On the evening of June 1, a synagogue in Mississauga, Ont., will officially welcome nine new members of the Jewish faith during Shavuot services. The conversion candidates have been studying for months, having undergone ritual baths and—in some cases—symbolic circumcisions, all to join the Tribe. The timing of the ceremony for these “Jews by choice” harkens back to the Biblical story we read on Shavuot about Ruth, a Moabite woman who joined the Israelites through marriage, and whose descendants included King David and Jesus.
For months, Canadian rabbis of all denominations have been reporting heightened levels of interest in conversions. Some candidates are looking to commit for their Jewish spouse; others proceeded solo on their own spiritual journeys. However, one thing many had in common: Oct. 7 has a lot to do with it.
Why would anyone want to become Jewish, you ask, when antisemitism and anti-Zionism are becoming increasingly mainstream? We get answers on today’s episode of The CJN Daily. Rabbis Taylor Baruchel of Holy Blossom Temple, the largest Reform congregation in Canada, and Stephen Wise, the spiritual leader of Shaarei-Beth El Congregation, in Oakville, join to explain the phenomenon.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s the sound of protests earlier this week in Toronto, outside the Casa Loma Events Centre, where a former Israeli ambassador was the keynote speaker at a gala fundraising dinner for the Jewish advocacy group known as the Abraham Global Peace Initiative. About 50 protestors blocked access while the guests were trying to drive in and park. Toronto police arrested at least two people. Charges included assaulting a police officer, assaulting a couple of pro-Israel guests, wearing a mask as a disguise, and mischief. In Montreal on the same night, anti-Israel protesters harassed guests entering a fundraising event honoring wounded Israeli soldiers. It was being held at the Chevre Kadisha Synagogue by Beit Halochem. Meanwhile, incidents of intimidation and anti-Semitism have become commonplace in Canada since October 7. This weekend, nearly 20 Canadians in the Toronto area who weren’t born Jewish are spending the Shavuot holiday realizing a spiritual dream. They’re becoming official members of the Jewish community, converts to Judaism. They’ve spent a year or more studying with local Reform rabbis and participating in the Reform movement’s formal conversion programme. One such ceremony is set for the Solel Congregation in Mississauga, while for others still in the final stages of conversion. This week, their cases went before a rabbinical council of rabbis who had to certify their learning and then take them to the Mikveh for a ritual bath. Canadian rabbis of all denominations have been reporting increased interest since October 7 from people wanting to become Jews.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: Our students are really exemplifying what it is to live with a Jewish identity that is centered and in pride and not in being defined by the exterior or in suffering or fear. And I think that’s what we all need to lean into. So I say, thank God for these students and these people who are saying, yes, we are with you.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Friday, May 30, 2025. Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation. If you’ve been a regular listener to this podcast, you may remember before Hanukkah, we brought you my interview with three converts about why they’re doing it, especially now when it’s really challenging to be a proud Jew in public. If you missed the episode, don’t forget to listen to it. We put the link in our show notes. Their stories were deeply moving, and the reason we spoke with them was because Rabbi Stephen Wise of Oakville’s Reform Shaarei-Beth El Congregation approached me and told me there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who’ve been flocking to Jewish conversion courses recently in Canada. So much so, they had to cap class registration numbers and put people on waiting lists. The Toronto Introduction to Jewish Life classes have 56 people converting in the pipeline right now. As we approach Shavuot, the biblical holiday where we also read the story of Ruth, the Moabite woman who married into the Jewish faith and after her husband had died, told her mother-in-law Naomi, “Where you go, I’ll go, and your people will be my people,” I wanted to find out what’s behind the rise in interest in conversions and what inspiration can it lend now to a community currently suffering under the weight of hatred. Rabbi Steven Wise joins me now along with Rabbi Taylor Baruchel of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple, where she’s the director of outreach and NextGen engagement. And by the way, Rabbi Wise’s congregation had to go to court earlier this year and recently won an order to keep a noisy anti-Israeli protester from picketing close to the synagogue every Shabbat. Rabbi Wise, we heard from you about this story, so I’ll give you full credit because you sent us an email saying, “Guys, we’re getting a flood of converts and we can’t even accommodate everybody.” So I’m fascinated by this. Can you give us, sort of, walk us through the background to why you decided people needed to know about this?
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Yeah, well, you know, look around the world. It doesn’t seem like things are going well for the Jewish people. Then I go to a meeting of the Reform Rabbis of Toronto, and I hear that the doors are beating down to try and become Jewish. And so much so that we had to close the class because we just didn’t have enough capacity for all the converts that want to be Jewish at this time. I was just overwhelmed by such a response, especially in this year.
Ellin Bessner: Rabbi Baruchel, what have you been seeing at Holy Blossom?
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: Well, I think it’s really been a question of folks who have been Jewish adjacent for a very long time. Maybe they have Jewish family or they don’t fully fit in a box. It’s always been something that they felt pulled towards. Since October 7, they’ve had a lot of clarity coming home of, “No, this is. This is my tribe. This is where I belong.” I really want to make that official. We’ve really been overwhelmed as well. We are actually restructuring how we take on students for conversion or affirmation. There are four rabbis at Holy Blossom, and we’re still struggling to figure out how we can meet the demand that we’re seeing.
Ellin Bessner: Can we talk numbers before we get into some of the more interesting cases that you’ve either kind of started? What are we talking about in terms of numbers, and compare it maybe to last year.
Rabbi Stephen Wise: We have something called the IJL class in Toronto and something called the GIC class in the Western communities, both very similar. I’ll speak first to the one I know more about, which is the Jewish Information Class. It’s been running for a long time. Arlene Botnick from Temple Solel is our teacher. When I started in 2007, I remember I’d send two or three converts from each of the synagogues in Mississauga, Hamilton, Oakville, and let’s say a class would be 12 to 15 people in a typical year. But there’s been an upswing lately, and even since October 7, the numbers are closer to 30 people. So we are seeing a real uptick, and they come from all walks of life. I have a congregant from Iran, a man and his wife, who had been searching and learning. He says there’s some evidence of Judaism in his family, but he emigrated to Canada many years ago. He and his wife this year had been sort of thinking about it. Should we do it? Should we do it? October 7 happened, and two weeks later they came to the synagogue, they meet with me, and they’re like, “We’re ready to become Jewish now.” I’m like, “You realize what just happened?” And they’re like, “No, that’s exactly why we’re here. This, this, Israel’s under attack. The Jew hatred and anti-Semitism. We want to cast our lot with the Jewish people today.”
Ellin Bessner: And so you’re seeing this just in the Western sort of Jewish communities. What are we seeing in Toronto?
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: I think all the more so in the GTA. We have actually was the lead educator for the Intro to Jewish Living course two years ago, and we already had a little bit of a surge then, where we had about 60 people enrolled in a given semester. Now my colleague, Rabbi Bill Tepper, who leads it now, was telling there’s 90 screens. This is starting out on Zoom. They have education on Zoom, and there’s 90. You can’t see everyone. It’s three or four pages of Zoom screens to try to keep up with this demand, which is hence the conversation that Rabbi Wise is talking about of how do we ensure quality of experience and the ability to keep up with this. It’s a huge surge.
Ellin Bessner: So the process is an education for how many months, and then of those, let’s say 90 or the ones you’re seeing, how many actually are going through with it all the way to, I guess, the circumcision Mikvah? I don’t know what you need to do. Tell me how that works.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: Sure. So it’s an academic year of study. It’s about two semesters. I’m not sure of the exact amount of weeks, but close to 40, I would say. Wednesday evenings, it’s a three-hour class with an hour and 15 minutes of Hebrew and an hour and 15 minutes of Judaics. The Hebrew is taught in a smaller cohort, giving them a little bit more attention. Then the Judaics part is tag-team taught by Reform-ordained rabbis throughout the GTA. It spans everything from Shabbat to specifically Reform Jewish practice and everything in between. As you can imagine, it’s quite intensive. There’s homework, there are exams. There’s also a requirement to be meeting with your sponsoring rabbi. That is at the discretion of all of our colleagues. At Holy Blossom, I know we have a requirement of seeing you at least four times. That could be at Tefillah, that could be at prayers, that could be at social programming or volunteering. We really need to see our people at least four times because Judaism is not a solo sport. You are joining a community, not just making a personal choice. If you are someone with a penis and you had not been circumcised, you will have to have a circumcision or hatafat dam brit, as well as then Beit Din and then mikveh.
Ellin Bessner: That’s prick of blood, right?
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: The ritual drawing of blood. Yes.
Ellin Bessner: Just for our listeners who don’t speak Hebrew. So, of the people that you’re seeing who have come nowadays, are they saying to you that they got it from an ancestry test as well? Are you hearing that they figured out they were always Jewish and just didn’t know, or is this more “I want to be Ruth, where you go, I go”?
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Yeah. It’s generally a combination. You wouldn’t believe the stories that we hear. In fact, every month when we gather, we typically spend part of our meeting just hearing some of the unique stories, because everyone’s got a story, it doesn’t matter if they come from a different country or they hear about some roots back in their own family genealogy. Sometimes, as Rabbi Baruchel mentioned earlier, maybe they want to marry somebody who’s Jewish. I met with a student today who’s 20 years old from Vancouver, focused on becoming Jewish. And he’s quite young, so we want to ensure that he’s ready for this big choice in his life. His plan is to go to Israel; he’s already living there. He spent six months there, came back but wants to join the Israeli army and fight for the Jewish people. So we’re definitely seeing all kinds of different things. Vereshel sort of outlined a typical case of a convert coming and showing interest. But we also encounter so many unusual cases that we often meet to try and figure out what’s the best way to guide this person towards Judaism.
Ellin Bessner: Are you seeing this from your colleagues across the country, or is this just an Ontario phenomenon?
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Yeah, we’re seeing it everywhere. We have a rabbi’s Facebook group, as does everybody. Someone posted the other day asking if anyone is seeing a rise in conversion students. I quickly put in, certainly, in fact, we’re capping a class because it’s so full, and comments started popping in one by one—yes. And this is from across Canada, across the United States, in bigger communities like Florida, New York, California, but even in smaller communities across the Midwest, all over the place. It’s unbelievable. I just want to say again that this is a difficult time to be Jewish. Why now of all times would there be a rise in people interested in Judaism? It doesn’t seem correct. I hope and pray that there are people out there very much behind the Jewish people, ready to cast their lot. They are ready to not just think about it but to put their faith into action, to actually come meet with a rabbi, come into the synagogue, start learning, start studying, and broadcast that they are proud to be Jewish. If I could give just one more example—I’m taking a little bit of a segue—but I was in Chicago last spring with a group of students from our youth group, about 20 of us, and we were walking in the downtown area. As we were coming up towards Michigan Avenue, we could hear something going on, some sort of rally. I’m hearing voices and all kinds of things. I realized pretty quickly that this was a pro-Palestinian rally coming down the street. I looked at our kids, all of whom are teenagers, and I’m thinking to myself, do I walk towards this thing? Are kids going to be nervous? Are they scared? Do we want to get into confrontation, trying to figure out how to handle the situation? One of the students, Noah, looks at me and says, “Rabbi, stars out.” He reaches into his necklace, pulls out a big Jewish star, and asks if he should have his Magen David out. I looked at all their faces and said, “Yes. Stars out.” Let’s take that star out, wear it proudly around our neck, and walk up towards Michigan Avenue to see what’s going on. That’s what I’m seeing in these people who are interested in conversion. It’s “stars out.” Let’s show pride. Let’s show who we are. If I’m feeling it inside, I now want to show it on the outside. And I think that’s one of the most impressive things about this phenomenon.
Ellin Bessner: Both of us are having an emotional reaction.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: To hearing a huge emotional reaction. It actually reminds me of a student that I worked with. She started her process before October 7th. This is someone who felt compelled. I have to say, I think it was October 10th or 11th, a Friday, when they called for a day of rage in 2023. That was a terrifying day. I had parents calling me to say, “Are you sending your daughter to school?” She was at a Jewish preschool. You know, “Rabbi, I’m taking the mezuzah off my door. I’m that scared. Does God hate me for that?” There were all these very difficult conversations. I remember that day just thinking, okay, let’s just get through Shabbat. Let’s just get through, and we’ll be okay. Right a little bit before sundown, my phone dings, and it’s a message from one of our students. She said, “I just realized this is the last Shabbat before I’m going to be Jewish,” because she had a mikvah date the next week. “And I am so excited.” I burst into tears and thought, thank God for you, that here is the Jewish world. We’re terrified, rightly so, as my colleague said, it’s a frightening time. And yet here is someone who is rushing and rejoicing in claiming this identity for herself, for claiming our Torah for herself and our people as her people. That is something I’ve held very close to my heart during these months.
Ellin Bessner: Is there a special, I don’t know, module or whatever you call it because of the anti-Semitism since October 7th, that you’re now equipping them that maybe the course didn’t have before? As one rabbi I asked in the Orthodox community, who was also seeing this phenomenon, I said to him, why are they doing it? And he said—I don’t think he was joking—he said, “They’re maso.” But I mean, it was funny, but I mean. Speaker A: So the question is, is there a special training they’re receiving because they have to face stuff maybe converts haven’t faced before?
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: We definitely have a module on antisemitism that has always been a part of it. I think it has become more robust, as has our discussion of Israel.
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Yeah, it’s something that our students ask about sometimes as the class begins. You know, we open up for a few questions before we get into the main curriculum. And the questions come up, especially if there’s some sort of bombing, some specific attack, whatever the news of the week is. It often will come up in that class because it’s a safe space to talk about it. Before anyone becomes a participant in this class, we ask them the major questions: Why would you like to be Jewish? Do you understand what’s happening in the Jewish world? So I ask them point blank, “What’s going on in the world? Are you ready to start this process today?” Without fail, they’re ready, and they have questions. Not only that, in some places, and maybe Baruchel can say the same, they fill the sanctuary with so much love and devotion because this is an active choice they made as adults. They come regularly, bring friends, sit there with smiles on their faces. They are Jewish to the core now that they have joined in with the Jewish people. I couldn’t be happier to do that part of my role as a rabbi to help usher in these people into our faith. It’s one of the greatest things that I can do.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: Absolutely agreed. It’s one of the greatest privileges, I think, and a blessing. I know it definitely makes me feel very fulfilled in my rabbinate to work with these folks and help them find what is theirs and claim their Torah. We see time and time again when we do have couples that we work with, often the Jew by birth doesn’t appreciate the beautiful traditions, heritage, and faith that they’ve been born into. It’s their partner, who is choosing Judaism, that brings them closer in. We’ll see Jewish partners being like, “Oh, I never really saw how cool this was or how interesting or how rich.” I think that’s probably because you stopped engaging with this when you were 13. Can you imagine the rest of the other things in your life if your relationship with it just halted at 13? That’s not the height of your own emotional maturity and development. But now you can take that, and these people who are coming in just saying, “Oh, look at this.” Doing the research and loving Torah lishma, learning for its own sake, is a deeply Jewish tradition. It’s like the Apple saying, there’s an app for that, there’s a text for that, there’s a bracha for that. We can find ways to imbue our lives with that. I think we see that with folks who are choosing Judaism to a really deep extent. Sometimes Jews by choice make the absolute best Jews.
Ellin Bessner: I was going to ask about one more thing. You mentioned Israel. Of course, there are the dichotomies of if you convert as a Reform Jew and then want to marry in Israel or marry an Orthodox, it’s problematic. Some have converted twice or aren’t accepted. So, do the converting class that you teach, do they know this, and are some of them going further to double convert so they can have full rights in Israel and marriage?
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: I think I can speak for us. We are explicitly clear about that. Maybe not all the Jewish world is going to recognize this conversion. I think for most of our people, they’re not looking to head further. But it is important to note that Reform conversion is recognized by the State of Israel for the purposes of aliyah. Marriage and being recognized by the Rabbanut is another piece. I also put that up there with not all of, look, my smicha document says that I am a rabbi in Israel. Not all of Am Yisrael will recognize me as such. There’s a spectrum with that. Are there people who absolutely go and try to go further? Yeah, that is going to be a thing. But I wouldn’t say it’s further; it’s just about getting the proper hecksher. There’s lots of Orthodox rabbis who don’t recognize each other’s conversions at the end.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, is there anything that you would like our listeners to understand about why you think this story is so important to tell and share at this time?
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Well, I guess I’ll go first just because I was the one who pitched the idea. But imagine going to a meeting and sitting in a room and hearing that we have to stop the amount of people converting to Judaism because we can’t handle the capacity. We don’t have enough rabbis, we don’t have enough teachers. This is a great problem to have, and that’s a problem we were ready to solve. We are overwhelmed with gratitude that so many people are choosing Judaism at this time. We’re ready for you. The doors are open. We want to have those conversations. We want to guide you there. We can build up the capacity for whatever is necessary. But we’re just excited by this phenomenon. It’s taken us a step back. We’re like, wow, what is happening? Okay, now let’s roll up our sleeves and let’s get down to business and help those who are interested.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: I think it’s a feel-good story for the Jewish people at a time when we can feel very isolated. I know we’ve consistently said, “Where are our friends?” Here they are, enough that they’re stepping up and saying, “I am with you. I want to be one of you officially. I want to own this for myself,” at a time when that can seem all the more problematic to do so, yet they are doing it with joy and with love. They’re rushing into our arms to do that. I, for one, am very proud and honored to be able to help guide that. I think we need more of these feel-good stories these days.
Ellin Bessner: Honestly. Stars out for sure.
Rabbi Taylor Baruchel: Thank you.
Rabbi Stephen Wise: Thank you, Ellin.
Show Notes
Related links
- Meet three Canadians who converted to Judaism after Oct. 7, despite everything, on The CJN Daily.
- Why Alexandria Fanjoy Silver converted twice, on The CJN Daily.
- Read more from Emily Caruso Parnell about the conversion process she underwent from both Orthodox and Reform pathways, in The CJN archives.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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