth between Stevens and El-Sayed as she sought to publicly pressure him to condemn a PAC ad that had linked rising grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel.
Meanwhile, some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state either avoided endorsing El-Sayed or did so with heavy reservations. Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership has been deeply divided on El-Sayed, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican.
“Our commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition,” the caucus stated.
Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters. He apologized for his Temple Israel comments; distanced himself from Piker; hired a Jewish outreach director; said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that Israel has a right to exist; and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, “I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice.” He told JTA in August that “the prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me.”
More than 1,000 Michigan Jews have signed an open letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed, compared to 560 who have done the same for Rogers. Progressive Jewish figures of note have held salons throughout the state in a bid to convince on-the-fence Jews to back him.
Yet El-Sayed also has continued to stake out positions many Jews find alienating. He asserted in the campaign’s closing weeks that Israel was “not actually our friend” and declined during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the U.S. His campaign also released an ad, designed to appeal to conservatives, that featured a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, the right-wing pundit who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In addition, El-Sayed’s careful sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from his ostensible allies, such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, has continued up to Election Day.
Ahead of Election Day, some liberal-leaning Zionist Jews tried to put pressure on El-Sayed to speak more directly to their concerns. A group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan in a bid to have him affirm what they called five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” After silence from the campaign, some of Nonnegotiable’s figureheads urged their followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet “Emma Lazarus” instead of voting for either candidate.
Michigan’s already small Jewish population, which numbers around 105,000 adults, has further splintered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. But it could prove pivotal to the outcome of a race that may determine control of the chamber. In 2024, the state’s Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes.
Either way, the race has crystallized the Democratic Party’s shifting fault lines over Israel — and many Jews’ growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump says US aid to Israel will stop at end of year
(JTA) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning said that the United States would halt billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026, potentially ending decades of military support for one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East.
“We were giving them $4 billion. We are. But it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump declared during a call-in appearance on the “Fox & Friends” morning program on Fox News. Israel’s 10-year memorandum of understanding with the United States, which currently gives Israel $3.8 billion annually, runs through 2028 so it’s unclear how easy it would be for the White House to stop the funding this year.
Referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in January that he wanted to taper off aid to zero at some point in the future, Trump questioned why Republicans should have to deal with criticism from hardline pro-Palestinian Democrats like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed when “we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it.”
“It’s a bad talking point,” he added. His comments came as Americans across the country are voting Tuesday in midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate.
“We reached an agreement on that” and Netanyahu “brought it up,” Trump continued. “He said: ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
A growing number of Democratic congressional candidates across the United States have campaigned on a platform of reducing or halting military aid to Israel during the run-up to today’s midterm elections. This April, dozens of senators — almost all of them Democrats — voted in favor of a failed motion to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel.
Yair Golan, chairman of Israel’s liberal Democrats party, slammed Netanyahu in the wake of Trump’s statement, tweeting that “precisely at a time when Israel’s defense spending has reached enormous proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its offensive weapons stockpiles, and after air defense capabilities have been depleted following such a long war—Netanyahu logs another massive failure under his name.”
“The cessation of U.S. aid is heavy damage to Israel’s security” and “a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American aid, not eliminate it,” added Golan, whose party opposes Netanyahu’s and is trying to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu from power following Israel’s own elections last Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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