Conversion Confusion

Question

Dear Rabbi,

I just happened to visit your site, when I was searching for information on Jewish conversion. Long before I read your response to a question about conversion in India, I had been contemplating converting to Judaism.
I was born in India, to parents who are natives of India and therefore I became a Hindu. In the language of Hindi (Language of the people of the region of Hind, i.e. today's India), any person born in the region of Hind is called a Hindu. The term Hindu is therefore a geographic designation rather than a religious one. I consider myself a Noahide even though my parents practice the Hindu customs. Judaism entered my life as a teenager, when I was exposed to evangelical Christians. I soon began to ask the pastor more about the laws of the Torah. The more I asked, the more irked the pastor became, and my faith, in turn, became more Jewish. As I read more about the Torah, I learnt that the Torah was offered to the whole world, and Israel was the only nation to accept it at that point of time. I realized it was my time to accept, what my ancestors had refused.
When I decided to convert to Judaism, and approached a head of a shul in my country, he advised me -much to my shock- not to convert because that would hurt my parents. Persistent and determined to convert, I started searching the internet for information. It was during this search, I learnt that converts are treated as second class Jews. This made me apprehensive about my decision to become Jewish. I, therefore, have the following questions: 1. Are Jews called Jews, because they are the descendents of Judah and of Israel (Jacob), or because they converted at Mt. Sinai? 2. Is a convert as much a Jew as a descendent of Jacob? 3. If yes, why, according to orthodoxy, is a convert prohibited from marrying a Kohen or a Levite? Doesn't this prohibition demonstrate that converts aren't as much Jews as Israelites (children of Jacob)? To me it seems that there is no point in converting to Judaism, if the land of Israel doesn't consider me Jewish.
I have also gotten the feeling that the only reason that Jews allow conversion is to minimize the writing and distribution of anti-Semitic literature, and not because they consider converts at the same level as Jews as is a descendent of Jacob. Due to these thoughts, I decided not to convert, but rather I try to obey as many of the 613 mitzvahs as possible. Nonetheless, a rabbi condemned me for obeying these laws since I am not Jewish. Do the Jews hate non Jews? (I would like to mention that India is the only nation where no Jew was persecuted ever). Do you have anything to say about this..??

Answer

I am sorry to feel so much bitterness through your letter and I would like to correct some false impressions you received about conversion to Judaism, which seem to be the result of mistaken or only partially true information. Let's try to deal with each point.
1) Converts are not second class Jews: in fact it is forbidden by Jewish Law to remind a convert that he/she was once not Jewish.
2) Who is a Jew? According to Jewish Law, a Jew is a person born of a Jewish mother OR a person who converted to Judaism. There is no "classes" or distinctions in "Jewishness".
3) The name Jew (Yehudi in Hebrew) comes from the name of the tribe of Judah (Yehuda) (one of Jacob/Israel's 12 sons), but this name was given long after the events of Mount Sinai. The Bible relates that after the Exodus from Egypt where the Israelites had been slaves for 400 years, they went to Mount Sinai and received the Torah. They did not convert, since the Israelites were the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob/Israel, to whom God repeatedly promised protection and the Land of Israel. At Sinai, the Israelites accepted God's Law.
Some time after settling in the Land of Israel, the people were governed by a monarchy. After King Salomon's reign, the kingdom was divided into two: Judah and Israel. The Northern Kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel was invaded and the people exiled, and only descendants of the two tribes (Judah and Benjamin) who inhabited the kingdom of Judah or the Southern Kingdom, survived the different invasions which took place over centuries. The designation "Yehudim" (Jews), is derived from the Kingdom of Judah.
4) The Cohanim were the priests serving in the Temple, and there were very strict laws regulating who they were permitted to marry. For example they were forbidden from marrying divorced women as well as other categories of Jewish women. These restrictions are still observed among the Orthodox community, even without a Temple. There is no restriction for a converted man to marry a woman from a priestly or Cohen family.
5) If you are converted abroad, the Interior Ministry of the State of Israel registers you as a Jew, and gives you all the rights received by Jewish immigrants. If you convert abroad through an Orthodox Rabbinical Court, the Rabbinate in Israel also accepts you as a full Jew.
6) I do not see how allowing people to convert to Judaism would minimize anti-Semitic literature. Anti-Semites will remain anti-Semites.
7) I do not know what Rabbi would condemn you for observing laws from the Torah. I wish you would meet more enlightened Rabbis.
I do hope that my letter takes away some of your bitterness toward the Jews, which seems to have stemmed from misinformation and misunderstanding.
I am open to answer all your questions about Judaism.

Rabbi Monique Susskind Goldberg
May 2005