Converting to Judaism? Live in the Chicago area or want it LONG DISTANCE ONLINE CONVERSIONM?
Call 847 331 3584 for details of our unique program
Introduction to Judaism
Program for conversion to Judaism
A 16-sessions Course for Potential Converts
God, Holy Books, Holidays, Life Cycle, Values, History, Kashrut, Kabbalah, Israel
Enroll anytime!
Students are accepted on an ongoing basis.
The program consists of:
We were told that we have the nation's largest synagogue based conversion program.You can just take the course and convert with another Bet Din oruse our Bet din to convert.
It is a standard Conservative program of 16 sessions and includes
1. Books to read
2. Items to memorize from a cd and videos
3. Values to learn
4. Lectures
5. Optional and unique-500 brief videos on dvds and online to assist you and allow you to make up missed classes
6. Terms to define and send back with videos to assist
7. 100 question exam with the answers on videos
8. Essay to write
9. Bet Din of Conservative or Orthodox ordained Rabbis, (though this conversion, like all done by non-Orthodox Rabbis, will probably not be recognized by the Orthodox.)
10. Syllabus for each session outlining the work for each session
11. Meet with Bet Din,sign Declaration of faith
Class meets Tuesday nights 7:30-9:30 PM and optional Shabbat Morning Learner's prayer service twice monthly.
Cost
$300 tuition, $125 books and materials,
payable by check, credit card or paypal
not including final conversion fees at the end of:
Mikveh $150 person/$350 family cap
Males require ritual circumcision $75
Honorarium to 2 guest Rabbi on bet Din $100 each
ESYNAGOGUE.COM Long Distance Learning for Conversion Application Form (rev. 9/08)
Today’s Date:
Name: Date of Birth:
Phone: Email:
Street Address:
City: State/Region:
Country: Zip/Postal Code:
Name of Spouse or Partner (if applicable):
Names(s) and ages of Children:
Occupation: Employer:
Educational History (names of schools, majors, degrees earned):
Present/Past Religious Affiliation:
How did you learn about the program?
Explain your interest in converting to Judaism:
Describe any prior Jewish learning. If you have previously worked with a rabbi, include name and contact info:
___I/we understand this conversion, done under Conservative Rabbinic auspices, may not be acceptable to Orthodox Rabbis and the Israeli Orthodox Rabbinic establishment.
I/we are paying via paypal _____or Visa____or Mastercard_____or American Express
if by credit, then we need billing name and address, card number and expiration.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Upcoming weeks parasha videos
My videos of the upcoming week on youtube
Parashat Ki Tovo-Optimistic future depends on "If"JewU 205
Parashat Netzavim- Free will, JewU 213
Parshat Vayelech
The Bible says "Be strong and of good courage" JewU 218
Parashat Ki Tovo-Optimistic future depends on "If"JewU 205
Parashat Netzavim- Free will, JewU 213
Parshat Vayelech
The Bible says "Be strong and of good courage" JewU 218
My youtube videos on the upcoming jewish holidays
Selihote-penitential service prior to Rosh Hashanah JewU 123
Prepare for Rosh Hashanah-Elul JewU 189
Rosh Hashanah Jewish New year JewU 65
High Holiday Bible readings JewU 153
Rabbi stories: shofar, messages, reward JewU 210
Shofar-Ram's horn JewU 94
An Amazing Shofar Ram's Horn Service JewU 233
Repentance-Teshuva in Judaism-Yom Kippur JewU39
How world's smartest person helps with Yom Kippur JewU 163
Yom Kippur Jewish Atonement Day JewU 66
Yom Kippur thoughts 5769 Jewu 433
Biblical Book of Jonah-its meaning JewU 152
Origin of Yizkor memorial service JewU 70
Books referred to in High Holiday sermon JewU 234
Destination High Holidays JewU 188
Prepare for Rosh Hashanah-Elul JewU 189
Rosh Hashanah Jewish New year JewU 65
High Holiday Bible readings JewU 153
Rabbi stories: shofar, messages, reward JewU 210
Shofar-Ram's horn JewU 94
An Amazing Shofar Ram's Horn Service JewU 233
Repentance-Teshuva in Judaism-Yom Kippur JewU39
How world's smartest person helps with Yom Kippur JewU 163
Yom Kippur Jewish Atonement Day JewU 66
Yom Kippur thoughts 5769 Jewu 433
Biblical Book of Jonah-its meaning JewU 152
Origin of Yizkor memorial service JewU 70
Books referred to in High Holiday sermon JewU 234
Destination High Holidays JewU 188
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Reach out for all
San Francisco - Go to almost any Jewish conference and you’ll likely find the ethnic makeup to be largely, and unsurprisingly, white.
But at a recent plenum in San Francisco, a group championing ethnic diversity in Jewish life turned that situation on its head, as scores of black, Latino and Asian Jews from around the world came together to grapple with the challenges they face gaining acceptance in the mainstream Jewish world.
The group of 80 Jewish leaders from 31 different countries — including Uganda, South Africa and Portugal — who gathered the first weekend this month for the Be’Chol Lashon International Think Tank had one clear message for the Jewish community: Open your doors to diversity. The sixth annual event, organized by Be’Chol Lashon — a Bay Area initiative dedicated to fostering diversity in Jewish life — and fittingly held at the Hotel Kabuki in the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown, centered this year on questions of conversion and whether Judaism might take a more proactive role in gaining adherents.
As demographic studies in recent years have shown a shrinking American Jewish population, the organized Jewish community has poured millions of dollars into strengthening identity in young Jews. But the mainstream response to the so-called population crisis, which has resulted in a slew of identity-building projects — among them, “Birthright Israel,” a program that takes tens of thousands of American Jews in their teens and 20s on free trips to the Jewish state — is not the solution, according to Diane and Gary Tobin, co-founders of Be’Chol Lashon. The organization, whose name is Hebrew for “in every tongue,” was established eight years ago in the wake of the Tobins’ 1997 adoption of an African American boy.
Gary Tobin, a Jewish researcher who is president of San Francisco’s Institute for Jewish & Community Research, contends that only through welcoming converts of all ethnicities and breaking down the barriers to conversion will the Jewish people be able to reverse the trend of dwindling population numbers. Tobin is referring not just to welcoming converts who are married to Jews, but also to reaching out to non-Jews generally.
“If we think that going to Jewish day school or trips to Israel are going to save the Jewish people, it’s just silly,” Tobin said. “The response of the organized Jewish community has been to circle the wagons, and what this room represents is the possibility of expansion, not constriction,” he said, referring to the conference participants.
The driving philosophy behind Be’Chol Lashon, Tobin added, is that Jews should, in fact, “be competing in the marketplace of world religion.” If Jews began reaching out across color lines, the number of Jews in America alone could increase, over the next quarter of a century, to 12 million from 6 million, he said.
Indeed, some in the organized Jewish community take issue with Tobin’s approach. In more traditional corners, emphasizing outreach over strengthening Jewish identity from within is often met with skepticism.
“We’re worried about bringing people in, but what about people leaving?” said Rabbi Elazar Muskin of the Modern Orthodox Los Angeles synagogue Young Israel of Century City. “We have to have more money and creative efforts spent energizing those who are already within the Jewish community rather than proselytizing.”
Conference participants were as diverse geographically as they were in skin color and ethnicity. Participants included Rabbi Capers Funnye of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken, a predominantly African American Jewish congregation on Chicago’s South Side; Ishe F.C. Raulinga Hamisi, an elder of South Africa’s Lemba community, which claims Jewish roots, and Miguel Segura, who was raised in Mallorca as a Xueta, the name given to descendants of Jews from Mallorca who were forced by the Catholic Church to convert to Christianity.
On the first day of the conference, Jewish legal scholars — including a Modern Orthodox rabbi, Darren Kleinberg — parsed Jewish law, or Halacha, and what it has to say about conversion. Contrary to widely held belief, the panelists agreed, Jewish law is far more open to conversion than contemporary practice would indicate.
That discussion was enough to sway at least one Korean American conference participant, Helen Kim, to reconsider her reservations about conversion. Kim, a 35-year-old sociology professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., is married to a Jewish man and has felt drawn to the religion ever since she first developed a grade-school crush on a Jewish boy. Kim, who has served for the past two years on the board of her local Reform synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that she has long felt ambivalent about formally converting to Judaism, because of questions of bloodline. But the panel on Halacha and conversion convinced her otherwise. “This conference has made me feel less resistant to conversion and more comfortable with it,” Kim said.
Another panel considered the effects of last February’s ruling by the Israeli chief rabbinate that only 15 rabbinic courts and 40 designated Orthodox rabbis in America could perform sanctioned conversions. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, a 39-year-old leader of the Abayudaya, a group of some 800 Jews in eastern Uganda whose ancestors have practiced the religion for nearly a century, said that it was refreshing for him to understand that even among Orthodox Jews, there are conflicts over the question “Who is a Jew?”
“It has become a Jewish culture that we don’t accept each other,” said Sizomu, who will return to Uganda next month, after receiving rabbinic ordination from Los Angeles’s American Jewish University. “You are frustrated with the Orthodox, and then you see they don’t even accept each other.”
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Thu. May 08, 2008
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But at a recent plenum in San Francisco, a group championing ethnic diversity in Jewish life turned that situation on its head, as scores of black, Latino and Asian Jews from around the world came together to grapple with the challenges they face gaining acceptance in the mainstream Jewish world.
The group of 80 Jewish leaders from 31 different countries — including Uganda, South Africa and Portugal — who gathered the first weekend this month for the Be’Chol Lashon International Think Tank had one clear message for the Jewish community: Open your doors to diversity. The sixth annual event, organized by Be’Chol Lashon — a Bay Area initiative dedicated to fostering diversity in Jewish life — and fittingly held at the Hotel Kabuki in the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown, centered this year on questions of conversion and whether Judaism might take a more proactive role in gaining adherents.
As demographic studies in recent years have shown a shrinking American Jewish population, the organized Jewish community has poured millions of dollars into strengthening identity in young Jews. But the mainstream response to the so-called population crisis, which has resulted in a slew of identity-building projects — among them, “Birthright Israel,” a program that takes tens of thousands of American Jews in their teens and 20s on free trips to the Jewish state — is not the solution, according to Diane and Gary Tobin, co-founders of Be’Chol Lashon. The organization, whose name is Hebrew for “in every tongue,” was established eight years ago in the wake of the Tobins’ 1997 adoption of an African American boy.
Gary Tobin, a Jewish researcher who is president of San Francisco’s Institute for Jewish & Community Research, contends that only through welcoming converts of all ethnicities and breaking down the barriers to conversion will the Jewish people be able to reverse the trend of dwindling population numbers. Tobin is referring not just to welcoming converts who are married to Jews, but also to reaching out to non-Jews generally.
“If we think that going to Jewish day school or trips to Israel are going to save the Jewish people, it’s just silly,” Tobin said. “The response of the organized Jewish community has been to circle the wagons, and what this room represents is the possibility of expansion, not constriction,” he said, referring to the conference participants.
The driving philosophy behind Be’Chol Lashon, Tobin added, is that Jews should, in fact, “be competing in the marketplace of world religion.” If Jews began reaching out across color lines, the number of Jews in America alone could increase, over the next quarter of a century, to 12 million from 6 million, he said.
Indeed, some in the organized Jewish community take issue with Tobin’s approach. In more traditional corners, emphasizing outreach over strengthening Jewish identity from within is often met with skepticism.
“We’re worried about bringing people in, but what about people leaving?” said Rabbi Elazar Muskin of the Modern Orthodox Los Angeles synagogue Young Israel of Century City. “We have to have more money and creative efforts spent energizing those who are already within the Jewish community rather than proselytizing.”
Conference participants were as diverse geographically as they were in skin color and ethnicity. Participants included Rabbi Capers Funnye of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken, a predominantly African American Jewish congregation on Chicago’s South Side; Ishe F.C. Raulinga Hamisi, an elder of South Africa’s Lemba community, which claims Jewish roots, and Miguel Segura, who was raised in Mallorca as a Xueta, the name given to descendants of Jews from Mallorca who were forced by the Catholic Church to convert to Christianity.
On the first day of the conference, Jewish legal scholars — including a Modern Orthodox rabbi, Darren Kleinberg — parsed Jewish law, or Halacha, and what it has to say about conversion. Contrary to widely held belief, the panelists agreed, Jewish law is far more open to conversion than contemporary practice would indicate.
That discussion was enough to sway at least one Korean American conference participant, Helen Kim, to reconsider her reservations about conversion. Kim, a 35-year-old sociology professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., is married to a Jewish man and has felt drawn to the religion ever since she first developed a grade-school crush on a Jewish boy. Kim, who has served for the past two years on the board of her local Reform synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that she has long felt ambivalent about formally converting to Judaism, because of questions of bloodline. But the panel on Halacha and conversion convinced her otherwise. “This conference has made me feel less resistant to conversion and more comfortable with it,” Kim said.
Another panel considered the effects of last February’s ruling by the Israeli chief rabbinate that only 15 rabbinic courts and 40 designated Orthodox rabbis in America could perform sanctioned conversions. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, a 39-year-old leader of the Abayudaya, a group of some 800 Jews in eastern Uganda whose ancestors have practiced the religion for nearly a century, said that it was refreshing for him to understand that even among Orthodox Jews, there are conflicts over the question “Who is a Jew?”
“It has become a Jewish culture that we don’t accept each other,” said Sizomu, who will return to Uganda next month, after receiving rabbinic ordination from Los Angeles’s American Jewish University. “You are frustrated with the Orthodox, and then you see they don’t even accept each other.”
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Thu. May 08, 2008
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