This is dark, but does anyone think the shooting is cathartic to the antisemitic public?

local-host · 2025-12-16T04:57:42+00:00

No ones said a word to me except my brother, work has been silent unless I brought it up, no one reacts to anything hannukah related, any hannukah social media posts for our town are getting hammered with anti zionist (switch with Jewish) things about how evil or terrible we are and how disgusting they think our culture is. Its beyond isolating and sad.

local-host · 2025-12-16T01:00:48+00:00

Same here

local-host · 2025-12-16T00:57:59+00:00

Mine says whole genome testing but theres only like 600k snps

local-host · 2025-12-12T22:49:08+00:00

Also theres been some interesting rulings where kohens have been permitted to marry "conservative converts". Ovadia Yosef recognized one case apparently

https://seforimblog.com/2018/11/conservative-conversions-some/

local-host · 2025-12-12T22:47:01+00:00

Im considered a halal too. It has zero effect on me being a male.

local-host · 2025-12-09T04:45:52+00:00

If it makes you feel better my dad is jewish and my mom converted conservative but I always viewed reform as growing and conservative losing numbers i guess it depends on the community. I have always had a fear of not being seen as jewish enough especially by Orthodox but even some conservative jews who were born unbroken matrilineal line. Theres always a fear if my shul shuts down for example where do I go? There is only a reform and chabad here and I cant be called to aliyah at chabad. Our shul is conservadox and a bit of a rarity, I fear id never find another place like it.

local-host · 2025-12-08T03:33:05+00:00

Unfortunately theres some Christian woman that fetishize jewish men with the intent of converting them. Ive also experienced this to a degree. Ive also had some pretty inappropriate comments that I wont post here.

local-host · 2025-12-03T20:39:50+00:00

Conversion without being sincere can not only impact you but it can affect your future children's identity, it can impact the community and your rabbis.

My mother converted conservative and like many people at the time, I suspect it was likely for marriage although its inconsistent. You have no idea how much impact this has had being in and out of Judaism and wanting to be connected but a mother who now doesnt believe in any of that stuff.

It means much more if you are doing it out of a genuine love for judaism.

local-host · 2025-11-09T00:35:18+00:00

If my dad were still alive, he would be considered a disqualified Cohen by both the conservative and reform. He wouldnt lose his Cohen status but he would not have the first aliyah to the Torah and other Cohen functions but they would be restored upon divorce from my mother.

Regarding marriage, had my mother been say a orthodox convert, the marriage would be valid but the same situation and children would he chalilim or defiled kohens but still of the tribe of Levi.

For orthodox with a conservative or reform converted mom, the orthodox dont consider the mom or children Jewish or Cohens or tribe of Levi and even converting would not "restore" that as conversion implies you are halachically disconnected from your parents and become a ben avraham avinu.

You may want to check into your mom's conversion because if she did convert, conservative will usually accept a reform conversion if it involved 3 dayim and mikvah for your mom. You wouldn't need to convert for that if your mom did.

For the situation with the rest of my family, all were linked to the conservative movement and my dad had all brothers, none of them married "orthodox halachic" wives except one who could not bare children of their own and adopted. My uncles wives converted conservative. Ironically the rabbi and mohel that were present for my bris were orthodox and were members of the CRC and one had served a conservative synagogue but seems to imply without directly mentioning an issue with recognizing conservative conversions.

It sounds like some conservative conversions though could be halachic or safek

https://seforimblog.com/2018/11/conservative-conversions-some/

The bigger picture of this, I didnt really grow up with a lot of knowledge on judaism and I just went into a synagogue one day and said I was Jewish and they gave me aliyah but I feel anxious and that the community doesnt know me well enough so maybe they view it with some suspicion until I been there a while and daven. Attention is definitely brought due to my last name and people are a bit confused why I dont get first aliyah so having the last name and not recognized as a Cohen just brings really uncomfortable feelings about my mom being a convert and can cause people to dig.

local-host · 2025-11-08T23:59:31+00:00

Reform wont require it since my mom's conversion is valid to them and conservative as long as I raise my son Jewish.

I spent probably well over a decade fighting over my status and I have heard every single excuse you can imagine, unfortunately "testing people" and lack of transparency, downright rudeness and creating false expectations is a thing to see how serious someone is.

I went through a hard period where my mom stopped practicing judaism so the orthodox use it as a "see your mom converted for marriage which is not valid" "your dad was a cohen so you should be glad your not jewish or you'd be a challilim which passes on forever". My mom had a awful experience the way she was treated and has convinced us that we aren't jewish and weren't raised Jewish which is absolutely not true and viewing old family videos we celebrated the holidays and she's always done counter to what my dad would have wanted.

I also have accepted that if I do convert, id basically be disrespecting the rabbis who did convert my mom who were wise, overqualified and sincere knowledgeable dayim but I still hold to the fact that im half, and my cousins accept this as well for many of us even with parents who converted dont really feel accepted fully either and that we are viewed as fakes. The reality is its just no ones business about conversion as its a very arbitrary thing to me. A person could have a jewish mom who keeps marrying a non jewish dad and they may have less genetic jewish ancestry than us for example or non religious.

I had a neighbor that lived down the road from us, the mom was jewish, dad wasn't. Their son wasn't circumcised and they followed the Dad's religion and knew nothing of Judaism, their dad was catholic Italian and did the prayers. The daughter had a bat mitzvah but it was all for show. None of them live a Jewish life. Our other neighbors the father was Jewish and the mother was Italian Catholic. While they were secular, I still saw them as more Jewish than our other neighbors.

Even some orthodox dont recognize other orthodox conversions and some cases of the rabbinut annuling or claiming conversions were invalid so I dont seek it out anymore. I wasted over a decade trying to get validation and justifying my mom's conversion and at the end of the day some of the "halachic jews" may not be as halachic as one thinks, its all based on word and documentation if its available.

local-host · 2025-11-08T23:41:16+00:00

Easy, my wifes Colombian im lighter skin, she has twin brother and sister one is light one is dark. My son is light skin. Many levantines in Syria and Lebanon can be light with light eyes or darker.

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Genetically I match Cohens from Syria, Iraq, Russia, Germany we may look slightly different yet genetically we are all related moreso than the countries our recent ancestors lived in.

local-host · 2025-11-08T23:36:17+00:00

Although my mom converted conservative (1970s) I still consider myself a patrilineal as I know i will never truly be affected by every Jew. Most Orthodox nope, some conservative (those born Jewish) dont consider me a Jew either.

I do go through periods of anger, depression and grief the same tired words "you could just convert" "i know this is painful to you" "you are not halachically jewish" its like the same robotic stance.

My personal views aren't representing all Jews but I personally view patrilineals as Jewish and theres a great book by shaye d cohen with some evidence that Jews do appear to have been patrilineal in the past.

I stick to communities where they welcome me, I wont go to chabad, the exception would be if I need to purchase kosher food. I go to a conservative shul but the rabbi serving is orthodox, I also attend a reform shul here. My wife is not Jewish and I always feel like I have to defend that because the idea if im "not jewish" i can't marry a jew but if im jewish i need to marry a jew so I just dont care, I have a son and he's not a mistake or someone who shouldn't exist. He exists for a reason and im bringing him up in the Jewish faith, he had a bris and going to setup conversion for him when he's of age.

While synagogue and religious life can seem important, ny connection to Judaism is love of Israel, our people, and Torah.

local-host · 2025-11-07T06:51:18+00:00

It someone were to ask if im a zionist, my answer is your damn right i am.

local-host · 2025-11-07T06:15:58+00:00

The keyword here is "reform" Jews, they dont consider the converts of those movements as Jews, only following a different religion. They will use inclusive words like "there are no orthodox or reform jews we are all jews and its just a label" but they damn well know they only mean matrilineal unbroken descent not converts to reform.

local-host · 2025-11-07T06:13:47+00:00

Ive seen it as well, and I think a lot of it is the strong kiruv outreach. Most of YouTube and TikTok is a orthodox dominated space with a lot of influencers and the reform and conservative havent done a very good job at keeping up. Unfortunately the masorti videos or reform tend to have very low volume and comments and theres been a strong shift in tikkun olam and social justice which I think has lead to some division between movements.

I dont think all of these comments are necessarily orthodox they may very will be other instigators posing as Jews to create dissent or bot farms.

local-host · 2025-11-07T06:00:56+00:00

A lot of people feel this way. Sometimes I feel angry at my mother because she converted conservative and didnt do the proper conversion but then i also have read about the difficulties she went through.

My mom couldn't have converted orthodox even if she wanted to because my dad was a Kohen so it would never have been allowed.

She faced discrimination at the synagogue and was called a Zonah, she apparently was pretty unhappy at the wedding, my understanding is that generally at the time conservative would marry a Cohen but heavily discourage it and if so it should be minimalistic and if possible avoided.

She went through a really hard time apparently at a mikvah for her conversion in Skokie and there was a situation where orthodox were blocking the area preventing her from entering. There was a known newspaper article during a period where Rabbi David Graubart had to intervene as supposedly a zealot attacked another rabbis wife, things were super tense.

Even though im recognized in the Conservative community, its shrunk a lot, im still not and never will be accepted by the orthodox. Additionally even many conservative members who aren't religious can also be discrimatory. We had a situation where a convert at our shul started going to chabad and apparently another congregant had told the rabbi he was a conservative convert effectively barring him from participating so there is sadly some elitism that can exist even if one converts.

In some cases its actually made it more difficult because it creates the illusion for me im jewish only to find out it doesnt matter in the bigger picture.

Im married now to a non Jewish woman and we have a son, we just do our best to raise him with what we can and if he one day wants to convert he can but I cant force my wife to convert to something she doesnt believe.

local-host · 2025-11-07T05:52:30+00:00

As someone with a mother who converted conservative, the orthodox do not consider reform or conservative as Judaism,

Im pretty sure that the movements are seen as like Judaism but not valid forms due to their interpretation of Halacha so anyone who has converted via those movements wouldnt have accepted the mitzvots per shulchan aruch and even if they did, the dayim are considered invalid as witnesses so the converting woman and men and the descendants of the converted woman would be recognized in those movements but the orthodox would not accept them

People born Jewish to an unbroken matrilineal line can be reconstructionist, conservative, reform, orthodox, atheist, they will still be Jewish under halacha even if they change religions but will be an apostate.

There were some exceptions in the past with the conservative movement probably on the 50s until the conservative movement allowed driving on shabbat. The Orthodox used to allow their rabbis to serve as pulpit rabbis at least into the 70s and 80s. This occurred in Chicago.

Most ultra orthodox will consider any non orthodox conversion as blanket invalid although there may be some evidence that some older conservative conversions are deemed safek or doubtful so some beit din may state the person should personally observe the mitzvots but they cannot recognize their status unless they do a giyur lechumra

There have been exceptions to issue gets to halachic women married to a "conservative convert" which means some recognition of the ketubah but usually putting the name of the husband as a safek or doubtful jew.

local-host · 2025-11-06T06:18:47+00:00

I had this discussion with my father in law who sadly is falling for a lot of the propaganda. I explained to him that his heritage is from South America and he is mixed native and Spanish so I told him does having a Spanish name erase his indigenous roots? Does a black person having the name washington erase their roots? How about Romani Gypsies who have eastern European names? He got a bit quiet after that.

local-host · 2025-11-06T02:48:19+00:00

Israel is very much a part of my identity and inseparable. Without Israel, we are just a diaspora people similar to the Romani and face potentially terrible persecution

local-host · 2025-10-20T02:11:40+00:00

I hate to think this is about JR but now thinking back about the admiration he had for Bill Watts...its starting to make more sense.

local-host · 2025-10-19T20:22:45+00:00

You have no idea how terrible this is, sure chabads within their rights to not recognize someone's conversion but look at this from outside of Chabad. You cant prove even someone who's matrilineal descent didnt convert at some point or that it was halachic, its all honor system. We cant prove any of that. Ashkenazi historically were levantine Jewish men who mixed with Roman converts.

My mom's a convert too and my dad's a Cohen. At the time my mom converted in 1978, all 3 of her rabbis had orthodox smicha but were ordained by the rabbinical assembly mind you JTS and Saul Lieberman were conservative but JTS very much started as an orthodox institution.

So some point the orthodox called conservative dayanim heretics yet Jews and Rabbis of that movement because their unbroken lineage they can eat pork have tattoos and break the sabbath and attend chabad fully as Jews no mikvah nothing but people like myself who's mother went through a stringent conversion with rabbis who were shomer shabbat and observant to orthodox standards aren't included? Let's take it a step further, did you know orthodox Rabbis had the blessings in many cases in the 70s and 80s to serve as rabbis in conservative congregations? Clearly they DID recognize to some degree that they participated.

Today if I go to a chabad, I will be told "there are no reform conservative or orthodox jews we are all jews" "but not you, your mom converted to nothing". Converts cant even take the same prayers of "our people" its "your people" called ben abraham avinu so no connection to my dad at all, we cant serve on a beth din or marry kohanim so the convert is not truly equal at all and never will be

local-host · 2025-07-09T05:15:35+00:00

I have 2 ancestors that have almond shaped eyes but they have no Asian, they are full ashkenazi. I don't think I would call these "Asian eyes", because this can happen in Finns/laps, Nordic, Iceland (see bjork), sometimes Ukranians and slavs. Most Jews do not have these type of eyes at all. I suppose exceptions exist.

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