Monday, April 7, 2008

The Golden Nugget

I want to invite you to go back over the Saxe/Chertok study, It’s Not Who Stands Under the Chuppah. Look at the numbers. The researchers divided the families into three categories: Jewish-Jewish Families, Interfaith Families, and Conversionary Families.

In all the categories the highest engagement was in the conversionary families. Leading me back to the statement: Conversion is good for the Jews. When an adult goes through the process of examining their identity, their practices, the values and behaviors that will define their lives and then decide that the best way to express the essence of their identity and values is to become a Jew it is not surprising that they then throw themselves into learning and practice.

Just a few months ago I was leading a workshop on Outreach to a group of about 30 professionals who run teen programs. We talked about the segments of our community from which our teens come - LGBT, multiracial Jews, interfaith families. I told them there is one group we haven’t spoken about. Of this group it is still acceptable to say:

they aren’t really Jewish
You can always tell one of them from us.
You know his/her father/mother is one of them.
They are way too into being Jewish.
You can’t really call them Jewish.

Who is this group? I asked the group.

Converts, they responded.

Conversionary families scored higher by all measures than Jewish-Jewish families. They are doing all the things we want parents to do to raise their children as Jews: giving them a Jewish education, practicing Judaism at home, and surrounding themselves and their kids with a Jewish social network. But they remain “other” in many Jewish environments. As recently as two weeks ago I asked a group of Jews by choice if we could take a picture of the group and put it on the website of their synagogue to let browsers know about the program. No, they told me, we won’t deny we are converts, but we don’t want to invite the second class citizenship.

Until we as a community does a better job with conversion and our golden nuggets - the converts - we will sap our own strength.

Much more open and enthusiastic support of these Jews is essential.