 I should preface what I'm going to say by clarifying that Judaism does not seek converts. We don't encourage people to convert. We don't seek converts. And it's for a very simple reason. There is no pressing need for anyone in the world to become a Jew. And the reason is because you don't have to be a Jew in order to have a relationship with God. You do not have to be a Jew in order to have a relationship with God. In the Bible's first book, in the book of Genesis, there are many people long before the Torah was revealed and long before there was a Judaism who knew God, who walked with God, and who lived righteous lives. And so we see from that very first book of the Bible that you do not have to be a Jew practicing Judaism in order to have a relationship with God. Another place we see this very clearly in the scriptures in the Bible is in the famous book of Ruth, the story of Ruth. So we know that what happens in this story is that a Jewish family from the land of Israel, Elimelech, and his wife Naomi, and their two sons leave the land of Israel during a famine, and they go to live in the land of Moab. And the two sons marry Moab by woman. One's name is Orpah and one's name is Ruth. And the two sons ultimately die, as well as Elimelech, Naomi's husband. Naomi plans to go back to her homeland to the land of Israel, and her two daughter-in-laws tell her that they want to accompany her and go back to Israel with her. So Naomi tells Orpah and Ruth, Why? Why do you want to come back to live in Israel with me? Stay here in Moab. Stay among your own people. There's no need for you to come and live with me in Israel. And she encourages them in the story. If you follow a narrative three times, she urges them, No, you don't need to come to Israel and be with me. You can stay with your own people. Live here in Moab. Orpah decides to remain in Moab, so she stays behind. But Ruth insists. Ruth says, No, I want to go with you. She ultimately says that your God will be my God and your people will be my people. And so Ruth decides that she wants to join the Jewish people and she ends up converting. But you see from the story that it wasn't absolutely necessary for them to convert, because if it was, then Naomi would have told her daughters-in-law, Yes, it's important. Come back to Israel with me. You have no life here in Moab. So that's an important starting point for tonight. Now I should say as well that different movements among the Jewish people today have different ways that they look at the process of conversion. And for tonight's talk, we'll be examining only the issue of conversion as seen through the lens of traditional Orthodox Judaism. I'm not going to be covering all the branches within the Jewish people. The convert to Judaism basically goes through the exact same process as the original Jewish people who came out of Egypt. When our people came out of Egypt, there was no Torah they had initially. There was no Judaism. And so what happened to the original Jews was that they in effect converted to Judaism. All the original Jews converted to Judaism in effect. They became converts at Mount Sinai. When God offered the Torah to the people of Israel, they had a choice to make. And their choice was either to accept the Torah or not accept the Torah. And so when those former slaves who came out of Egypt responded to God's offer by saying, Naase, we will do. We accept upon ourselves the obligation of living according to the Torah. At that point, essentially they became converts. That's what it means to convert to Judaism. Conversion to Judaism is essentially an acceptance upon oneself of the obligation to live according to the dictates of the Torah. A person cannot convert themselves to Judaism. You can't go off and just read a book and decide that you're a Jew. Conversion to Judaism is not a unilateral decision that someone's makes. A person might decide that they want to join the Jewish people and become a Jew, but the Jewish people have to accept them as a convert. It's a process that goes both ways. The candidate seeks to become a convert, but the community has to accept that person. Conversion takes place as a formal legal process, much in the same way that anyone that seeks to become a naturalized citizen of a country cannot do it by reading books about Canada and eating poutine. That's not how a person becomes a Canadian and they can even wear a Canadian flag on their backpack. They can do all the things that Canadians do. They can root for the maple leaves. But becoming a citizen of Canada or any other country requires that the person go through a formal legal process, which is invariably a citizenship judge or at a citizenship court. I went through that process myself when I came here from the United States and became a Canadian citizen. It was a formal legal process. In the same way, conversion to Judaism is handled by a Bate Dean, which is a rabbinical court of three members, invariably rabbis, but not necessarily. It's very important to understand that the Bate Dean, the rabbinical court, does not do a potential candidate for conversion any favors by converting them without properly vetting them. And unfortunately this happens far too often that a person expresses their desire to convert and the Bate Dean does not properly vet them. And then after a year or so, the person falls off the wagon, so to speak, and they don't follow through on their commitments to observe the laws of the Torah. Now the reason the Bate Dean is not doing them any favors is that prior to their conversion they were not Jewish and they had no obligations to follow the laws of the Torah that were specifically given to Jewish people, such as observing the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays and the Jewish dietary laws and many, many other laws. They were under no such obligation. So at the end of their days where they were to meet their maker, the Almighty would not say to this person, why didn't you abstain from having shrimp? For a person that's not Jewish there's no reason why they shouldn't eat shrimp. They're not going to be asked why you didn't observe the Sabbath because people who aren't Jewish are not obligated to observe the Sabbath. So a Bate Dean that converts someone prematurely or without carefully screening them and the person does not follow through on their ostensible commitment to observe the Torah, they will be spiritually responsible for all of those laws they're not following. They're much better off living as a righteous Gentile than as a sinning Jew. It's an important thing to remember. Not only is the Bate Dean responsible to the potential convert, the Bate Dean is responsible to the Jewish community. It's not healthy to bring in members, new members to the Jewish community who are going to be contributing negatively in a spiritual way. It doesn't help the health of the Jewish community to have more and more people who are not observing Judaism. And so there's a responsibility to the Jewish community as well. In addition, the Bate Dean is charged with ensuring that the candidates for conversion are sincere. Unfortunately, there are many people, and we know this from experience, for example Christian missionaries who have sought to infiltrate the Jewish community, convert to Judaism so that they may in their own words for example say, well now I'm a Jew for Jesus, or they may seek to be able to move to Israel. And as a Jew, they become automatic citizens and the state sponsors their citizenship. So there might be many reasons why people could have insincere reasons for seeking to convert to Judaism. And so the Bate Dean has a responsibility to screen people both at a responsibility to the potential candidate and to the Jewish community. Now how does the Bate Dean test for the sincerity and the commitment of a person to observe the Torah? So the Bate Dean basically does it by requiring that the candidate go through a period of study and of trying on the Torah itself, both studying the Torah and trying it on. It's important for the candidate to study the Torah because they have to know what they're getting into. They have to know what they're committing themselves to. We don't want to have someone that converts and then discovers a little while later on, oh you mean that was something that I'm required to do. So we want the person that's converting to basically know more or less exactly what they're committing to. And then we want them to begin observing the Torah, to actually begin observing the Torah so that the Bate Dean is able to test both their knowledge and their sincerity. And the Bate Dean itself is not able to personally supervise every candidate. For example, in most Jewish communities the Bate Dean is not a full-time job that the rabbis have. They're generally speaking senior rabbis in the community who are extremely busy and it's very difficult to get them even together, to get three of people together for a meeting. So what happens is in order to be able to properly supervise and vet the process, the Bate Dean in almost all communities requires that the candidate secure a sponsoring rabbi that will oversee their progress. In addition, many communities recommend that the candidate for conversion secure a tutor that can study with them. It's probably not going to be an absolute requirement because a tutor will generally speaking charge money, but it's often recommended. And at some point during this process which takes approximately two years and it can take longer if the Bate Dean sees the person is not progressing adequately, but a process will normally take about two years, the Bate Dean will require at some point that the person relocate to within walking distance of a synagogue if they are not living in proximity to a synagogue when they begin the process. Now it's important to understand why that is a requirement. Why is it so important that the person live within walking distance to a synagogue? First of all, Judaism requires being part of a community. We don't live as Jews in isolation. You can't just again pick up a book in Nunavit if you're living there and read all about Judaism and begin trying to practice Judaism and think that you can convert. Judaism requires that we become part of a community. As Ruth said, your people are going to be my people. And so the convert is literally marrying into a family. They're joining a family. And so in order to do that for real, it means being with the community. Number two, much of Judaism and much of Jewish practice, it revolves around synagogue. Synagogues are critical both for prayer and for study. And so it's important for the potential convert to have access to a synagogue and to be part of synagogue life. Number three, we learn much about Judaism by practicing it rather than reading about it. For example, a person will learn much more about how to observe Shabbat by being with families that observe Shabbat than by reading articles and books about Sabbath observance. So when a person that is in the process of conversion moves into a Jewish community and becomes attached to a synagogue and gets to know the people of the synagogue and develops relationships with the people in the synagogue, that candidate for conversion will be invited to the homes of the members of that synagogue. They'll be invited to come for Shabbat meals, for holiday meals. And it's at those encounters, those meetings, those experiences where the person that's trying to learn about Judaism really learns about it. And finally, when the person is living in the community, going to classes, developing relationships with rabbis, getting to know members of the community, getting to spend more time with their sponsoring rabbi, the sponsoring rabbi has the ability to properly gauge how they're doing, how they're progressing. Unless the person is living within the community, it's really impossible for anyone to know whether or not they are learning and they're growing. In most procedures, this whole process, which again I said takes about two years, the bait-in will have an initial meeting to first approve the person's candidacy. Not every single person that desires to go through the process of conversion will be accepted. If the rabbis initially feel that someone is mentally unstable or whatever other reasons that present at the initial meeting, the rabbis at that very beginning of the process may not accept 100% of seekers as a candidate. Most people will be accepted if they appear to be somewhat normal and sincere. During the two-year process, again I'm saying two years approximately, the bait-in will often meet with the candidate several times just to monitor their progress. And then at the end of the process, when the candidate feels they are ready and their tutor and or sponsoring rabbi feels that they're ready, they'll conclude the process. In some communities like here in Toronto, the bait-in requires the candidate take an extensive exam, an extensive written exam. Here the exam is quite long. It can take about 12 hours. And it's done. It's a tool to help gauge how much the candidate has actually progressed. If everything goes well, they will organize a final meeting. Where at the final meeting, the following takes place. If the candidate is a male and if the candidate had been surgically circumcised as a child, which many North American boys are, so then at the very last meeting, the bait-in will have what is called a hatafat-dam-brit. They will take a symbolic drop of blood for the circumcision. And that's done immediately prior to the immersion in a pool of water called a mikvah. And when the person emerges from that body of water from that ritual bath, they are a Jew. Obviously in the case of a woman candidate, they just go straight to the mikvah. In the case where the male was never circumcised ever as a child, so that is a more difficult process obviously for an adult. And that will take place before the final meeting where they will immerse in a mikvah. Most bait-deans have an administrative fee for this entire process, which ranges approximately between $600 and $1,800 for the whole process depending upon the city. And I'll just share one final thought, and this is a question that I often receive from people. They ask the question, why do the rabbis make it so difficult to convert? And the answer I believe is very simple. The rabbis don't make it so difficult to convert. The rabbis do not expect anything of a potential convert that other Jews are expected to do. The potential convert is not asked to perform any mitzvoth to observe any commandments that other Jews are not observing or committed to. So again, the process of conversion is simply a person who decides and seeks to accept upon themselves the observance of the Torah. That is the central definition of conversion. The rabbis, the bait-in, the community is tasked with gauging whether the person is sincere and they feel to the best of their estimation the person will follow through on their commitments. And that's why the process essentially involves a period of study and of practice to the point where the bait-in is able to feel confident that the person will follow through on their commitment to observe the Torah.