"Why Not Just Convert?"

Emunah Avot does not seek to tell others what they should do regarding conversion into the branches of Judaism that do not, at present, accept patrilineal descent as a basis for Jewish identity.  Individuals must do what is right for them in obtaining basic rights, privileges, and responsibilities in the section of the Jewish community that is right for them spiritually.

That said, Emunah Avot vigorously asserts that conversion does not solve all of the problems matrilineal descent causes in the lives of patrilineal Jews, and in the life of the wider Jewish community.  Having been excluded from the Jewish fold prior to conversion may leave emotional scars that no mikveh can ever heal.  And for that reason, Emunah Avot strongly encourages even those patrilineal Jews who have had a halakhic conversion to continue to work for the recognition and acceptance of patrilineal descent by those parts of the Jewish community that currently do not recognize or accept it.

In the organized Jewish context, patrilineal descent is often treated as a "synagogue issue"--that is, primarily as a question about whether a particular person will be able to join a synagogue, celebrate a bar/bat mitzvah or wedding within the context of a particular community, and so forth.  What is almost universally overlooked, however, is that traditional matrilineal descent has enormous negative effects on Jewish families and, in some cases, on non-Jews who are involved with Jews:

• Jewish grandparents frequently refuse to have a relationship with a patrilineal child, favor their halakhically Jewish grandchildren over the patrilineal child, or bequeath money inequitalbly, to the detriment of the patrilineal child.  Scars from this kind of emotional rejection can last a lifetime.

• Jewish men who have interdated--even in contexts where Jewish women are unavailable for dating, such as in remote rural areas or foreign countries lacking a large Jewish population--often become estranged from Judaism altogether after family members react far more negatively to their interdating than they do to a daughter's interdating or even intermarriage.  Some men have reported that parents refused to meet or see their non-Jewish girlfriends, while openly tolerating a sister's intermarriage.  This kind of sexism and hypocrisy is a direct outgrowth of matrilineal descent.

• Many Jewish men often receive the message, explicitly or implicitly, that it is okay to "fool around" with non-Jewish women before marriage, while it is not okay to "fool around" with Jewish women.  This attitude, rooted in sexism and xenophobia, is deplorable, and often based in an unstated assumption that all non-Jewish women--more than half of the world's population--are little better than prostitutes.

• Many Jewish men choose to date but not to marry non-Jewish women, or present conversion to Judaism as an ultimatum when they feel the time has come for the relationship either to end in marriage, or to end.  Jewish men feel pressure to end relationships with non-Jewish women in ways that Jewish women do not feel pressure to end relationships with non-Jewish men.  

• Jewish men who have fathered children by non-Jewish women are sometimes encouraged not to marry these women or to be emotionally involved in the lives of these children, so that they can be free to marry a Jewish woman and father children who are "really Jewish".

• Intermarried Jewish men who become baalei teshuvah--that is, Jewish men who have returned, in particular, to Orthodoxy--sometimes abandon their wife and "not Jewish" child out of guilt or communal pressure.  Even when these men do maintain a relationship with their children, the children are often made to feel unwanted and ashamed when they visit the father's synagogue.

Not one of these problems is solvable through simple conversion.  We at Emunah Avot hold that these situations and behaviors are neither holy nor neccessary, and that they are entirely unworthy of a tradition that calls upon us to be a nation of priests and a holy people.  For the Jewish community to address these problems, only altering the nature of Jewish descent, to treat men and women equally, will suffice.