The Myth

One of the more difficult things that converts face is the fear that if they ever slip a little in halakha, someone will “catch” them and question their status as a Jew. And people WILL question it. I know that. (All the more reason why it is hurtful to expose a convert.) However, a beit din cannot take away your status. Once the mikveh is done in a completely Kosher way, it’s done.

I think the myth partly comes based on how many people – my mother included – have had conversions and were later expected to “upgrade.” And I once had the miserable experience, before my own re-conversion of being treated as a totally different person once I’d let slip that my mother had converted to Judaism. (At the time I was less obviously observant so the person who treated me that way assumed I was utterly ignorant. In a way he was right. That was the first sense I ever had that my mother’s conversion could not have been legitimate enough for me, and ultimately this helped me become more osbervant. But I still resent the way I was treated by that man, and I feel a little cheated that I had to be almost forced to enhance my halakhic growth rather than just get to it in my own time. It’s for another time to discuss whether I ever would have reached a point when I was happy with my own observance if I hadn’t been pushed in that way.)

In any case, while a beit din can legitimately question a non-Kosher conversion, it cannot take away a Kosher conversion. At the same time, however, if a person has a halakhic conversion and then openly and brazenly violates halakha, the beit din will become much more cautious about converting anyone else. The truth is, I think that if I were on a beit din and responsible for making a person into a Jew, I would really keep an eye on them to make sure my sense about them was well-founded. And I can see too why a beit din can be so very slow and cautious about completing a conversion for that very same reason… to make sure they’ve done the right thing. But it’s not fun, or fair, to live in fear of Jewish eyes in that way.