quote:

Than you Rosemary. If we dig deeper into any of our memories, we will find a lot of stories supporting and contradicting the general premise of the traditional conversion law.

Hi Alex.

What do you mean by "law" here, Alex? And what do you mean altogether?

From what I have been reading about Judaism (I, as a Jew who came in from the cold, had to do heaps of this, for my satisfaction) , both in books and on the net, it seems that certain processes of conversion are expected, with rules of law underpinning this. I don't have first hand knowledge of conversion practices but have been told things.

Have some people just assimilated the other way, into Judaism, without converting? I suppose that would happen but I haven't heard any stories.

My family went the other way.

By "law" I meant the Orthodox conversion rules. What I mean is that we in our collective memory and history have situations where a person did undergo the formal conversion process and did not gain a Jewish soul, as well as situatons where a person with a Jewish soul did not go through the conversion and is/was shunned by the Jewish community. And on the other side of the coin, we have tons of cases where a person went through conversion because he or she felt Jewish prior to the conversion.

Sorry if I do not appear very clear on this issue.

Quote "Does she not deserve to be Jewish?"

Whoever is not Jewish and wants to be Jewish always has the option to convert. Nobody is holding her back from being Jewish.

Quote "By "law" I meant the Orthodox conversion rules. What I mean is that we in our collective memory and history have situations where a person did undergo the formal conversion process and did not gain a Jewish soul, as well as situations where a person with a Jewish soul did not go through the conversion and is/was shunned by the Jewish community."

Having a "Jewish soul" is not the most objectively defined. I'm not sure whom you're referring to in the collective memory, but there can't be a rule "you're as Jewish as you feel."

quote:

but there can't be a rule "you're as Jewish as you feel."

So there! Was I being mean somewhere else when I said words to this effect? No. It is just how it is. Don't blame me, please, whoever did.

Quote "
but there can't be a rule "you're as Jewish as you feel."


So there! Was I being mean somewhere else when I said words to this effect? No. It is just how it is. Don't blame me, please, whoever did."

Dear Rosemary,
I only said that in response to Alex's point that there are some Goyim who have a "Jewish soul", so even without conversion, they still should be considered somewhat Jewish.

Sorry, Rav, if I got something wrong there. It seemed to fit as a response to something that got flung at me some time back now when I was trying to say something (not to you) I think (correctly, I hope?) was in line with what you said but didn't get received too well, as if I was being unfeeling or something. Perhaps I should have explained, but I didn't want to rehash old stuff and have been so short of time and I thought it'd be understood (my mistake; too cryptic?).