The only question that really matters in terms of conversion is this: is the prospective convert knowledgeable enough and committed enough to embrace Judaism?
It may well be that your children will gravitate towards Jewish practice and if they are serious enough, this may lead a Beth Din to look favourably on their potential conversion. However, in order for a Beth Din to agree to convert them, you would have to demonstrate that your home is a place that will nurture full religious observance. In theory, this may be possible if you are deeply committed. In practice, I imagine it will be very difficult given that your wife and your children's mother is not Jewish. How, for example will you manage to keep a kosher kitchen? What atmosphere will there be in the home on Shabbat? How will you prepare for and celebrate Jewish festivals? These are not insurmountable problems; I only point them out to demonstrate the challenges.
There is another option and that is to imbue your children with your Jewish values without necessarily anticipating their conversion. So by all means send them to a Jewish school and be as supportive as you can at home by encouraging their Jewish learning and by learning and practising more yourself. If as a family you gravitate towards greater Jewish practice and commitment, you can then explore the possibility of conversion. If not, then at least you will have raised your children with a respect for Judaism and an appreciation for Jewish values, which in today's morally relativistic world, is in itself no small achievement.
 | Rabbi Jonathan Romain Jonathan Romain is rabbi at Maidenhead (Reform) Synagogue. |
Until recently, the standard answer has been that children of a non-Jewish mother acquire Jewish status by either converting with her or doing so independently in adulthood.
But this begs an awkward question. If the mother does not want to convert herself, but is genuinely happy for them to do so as they are growing up, why force her either to undergo a sham conversion or to deny the children Jewish status till later life?
Surely what is important is their Jewish education and identity, through experiencing home ceremonies, being part of synagogue life or attending a Jewish school.
For this reason, Reform Judaism allows minors to acquire Jewish status in their own right if both parents request it, the children appear before its Beth Din and the mother has done a course on Judaism. Liberal Judaism accepts as Jewish the child of one Jewish parent if the child has had a Jewish upbringing.
But might it be time to automatically accept those with a Jewish mother or father either way? Why disenfranchise those with a Jewish lineage who want to maintain it? It is worth remembering that for the first 1,800 years of Judaism, the tradition was that Jewish status went through the father's line.
That is why Joseph could marry an Egyptian woman and Moses marry a Midianite, but still have Jewish children. We have remnants of this original system today in the line of a Cohen or Levi going through the father, while the Hebrew name of children in Orthodox circles incorporates their father's name, not that of their mother.
It was only in the time of the Mishnah in the second century that the rabbis switched Jewish descent from the patrilineal line to the matrilineal one (Kiddushin 31.12; 68b). Suddenly, it was the mother that made you Jewish. That was a major reform, undertaken to meet the needs of the time. Perhaps another change is needed today, because what counts is the home in which children grow up, not the womb from which they emerge.
Maybe we should marry both Jewish traditions - the earlier patrilineal one and the later matrilineal one - and say that Jewish status depends on having one Jewish parent, irrespective of gender.
If that was the case, your children could have a bar/batmitzvah, while the community would be including those with Jewish roots rather than pushing them away.
