There are plenty of shuls and communities where a convert and a baal teshuva (a person born Jewish who becomes Orthodox later in life) will never fit in and plenty where he will. I’d put the ratio at about 70-30, with 30% representing communities that will give him a fair chance. Among the Orthodox who do outreach to other Jews, there’s usually a two-tiered social life that is never mentioned explicitly. Those who are born and raised Orthodox will usually prefer to mix with the same. I have no problems with this. It’s natural for like to mix with like. You can’t just become an Orthodox Jew and expect to accepted as those who’ve been doing it for 40 years. It’s a complicated religion and how are you going to trust the kashrut etc of those learning the system?
As a convert to Judaism, I feel like I should be entitled to sprinkle my speech (depending on the company) with colorful expressions like sheygetz and shiksa because it is obvious coming from a man of such immense good will as myself that I mean no harm. I get told all the time by modern Jews that these terms are demeaning and shouldn’t be said, while traditional Jews have no problem with them and even more colorful terms.
* Grifters daven hardest, particularly on Rosh Hashanah. They love to kiss the Torah and to shake with religious fervor.
* Does a rabbi and a shul have liability if they allow someone in who’s an admitted child molester?
* Ambulances and fire fighters won’t go into many ghetto areas (in Los Angeles and elsewhere) without a police escort, hence a lot of people there die who would otherwise live. Those deaths are on the gangbangers.
* I don’t see why it is any worse to kill people with chemical gas versus machine gunning them, ergo, why intervene in Syria?
* Seeing BYU thrash 15th ranked Texas tonight, reminds me that I had such Mormon envy growing up as a Seventh-Day Adventist. Adventists seemed without accomplishment in the world aside from in health (Adventists were never in the news except for health and weird things like David Koresh etc) while Mormons dominated in business, sports, politics, etc.
