In reaction to this, I say:
As a convert to Judaism, I’ve experienced snide remarks about converts maybe once or twice or maybe never. I don’t remember. I don’t treasure these things and cry myself to sleep over them.
Any group worth joining has initiations and this hazing is not just official (with the rabbis) but with the born Jew whose feelings are every bit as legitimate as the convert’s. Jews have a long proud history and to think that anyone who converts can immediately appropriate this and walk around proclaiming his Jewishness is disconcerting.
A convert has to earn his stripes. If he’s not strong enough to deal with some skepticism and rudeness, then he’s a wimp and the Jews don’t need him.
If a convert can’t handle some hazing, how’s he going to handle anti-Semitism? By running back to his mommy?
Cry me a river over Lauren Winner. Every rude skeptical remark by Jews about her conversion to Judaism was amply justified by her subsequent conversion to Christianity.
There’s nothing wrong with born-Jews wanting to marry another born-Jew just as there’s nothing wrong with someone who values words wanting to marry a reader of books.
The dirty truth is that most converts are unstable Jews. If you count converts through all streams of Judaism, I bet that more than 90% don’t become observant Jews and that at least half don’t go on to do many things Jewish. Such converts are no benefit to the Jewish people.
Reb Phil writes to Jewcy: "I’ve always thought you had to have a screw loose somewhere to accept all the nonsensical teachings that orthodox Judaism requires of the convert. Does anyone really believe that God hates it when Jews carry keys in their pockets on the sabbath while walking through their neighborhoods, except when those neighborhoods are circumscribed by a thin wire (i.e. an eruv)? Or that there exists a God who really cares that Jews not wear garments containing mixtures of linen and wool? Anyone who converts to such a system of silly beliefs is apt to be daft to begin with, which makes the probability of an unhappy outcome that much greater."
