Do you know why Judaism is so difficult to convert to? I can't find an actual answer, just people explaining how hard it is and not saying why. I know most religions you have to go through some sort of process (like Christianity has baptism and stuff) but Judaism's seems extremely difficult. Is it to make sure the person actually wants to convert and isn't just doing it for the hell of it?
While there are several answers you could give to this, I think my answer comes down to a few main points:
1. Jews do not believe gentiles should be Jewish, and do not believe that there is any particular reward or moral supremacy in being Jewish.
Christianity generally holds that people need to convert to Christianity, that there will be a severe and eternal punishment for people who don’t convert to Christianity, and that there is a moral obligation to proselytize. In light of these perspectives, it makes sense to have an expedient conversion process (what if someone dies before they get a chance to Accept Jesus?)
Because there’s no particular reward for being Jewish, and because, in fact, being Jewish tends to have many drawbacks (like dying horribly), we do not share this sense of urgency about conversion.
2. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, and confers a set of obligations onto Jewish people that gentiles do not share.
Some quick and simplified context: after delivering the Jews from slavery in Egypt, God appears before all the Jews at Mt. Sinai. He gives us the Torah and we, as a people, make a pact to follow its commandments.
You may have heard the concept of Jews being God’s Chosen People. This is often misunderstood as meaning that Jews are asserting themselves as more important than all other people.
What this actually means is that the Jewish people have this specific pact with God to follow the Torah’s laws, and thus have responsibilities and obligations that gentiles do not.
There are 613 commandments that are obligatory for Jews. There are, by contrast, 7 moral laws for gentiles, which include “do not murder people” and “please don’t eat body parts off of animals while they are still alive.”
So converting to Judaism involves making this very serious choice to join in on the covenant between God and the Jewish people, to take on the enormous responsibility of following all of these commandments, and to confer those responsibilities on the children you might eventually have. When, again, we don’t believe there is any moral obligation for you to do that.
Because some of these commandments are associated with particular times of year (e.g., holidays), a convert-in-progress needs to go through at least a calendar year of learning what exactly they’re signing up for, and how those observances are done.
And yeah – because we’re one people, and tend to share a collective fate, and tend to be punished collectively, I suppose there’s also a very real need to “vet” people who would like to join.
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