Conversion

Facing exile and persecution, an Iranian dissident crossed from devout Muslim to student of Judaism

IRANIAN AFFAIRS: Iranian refugee Behnam Vali Heydarian recounts persecution, attacks, pro-Israel activism, and fears of deportation to Iran after his journey from Islam to Christianity and Judaism.

IRANIAN ACTIVISTS display the Lion and Sun flag alongside Israel’s flag outside Georgia’s parliament at one of the rallies that interviewee Behnam Vali Heydarian says he was pressured to stop organizing.
Rubaha, 8, watches from the entrance of her home as a buffalo is held down for sacrificial slaughter in celebration of Eid al-Adha in the Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan, June 8, 2025.

European Parliament demands Pakistan free 13-year-old Christian girl in forced marriage, conversion

RALLYING IN JERUSALEM for the Bnei Anusim.

Latin American Jewish converts caught between communal bans and Israel’s Law of Return

A Yazidi woman holds a flame during the Charshama Sor Red New Year ceremony at the Lalish temple in Iraq in April. For a community repeatedly driven from its ancestral homes and subjected to forced conversions, religious tradition has become an enduring expression of survival and continuity.

From forced conversion to genocide: How Yazidis carry centuries of persecution into exile


Ben-Gvir calls to end recognition of Reform conversions for aliyah

Ben-Gvir wishes to establish a situation in which only those who have been converted by Orthodox rabbis will be entitled to immigrate to Israel according to the Law of Return.

 Head of the Otzma Yehudit party MK Itamar Ben Gvir and members of the party speak to the press after a meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog at the President's residence in Jerusalem on November 10, 2022.

Parashat Lech Lecha: Was Abraham an influencer?

Influencing others becomes so addictive that our personal behavior is, itself, influenced by our overwhelming desire to influence others. Are influencers the ultimate influencees? 

 INFLUENCERS: NOT a question of talent but of garndering ‘likes.’

The Zionist essence: Not political, not religious, just a path home

Zionism is a path toward home. Zionism has no political adherence. It is neither a calling for expansion nor a religious movement.

 YAEL ROZENMAN-ISMAEL (speaking at Jerusalem’s Begin Center): Zionism is a path toward home.

Who is a Jew? 70% of Jewish Israelis say patrilineal descent doesn't count

The poll is the IDI's biennial statistical report and serves as an in-depth look at the balance between religion and state that is so central to Israel and Israeli society.

Israeli police officers clash with Ultra Orthodox Jewish men during a protest against the enforcement of coronavirus emergency regulations, in the Ultra Orthodox jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, October 4, 2020

Sephardic Jewish ancestry certificate now open for millions of applicants

Recent research has demonstrated that as many as 200 million people in the Americas and Europe have Jewish ancestry who were forcibly converted.

Certificate of Sephardi Jewish ancestry.

Are too many Germans converting to Judaism? - analysis

In a DW column titled “Why the increasing number of converts is a problem for Judaism,” Avitall Gerstetter charged that too many people in Germany convert for the wrong reasons.

The German flag is pictured at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, November 7, 2017

Conversion in Israel: The tug of war between the state, rabbinate

How did conversion to Judaism get caught in up the midst of an Israeli political controversy over the Law of Return and identifying who is a Jew?

 A WOMAN stands before the rabbinical court.

Cardinal with Jewish ancestry honors Jewish-born nun murdered in Auschwitz

Born Edith Stein in Breslau, Germany to an Orthodox Jewish family, Stein converted to Catholicism in her 30s.

 THE GATE to Auschwitz, photographed in January 2021, 76 years after the camp’s liberation: There are still countless Jews who say about the Shoah, ‘If this could happen, how can anyone still believe in God?’

The journey from Jewish convert to accomplished artist, scribe

Neriah Israel's journey from South Africa to Dimona

 Neriah Israel writing a page of a Sefer Torah scroll.

'Covenant': Creating a Jewish conversion spectrum - review

Turning some of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s ideas toward resolving the Jewish identity crisis

 REFORM JEWS hold up broken hearts as they demonstrate outside the Knesset in 1997 against pending legislation by ultra-religious parties to tighten their grip on conversion issues.