Converting to Judaism - anyone willing to share their experience?
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Anonymous
+1 PP's family member should ask their synagogue's Executive Director about the security precautions in place, including infrastructure/building and things like hiring a security guard when the synagogue is using the building. |
Anonymous
| I think OP has had 1 post from an actual convert, several helpful posts about converting, and has had to wade through a ton of posts about whether or not it's safe to attend synagogue. Maybe it's time to start a thread on whether it's safe to attend synagogue.... |
Anonymous
the term shiksa is offensive I am surprised Is it really a thing to call converts that? |
Anonymous
No. Converts are Jewish and do not get othered in that way. But there is a lot of history behind the word's use in an America where Jewish men bought entry into white society by denigrating Jewish women as the backward, ethnic ones. N.B. everything mid-20th century Jewish authors and comedians said about their Jewish mothers and sisters as explanation for why Jewish women are undesirable as partners. If the community corrects for this by jabbing at Jewish men who seem chase non-Jewish women in this complicated attempt to reconcile their competing identities, well, it is kind of understandable. But we should have a name for the Portnoys (that's what I call them), not the women who don't understand the dynamic they're dragged into. |
Anonymous
I don't understand your point: are you saying converts are Jewish but it's okay to call women converts a derogatory name, we should just use a derogatory name for men too? And are you saying you judge women converts? |
Anonymous
No. "Shiksa" means gentile (non-Jewish) woman/girl, as it was used in PP. |
Anonymous
Probably just ignore the English Literature major flunkie |
Anonymous
Do you have kids? So you send them to school? Schools aren't sad either. |
Anonymous
What makes you think you can get behind Judaism? Christianity and Judaism are both fine, generally speaking, but since you mentioned the special reason: if you don't like the skeletons in Christianity's closet, you probably won't like Judaism's skeletons either. |
Anonymous
The literal definition of the term and the way it's commonly used (in this case, derogatorily) are two very different things. Given the common usage of this particular term as a slur for non-Jewish women married to Jewish men (or sometimes referring to female converts as a way to call their motives into question and other us), let's just all put that in the list of words we don't use anymore and move on. |
Anonymous
So non-Jewish women get called names when a Jewish man dates or marries them. Got it, but it's not exactly a "correction" if the men aren't blamed except by association with a shiksa. |
Anonymous
I send my kids both to school and to Hebrew school (and I'm at the synagogue usually two or three times a week). I don't think the synagogue is unsafe, but it's also got a somewhat unfortunate amount of heavy protection, as I detailed above. I do think they're probably safer in their DCPS schools than we are in the synagogue, but again, I feel pretty safe in both locations. |
Anonymous
Not very progressive, not into women’s rights |
Anonymous
My dcs go to public school but dd is a counselor at a Jewish school. I will say that I have safety concerns at both: public I feel is a higher risk bc there is less security and it is more open, but I feel the Jewish school is more of a target, so the higher level of security may not matter if someone has more motivation to attack. I basically do not feel good about either, but live with the risk. I absolutely understand people not feeling safe about going to synagogue too. People are allowed to feel fear and act however they feel comfortable. It's not a far-fetched feeling with no basis in reality given past events and current atmosphere. |
Anonymous
To unite this chain of thought with OP's post about conversion: I was in a study group recently where the rabbi told us that the only real guide to conversion in the Talmud is that rabbis should ask three questions. Those questions are (1) will you keep Shabbat? (2) will you keep kosher? (3) you do understand that everyone else wants to kill us, right? I wonder how Jews by choice grapple with the very real and justified need for this kind of security measure, and with the fact that it's not at all unreasonable to feel uncomfortable going to shul in a building that lacks them. It's a lot to try to take on! It's a lot for those of us who were born into Judaism, too, but we didn't really have a choice about it, and most of us weren't aware of the "everyone wants to kill us" part until years later. |