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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why don’t Jewish people want converts?
My daughter converted when she married a Jewish man and everything seems fine? Am I missing something?[/quote]

Have you ever heard of a Jewish missionary? Did Judaism spread throughout the world to convert people the way Islam did? They obviously don't want converts. They accepted your daughter's conversion because they want the kids to be raised Jewish and don't want to lose them. There's a lot of intermarriage and mainstream Jews accept that it's better to convert a spouse if it means retaining the kids. But they would prefer Jews marry other Jews and the state of Israel doesn't even recognize your daughter or her kids as Jewish. Believe me, your daughter won't ever be fully accepted as Jewish my many Jews.[/quote]
So how is this not elitism?
No matter what you do or how much you love us, you are 2nd class

Do people really marry into stuff like that ?
[/quote]

I never thought of it that way. I didn’t know my daughter would not be fully accepted. Do Jewish people treat converts and their kids differently or is it just some unspoken rule that converts are not really Jewish? Sort of depressing. [/quote]
I converted to Judaism 12 years ago and I feel fully accepted by my community and my Jewish in laws. I occasionally come across someone who feels like PP, but it's rare these days, and they almost never know me personally, or make an attempt to get to know me.

The concept of l'dor v'dor (from generation to generation) is a central part of Jewish life and Jewish theology. Every Jewish community I have been a part of has had conversations (both big congregation-wide or movement-wide, and personal) about Jewish continuity and the continued existence of the Jewish people into the next generation. It's just something that every Jewish person worries about on some level. Some people leave those conversations feeling like PP that conversion is a not-ideal-but-necessary thing to combat intermarriage and keep the next generation Jewish. In my personal and professional experience in the Reform and Conservative movements (my job is in the Jewish community as well), that belief is on its way out. I'm not treated differently because I'm a convert and my kids aren't treated differently as the children of a convert.

That said, there are people in every society who want to share their traditions with the next generation and lament when they can't. I grew up baking Christmas cookies and decorating Easter eggs with my grandma, and I know that's something that my mom wanted to do with her grandkids someday. My parents saved all of my Christmas ornaments from when I was little hoping to pass them down to me when I became an adult. My dad loves Christmas cartoons and would love to watch them with his grandkids. But my parents can't do those things with their grandkids because their grandkids are Jewish. My parents have always been supportive of my Judaism and they find other ways to connect with my kids, but it's still a loss of something they expected to have.[/quote]

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