My name is “Chriss,” as in, Chris(t). My name has proved to be a blinking neon sign indicating to all in the Jewish world that I am the odd girl out. The first question is “are you Jewish?” and the second is “how?” Funny, that wasn’t my first question to you.

I came to Judaism knowing nothing… except for Anne Frank, I knew who she was. I had also read a few books by Chaim Potok, though I pronounced his first name like “chain” with an “m.”  Yom Kippur-the tiny printed words on every calendar was just an obscure Irish holiday (imagine my surprise…).

I grew up in a homogenous small mountain town in Northern California where everyone was from a Christian background. The primary faiths represented were Mormons, small evangelical groups or Protestants, like my family. I didn’t knowingly meet somebody that was of another faith (like Judaism) until freshman year of college.

I moved to New York City at age 22, and several years later I dated a Member of the Tribe. Friday night dinners with his observant parents, fasting during Yom Kippur and eating cheesecake all night once a year. It seemed awesome but everything was one big Hebraic blur. So, I enrolled in a “Judaism 101” course at a synagogue in Park Slope. They were egalitarian, friendly, engaging, and progressive in their views— everything I was looking for in an “organized religion.”  I asked a lot of questions throughout the course and when it ended after 6 months, I knew that I wanted to start the official conversion process (despite the end of my romantic relationship as well).

The first thing my Rabbi said to me was “just so you are fully aware- a Reform Judaism conversion is a bit controversial among the Jewish community.” I shrugged it off. A Jew is a Jew.

It took 2 years of studying, meeting with my Rabbi and observing various traditions, like keeping Kosher and Shabbat. As my Reform synagogue didn’t have much of a thriving social scene, my best friend showed me the social landscape of the Modern Orthodox in Manhattan. I was excited as well as a bit intimidated. Soon I started to feel that I was ready to be a full-fledged member of the tribe.

In May of 2014 I nervously met with a Beit Din who officially “approved” me and immersed myself in the warm waters of a mikvah on the Upper West Side. Outside the mikveh door stood my Rabbi, brother, and two good friends.  I was a Jew and I shouted this (literally!) through the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn that day.

Prior to Judaism I connected with potential dating partners solely on good vibes, mutual interests, etc.  Religion played virtually no part in it.  Now that I am not a “shiksa” it is of the utmost importance. I want to have a traditional Jewish family with a smart, funny good-looking man who embraces his faith and culture, finds meaning in tradition, loves Israel and is progressive thinking.  Should be easy in New York. Right? Wrong.

I didn’t understand how my “type” of conversion would come into play in the Jewish dating world. First, as a convert I have to cross off all men with the last name of “Cohen.” I learned this after a man at shul said he’d love to date me but he was part of the Kohanim and as a convert I am forbidden fruit. The Ultra Orthodox, Haredim and most-any sect of Orthodoxy automatically discredit my conversion entirely. The hypothetical children I might produce down the road may be an issue for Reform or Conservative Jews as our offspring’s “Jewishness” maybe called into question. So that leaves me with secular Jews. So much for the dream.

Most men aren’t worried about my level of observance or thoughts on the religious front.  My “worthiness” is contingent on being the “right kind of Jewish.” Their verdict is usually asserted loudly and rudely after a few drinks. Apparently a traveling rogue Beit Din.

On a first date with a cute guy I had met at a costume party called “Challahween,” I learned he had grown up in a very religious family and was impressed that I had converted. His enthusiasm quickly faded when he learned one of the Rabbis I studied under was a woman. Huh? This is 2016.  Aren’t we passed the antiquated notion that only men can be accepted as rabbinical figures?  Not to mention that nowhere in the Torah does it forbid it. We disagreed and still made out. Regrets in feminism.

Recently I introduced myself to the host of a house party (where 99% of attendees were Jewish). He loudly exclaimed that now he knew “who the goy” was. He didn’t know it that the next day marked my 2^nd anniversary of going to the mikvah. I looked at my best friend sitting across from me. She was bracing herself for one of my long, bitter, tearful diatribes. Instead I simply said “I AM A JEW.” He didn’t understand his words pushed an atomic bomb like button inside of me. I spent the next hour singing my feelings out on his karaoke machine.

Last week “Sammy” on Jswipe asked for my phone number. I was delighted but as his profile mentioned having Jewish parents I decided to tell him upfront that my parents were not.  “Who and where did you convert through?” I knew where this conversation was going. I told him that I wasn’t Orthodox but I am Jewish. “I question your intentions when you go through conversion and don’t one hundred percent the life of a Jew with our culture. You are not a Jew.”

My intentions? Did he think I was some breed of religious terrorist? I I keep kosher, lived in Israel, observe Shabbat and chagim. He then called me a Christian… as a slur, and blocked me.

As my name often serves as a conversation “ice breaker”: I have thought by going solely by my Hebrew name (Miriam), but for 30-something years I’ve been Chriss. I don’t want to negate my family or the journey that brought me here for your convenience. There are Jews named Chriss. Here I am.

This past Shavout I heard a fellow convert say something very simple but powerful – we forget that despite our different backgrounds we once stood at Sinai together as one community. Maybe that was only a desert mirage.

Chriss Williams is currently finishing her degree in Religion at Hunter College. She created the blog “Shiksaism.com” which chronicles her adventures as a “Jew by Choice.” Chriss lives in Brooklyn and loves red wine, hookah, and dancing. Please swipe right. 

Images courtesy of Chriss Williams

The post Chriss the Jew; Dating as a Reform Convert appeared first on Jewcy.

The Jewish Week has published a devastating article by Stephanie Doucette, who until quite recently was converting to Judaism under the auspices of Barry Freundel, the Washington D.C. rabbi arrested for voyeurism earlier this month.

If you’re unfamiliar with the details of this disturbing story, here’s a quick rundown: Freundel was the rabbi at a prominent Modern Orthodox congregation called Kesher Israel from 1989 until October 2014, when it emerged that he had hidden a camera in the bathroom of the shul’s mikvah and secretly recorded female congregants before their immersion, a level of predatory creepiness that is off. the. charts. How Freundel started doing this and got away with it for so long is confounding, but also totally banal and predictable: he’s a rabbi in a traditional, Orthodox, male-dominated community, and he was responsible for the spiritual and religious guidance of the community’s most vulnerable—women converting to Judaism. It’s a situation that is ripe for exploitation, as multiple sources point out in this Times of Israel article.

But back to Doucette, who has bravely penned a honest, frank account of her dealings with Freundel. She is one of several prospective converts who was encouraged to a take bogus “practice dunk” in the mikvah before the actual event, and is waiting for find out if she was filmed:

At first, upon hearing of the voyeurism charges, all I felt was anger. Anger that he may have videotaped me. Anger that he may have videotaped countless converts, married women and students. Anger at wondering if he felt joy over knowing how many people he has hurt. How could this have happened? Why did people not take complaints made against him more seriously? Why had people ignored me when I discussed my issues with him?

After a week, my anger gave way to a full depression. I began to find myself obsessing over this, going over every detail of the past year and a half. The only part of my conversion process that I cannot go back to in my mind are those immersions. I remember bits and pieces, but I don’t know if I can ever allow myself to fully remember. How can I, when I know someone may have videotaped and watched me? I have begun to find myself crying at random times throughout the day, whether it be sitting in a Starbucks or picking out dinner at the grocery store. I don’t know how to dress anymore. Even undressing in the privacy of my own bedroom is difficult right now. I can only wonder what other potential victims might be going through.

I urge you to read the full article here—it’s understandably distressing, but it also ends of a note of strength and agency. Doucette has chosen to speak out for her children, and “for future generations,” in a spirit of transparency and openness. “If potential victims like myself don’t speak out then tragedies like this will only continue happen,” she writes. “Sexual abuse is a problem that occurs in every religious group, but it only continues when those communities fail to speak out.”

(Image: Mayyim Hayyim, 2009. Tom Kates)

The post Stephanie Doucette, Until Recently Converting to Judaism With Rabbi Barry Freundel, Speaks Out appeared first on Jewcy.

Jews aren’t good proselytizers: circumcision, long prayer sessions, kosher dietary restrictions—not to mention a few thousand years of persecution—do not exactly endear Judaism to strangers. But what Jews are good at is writing comedy. In the quirky new web series Jewvangelist, creator and actor Becky Kramer explores what it would take for a young rabbi to recruit new members to the Jewish faith.

The show focuses on Rabbi Leah Levy’s campaign to refresh the family synagogue, which is rapidly losing members. After an almost too coincidental bicycling accident with a Mormon missionary, Levy (played by Kramer) realizes that promoting conversion is the key to replenishing her congregation. Levy is joined by her goofy cantor friend, and along the way they pick up a hodge-podge of friends from various religious backgrounds. Our heroine has a villain, of course—her ridiculously evil twin brother Asher, who is a rival Rabbi and wants to sell the building.

While the plotline may pique your interest, there are some flaws that should be addressed: the acting is weak at times, and the story relies on a number of absurd coincidences. There is an excessive amount of sexual innuendo and it tends to be a little out of place.

But all that is ok. After all, Jewvangelist is only a short web series. And what the show does right, it really does right. The writing is witty and the production quality is flawless. Each episode is about 12 minutes long, which means the entire six-part first season can be watched in a little over an hour. I rarely found myself heartily laughing at the jokes, but the characters are loveable and I found myself rooting for them to succeed. The show also promotes religious and cultural tolerance—a message we need to keep hearing.

As with many Jewish productions, you’ll laugh a little, cringe a little too, and wonder why you’re still there halfway through. But when it’s all over you’ll leave feeling warm and satisfied, even if you’re not entirely sure why.

Watch the first episode here:

Related: New Web Series Celebrates Poutine, Lactaid, and Jewish Angst—in Yiddish

(Image via Kickstarter)

The post Jews, Proselytizing, and Comedy Collide in ‘Jewvangelist’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Gwyneth Paltrow is reportedly converting to Judaism, the New York Post‘s Page Six reports. Apparently, the actress/cookbook author/unattainable lifestyle queen “is quietly converting after years of following Kabbalah, which originated in Judaism, and being friends with Michael Berg, co-director of the Kabbalah Centre.” (The same cult organization which oversaw the bar mitzvah of Madonna’s son Rocco last year.)

Paltrow’s late father, the film producer Bruce Paltrow, was Jewish, while her mother, actress Blythe Danner, is Christian. Paltrow was raised in both religious faiths, which she once described as “such a nice way to grow up.”

It’s unclear who’s supervising the conversion, or if Paltrow’s children Apple and Moses (with ex-husband Chris Martin) will be converting with her. Either way, it’s nice to know that there are two Jewish holidays in which their names play starring roles.

The award for Twitter Quip o’ the Day goes to one Mr. David Wolkin:

gwyneth paltrow just straight up pouring honey on her daughter’s head for rosh hashanah

— David Wolkin (@david_wolkin) September 5, 2014

Welcome to the tribe, kids!

(Image: Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock.com)

The post Gwyneth Paltrow Converting to Judaism: GOOP for the Jews? appeared first on Jewcy.

Wanna feel old? Consider this: ‘Sex and City’ premiered sixteen years ago today.

Now, I know it’s cool to hate on Carrie et al these days, what with Girls and Broad City bringing the sexting, q-tips and authentic Brooklyn hipster poverty to the small screen. But I still have a soft spot for SATC, and I have a feeling you, dear reader, might feel similarly. Before it descended into the slavish consumer-fest of the later seasons (and the movies, of which we shall not speak), it was really, really good. Edgy! Risque! It’s where I learned about anal sex! And vibrators! (Ah, the sheltered decade of dial-up internet: we were such innocent teens.) Don’t pretend you don’t stop and watch an episode when you’re channel surfing/illegally downloading in the liminal hours between updating your OKCupid profile and falling asleep. You do, and you love it.

Anyway! SATC had a number of good Jewish moments, mostly focused on Charlotte’s conversion to Judaism for husband #2, Harry Goldenblatt, who woos her with his menschy, honest charm—one of more engaging plot-lines in the harried, lackluster final season. Wrote Sala Levin in 2012:

Nebbishy, lawyerly Harry certainly seems to be cut from the same cloth as his anxious, uncool brethren. Harry knows that the “shiksa goddess” Charlotte seems to be beyond the reach of “a putz like me,” as he puts it. But while the stumbling nerds of the popular imagination typically win the affection of their crushes despite not knowing how to interact with members of the opposite sex, Harry gets the girl with his brazenness, a forthrightness that Charlotte finds difficult to resist. It’s his openness about his desire for her—coupled with a talent for coupling—that distinguishes Harry from his geeky cohort. Like the female characters of Apatow’s movies, Charlotte ultimately develops feelings of real depth for Harry, noting that if his warmth and kindness are part of his Jewishness, being Jewish might be something she would want for herself. But—unlike in Apatow’s films—these feelings emerge only after the ignition of a sexual spark.

Charlotte and Harry’s love affair is served up with a generous dollop of borscht belt vernacular—a lot of putzing and schvitizing on Harry’s part, which feels tonally off for a 30-something man in the early 2000s—but underneath the schtick, theirs is a love affair of equals: two people who really understand and accept the other for who they are, hairy back, WASP-y affectations and all.

The depiction of Charlotte’s conversion is fairly accurate by sitcom-land standards: she’s thrice turned away by the rabbi before being accepted as a candidate for the “Jewish faith,” she and Harry bicker over differing levels of religious commitment, and eventually we see her take a dip in the mikvah to complete the process. There are a few anomalies—i.e. the rabbi’s family members seem to have confused Shabbat and funeral attire, and the rituals are overly-formal, almost robotically executed—but for the most part it’s a faithful (if abbreviated, sentimentalized) depiction of a non-Orthodox conversion.

Back in 2003, Samuel G. Freedman wrote that Charlotte’s conversion to Judaism radically redefined interfaith relationships in American popular culture:

Until the HBO series, no television show had ever presented a conversion with such visual and theological detail. Even more important is what the approving portrayal represents: a reversal of the entertainment industry’s tradition of viewing Jewish identity as something to be shed in the quest to become American.

For nearly a century, ever since the Broadway comedy Abie’s Irish Rose, the standard narrative of love between a Jew and a Christian has pointed toward interfaith marriage, and the implicit abandonment of Jewish observance and continuity, as the epitome of the melting pot… Unlike all of those Jewish characters of yore, who were so ready to reinvent themselves with a gentile wife, Harry insisted that Charlotte convert; he wanted their children to be fully Jewish.

And Charlotte wanted to be fully Jewish, too: from the very first heartfelt ‘shalom’ she offers to the custodian of the synagogue, to her decision to stop celebrating Christmas (a ritual she loved), she’s in it 110 percent—she even chastises Harry for watching baseball during Shabbat dinner, leading to a massive fight and temporary break-up. But it’s OK! They reconcile at a depressing singles’ event at shul, and have a big, fat, disastrous (but happy) Jewish wedding.

http://youtu.be/GKKau5XVF7k

So happy birthday, Sex and the City. I still love you, and I’m not ashamed to say so on the internet.

Image: HBO

The post Happy Birthday, “Sex and the City”! appeared first on Jewcy.

Actress Elizabeth Banks, most recently seen in The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect (which she produced with her husband), sat down with Marc Maron this week for his WTF Podcast, and their conversation was pretty interesting. Banks is sharp and funny and calls the Olsen twins elves. She also opens up about her working-class Catholic upbringing in Pittsfield, MA, and eventual conversion to Judaism.

“So you met a Jew at Penn,” Maron offers a little after the 30 minute (!) mark.

“Yeah, it’s real hard,” she quips. “It’s like, throw a dart.”

There were a few Jewish kids at her high school, she explains, but most of them lived on the other side of town and went to a different middle school, so she didn’t meet them until they got to high school—which meant no bar mitzvahs for her, sadly.

“So how’d you make the ship from Jesus to Jew?” Maron asks at minute 35.

The story is sweet. Banks met Max Handelman, her future husband, her first day at college. They kept running into each other, and one night she ended up at one of his AEPi frat parties. (She says the ZBT guys were douches from Long Island who all work on Wall Street now. Also I love her.) They went on a date to a jazz club in Philly—it was one of her first rides in a taxi—where they drank bourbon and didn’t get carded. She made the first move, “and then it just went from there.”

“Now was there pressure on you to be a Jew?” Maron asks, before calling Banks a “shiksa goddess Jew.” (“People love that when the shiksas come over,” she fires back.)

“No religion meant as much to me as Judaism meant to my husband,” Banks explains. There were also the in-laws. “We got married after 10 and a half years, and for the first five years I’m positive that his father did not learn my last name,” she says. “I’m positive that his dad was like, ‘This is Portnoy’s Complaint…my son will marry a Jewish girl.” (Of course, what they really cared about was the grandkids. “My kids are Jewish, so they’re happy,” she explains.)

She went through the conversion process, studying with different rabbis. “I did not have my mikveh, so technically I’m not converted,” she admits, but it’s only because she was never in L.A. long enough at one time to have done what she calls the 11-week “You’re a Jew now class.” And she’s been practicing Judaism for so long at this point, she explains, that finalizing the institutional process seems more like a needless formality than anything else.

“I’ve been essentially a Jew for like 15 years,” she says. “I haven’t had a Christmas tree in 15 years.”

“But are you like, officially a Jew?” Maron prods.

“I’m not officially stamped, but by all accounts yes,” she explains. “My kids go to Jewish pre-school, we only celebrate Jewish holidays, I love seder.”

“Frankly, because I’m already doing everything, I feel like I’m as Jewish as I’m ever going to be.”

It’s a very Jewish way of thinking, actually. Consider yourself at home, Banks.

Here are some other gems from the interview, which is really, really long, but totally worth it:

• She took Latin for six years: “I was a real nerdball,” she explains.

• She’s a TriDelt.

• She graduated Penn magna cum laude.

• She played Pontius Pilate in a high school performance of Jesus Christ Superstar.

• Her dream rom-com co-star? Channing Tatum: “I would work that.”

Listen to the full podcast here.

The post Jewish Actress Elizabeth Banks Discusses Her Conversion With Marc Maron appeared first on Jewcy.