Shalom, I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg of the Ezra-Habonim, Niles Township Jewish Congregation, Skokie, Illinois. This video is about conversion to Judaism. The first point to make is if you want to convert, you will. If you have a hard time finding a Rabbi who can convert you, keep looking. There are some old fashioned Rabbis who still think, they are supposed to discourage converts. We do not believe in that, keep looking and you will find a Rabbi who will supervise it.
If you are in the Chicago area, you can come to our program, my wife is a former Lutheran Administer, and now is a Jew and teaches Judaism. She is the director of our program, co-teaches it with me and supervises the spiritual development of all perspective Jews by choice. You can email her at ehntedu@yahoo.com. If you are outside the Chicago area, there are certainly programs in various parts of the country.
Now, what does it mean to convert? Well, I tell you what our requirements are, first of all you have to take a class, we offer 16 week class, it meets o Tuesday nights, 7:30-9:30, that is certainly something that you can take if you are in the Chicago area, and otherwise, you need to take a class or get instruction from a supervising Rabbi. We also want everybody to take an introductory to Hebrew course, so they can learn how to read Hebrew. Also expect you to attend Sabbath services regularly, in our synagogue. We expect people to attend or their own synagogue. So that would be something that would be important.
Also, that is another aspect of demonstrating a commitment to Jewish living, not only the Sabbath, but the dietary rules and other elements of the Jewish holidays and other aspects of living as a Jew. We ask a series of questions and expect you to write an essay about why you are doing this, your belief, your ideas about Judaism, so we can kind of under assess your progress.
We also expect you to meet three times with my wife and I am sure your supervising Rabbi would expect you to meet fairly regularly with them. What else to make sure? That you do not practice any other religious tradition, you do not have any beliefs that are antithetical to Judaism, such as believing that Jesus is the Messiah or God in anyway, or that you worship idols or anything like that.
You also need to take a holiday test that we had out at the begging and have you work through as we do the holiday series. Finally, you need approval from the religious tribunal, debating. First, I assess in our program whether you are ready and then take you to the debating where your questioned, not grilled but people want to hear your story and know why you are wanting to do this and finally the rituals. If you are a male, you need to be circumcised, if you are already circumcised, you need a ritual circumcision of a symbolic one, a drop of blood extracted from the original site of circumcision, with a mohel, a circumciser who is trying to do this.
For males and females, you need to immerse in a Mikvah, a ritual bath, we have one that we use in the Chicago area. Your privacy is protected. If you are a female, there is a female attendant it is in with you and you immerse three times, there is two blessings to our site, the first one is (foreign English) upon the immersion, the second one is the (foreign language) we warmly welcome you., we encourage people to join the Jewish faith, I am sure that if you want to do it, you will be able to. Now some Rabbis will not preside over a conversion if you are married to a non-Jew you will marry a non-Jew, some will, some people will encourage you the conversion of a non-Jewish spouse, most denominations today will do that, we certainly welcome those who are in spiritual journeys who want to be a ember of the Jewish people who do not have any significant relationship with a Jewish partner. Any case, best of luck on your journey and I am sure you will find a good spiritual mentor and supervisor who will help fluctuate your conversion to Judaism.
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