After undergoing Orthodox conversion, Noa Arazi is helping others do the same

With her olive complexion, luminous eyes, and rapid-fire Hebrew, 23-year-old Noa Arazi resembles the average young Israeli woman that one encounters throughout this country. She could be everyone and anyone. Yet, behind Arazi’s ready smile is a fascinating story. 

She is the daughter of a French Catholic mother who underwent a Reform Jewish conversion, and a Jewish Israeli father. Despite being born and raised in an Israeli household, Arazi decided to undergo an Orthodox conversion and change her life. Today, she is helping to change the lives of prospective converts seeking information about conversion.

The story begins in Colmar, a city in northeastern France, in the Alsace region, situated on the Alsatian Wine Route, where Arazi’s mother, Mor, was born. (She changed her name when she moved to Israel and prefers to go by that name). Though she grew up in a Catholic home, Mor always felt a connection to Israel. “My mother did not have a previous connection with the Jewish people,” says Arazi, smiling, “but she has a Jewish soul.”

In 1987, Asher Arazi, an Israeli who had studied acting for six years in France, met Mor. In addition to his acting studies, he worked part time at the Jewish Agency. It was in that capacity that he met Mor when she came to the agency office and expressed an interest in volunteering in Israel. 

Mor arrived in Israel in 1987 and worked at Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in the North, studying Hebrew at an ulpan in her spare time. Asher and Mor continued their relationship, and the couple married in a civil ceremony in France in 1989, after which they returned to Israel to live. 

Shortly after their civil marriage, Mor decided to convert to Judaism. After studying with the wife of a rabbi in Kfar Saba, and after another six months of what she calls a “runaround” from the Tel Aviv Rabbinate because they lost her file, the rabbinate demanded that her husband become fully observant as a condition for her conversion, but he refused. Mor turned to the Reform movement, where she was accepted and was converted by a Reform rabbi.

Noa Arazi was born in 2001, 12 years after her sister Odelia, and grew up in Herzliya, attending high school in Kfar Saba. “I felt Israeli and completely Jewish,” she recalls, “but I knew I was not considered Jewish. I didn’t feel the need to convert because I felt part of the Jewish people.”

Until 2021, the only conversions officially recognized in Israel were those conducted under Orthodox auspices. In March 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that people who converted to Judaism in Israel under Conservative or Reform auspices must be recognized as Jewish under the Law of Return and are entitled to citizenship. However, the law does not deal with the halachic status of such converts relating to issues of marriage, divorce, and burial. Arazi’s mother’s Reform conversion did not affect Arazi’s religious status, and she was not considered Jewish according to the state regarding those issues.

In July 2019, Arazi entered the IDF and enrolled in an officers’ training course. At the conclusion of the course, she was sent to Michve Alon, an IDF base composed of the Education and Youth Corps, whose purpose is to integrate unique populations into the IDF and society. Michve Alon incorporates a wide variety of populations – new immigrants, Druze, Bedouin, soldiers who did not finish high school, and those with family issues. Arazi served as a human resources officer at Michve Alon and had nine soldiers under her command.

The base is also the home of Nativ, a program for soldiers and National Service volunteers who want to convert to Judaism. Nativ, which is operated by rabbis from the IDF Rabbinate, is the only recognized conversion option in Israel that is not run by the Chief Rabbinate.

“I wasn’t connected to the religious world because I grew up in a secular home,” says Arazi. “But when I went to officers’ school, they spoke to us about Judaism and Zionism and Israel, and something touched me.” 

Arazi spoke to people about the course and, in 2022, decided to participate in the program. Initially, she says, she was cynical and judgmental about the conversion course. “I felt I was going to change, and it frightened me. I knew I had a connection to Judaism, but it wasn’t something I was used to.”

Living in two worlds

Candidates for conversion in the Nativ course are placed with a Jewish family that “adopts” them and helps them during the process. “It was complicated,” she admits, “because I have my own family. I had to live in two worlds and had to set aside enough time for each family.” Arazi spent time with her adoptive family, learning and familiarizing herself with Jewish practices.

She was assigned a family in Tzur Yitzhak, a town near Kfar Saba. “They supported me, and I learned a lot from them. The conversion process is complicated and mentally shakes you. It is a real change. The Jewish language is completely different from the secular language,” says Arazi. “If you don’t get support, you can’t finish the course alone.”

Arazi says she learned a great deal in the Nativ course. “We learned about Halacha, mitzvot, and the spirit of Judaism – things that my secular friends know very little about. It’s not their fault.” She acknowledges that when she started the course, she, too, was not well versed in these subjects. 

What caused Arazi to change her view of the conversion course? She pauses for a moment and then says: “It was the fact that I spent time with my adoptive family. I saw their way of life, and it really appealed to me. They are nice, good people. Because of their religion, they are calmer, better people, and their children’s education is better. I really connected to it.” She speaks equally highly of the rabbis who taught the course, saying, “They are wonderful people, and I admired them.”

Arazi says that while her friends and family supported her decision to attend the conversion course, it was a bit disconcerting to return to her real family during the period when she was also spending time with her observant, “adopted” family. “I felt a split personality when I returned to my real family. They are not Shabbat observant. I had to respect them and keep Shabbat when I was there, and they had to respect me. We succeeded.”

A spiritual experience

Four months after completing the conversion course, Arazi was called to the Nativ rabbinical court at the IDF’s Tzrifin base. “I was very nervous and stressed,” she recalls. “It wasn’t the most positive experience. It was unpleasant for me to try to prove myself, sitting opposite three men asking penetrating questions. I know what I did. I am proud of the path that I took, and I had to prove myself.” 

Arazi says that the questions focused on mostly technical subjects, such as the laws of Shabbat and holidays and the blessings recited before eating food. The encounter lasted approximately 20 minutes, after which she waited outside with the father of her adopted family. Arazi was then called in and was informed that she had passed the exam. “I was happy and excited,” she recalls.

Arazi has suggestions regarding the conversion process and says that it should not just focus on the accumulation of dry facts and information but should add an aspect of the spiritual as well. She adds, “We learned strictly by the book, and I think that we were missing summaries, such as ‘How do you feel, and where are you in this process?’”

In that sense, she says that those who work with conversion in Israel might want to smile a bit more when they work with prospective converts. “I think that conversion is a bit like birth. And when you are involved in something like that, you want the person helping you to be smiling and pleasant.”

Ten days after the rabbinical court meeting, Arazi went to the mikveh (ritual bath) for the immersion, accompanied by a rabbanit, three rabbis, and her sister, who had converted 12 years earlier, also via Nativ. Recounting the visit to the mikveh, she exclaims, “Wow – it was a spiritual experience!” 

Arazi confesses that she didn’t expect the mikveh experience to be particularly meaningful and thought that it would be unexciting and technical, similar to the meeting with the rabbinical court. To her surprise, she found it to be exceedingly spiritual. “When I came out of the mikveh, I said to myself, ‘Noa, you are not living the life that you should be living.’ I wanted a change in my life.” 

Soon after her conversion, Arazi moved from Tel Aviv, where she had been working as the assistant guest relations manager at the Dan Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem, where she assumed the post of concierge at the King David Hotel in February 2023. “Tel Aviv did not provide the same spiritual feeling and was no longer the place for me,” she says.

Arazi enjoyed working as a concierge at the hotel, providing tips and advice for tourists from around the world seeking information about all things pertaining to Jerusalem, from touring to locating the right restaurant. However, after Oct. 7, everything changed. She was put on unpaid leave and resigned from her post. 

Becoming an information source on conversion

Since then, she has devoted much of her time to helping prospective converts learn about the conversion process, drawing from her own conversion experiences on social media, under the title “New Choose New Jews.” Arazi has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, where she posts short videos that provide practical information about conversion. Among some of the titles are “How to know if I’m ready to convert”; “How to make your family part of your process”; and “Myths about converts.”

Many of the videos that Arazi has posted to social media feature practical advice for those studying conversion, such as tips on how to manage the first visit to a synagogue; how to pass the rabbinical court exam; and how to deal with family issues during the conversion process. 

“As a convert,” she explains, “I was missing assistance along the way. It’s a sensitive and sometimes lonely path. Even those who supported me didn’t know what I was undergoing because they were born Jewish. They didn’t understand the complexity of it. 

“As a graduate of the Nativ course, I wanted to speak with those who are converting. I saw how much it helps them that someone who was in the process understands what they are going through, speaks with them, and gives them tips from personal experience. This is what I wanted to provide for my followers.”

Arazi’s social media followers are people in the process of converting or are interested in beginning the conversion process. “My goal is not to convince people to convert but to provide information to people interested in converting. This is something that teachers and rabbis can’t always do because they were born into it.” In addition to Arazi’s social media pages, she says people contact her privately with questions and issues. 

The information and content that Arazi initially posted was in Hebrew with English subtitles, as she thought that most of her followers would be Hebrew speakers. People around the world noticed her Instagram page, and she was flooded with inquiries from outside Israel, mostly from people in the United States. Today, virtually all of her followers are from outside Israel. As a result, she is posting exclusively English-language content. 

Arazi, who was familiar with the religious conversion process only in Israel, has had to familiarize herself with the different requirements of conversion courts around the world. “It’s a challenge for me,” she says, “because I have to understand where they are from, because the rules are different all over the world.”

In Israel, for example, prospective converts must take a conversion course and spend time with an adoptive family. In the United States, the rabbi sponsors the convert. France, she says, has stricter conversion requirements, and the process can take as long as three or four years. When Arazi speaks with prospective converts, she first determines what type of conversion process they are interested in pursuing, and then turns to rabbis whom she knows among different streams of Judaism. 

Arazi states that as far as she knows, she is the first convert to provide practical information on conversion via social media. She has spoken with participants in the Nativ courses, and says that her teachers in Nativ have been very supportive of her efforts. Recently, she lectured prospective converts at Nativ in Kiryat Moriah, where she began her conversion process years ago, about the distinctions between Judaism, Zionism, and “Israeliness.”

“Sometimes people come to me who have converted, and they are afraid to present themselves as converts,” she says. “I tell them that we had the privilege to choose Judaism. There is no need for shame. We should be proud of it.” 

How has the war affected the conversion process? Arazi says that in Israel, many conversion students have accelerated their process, especially those who are serving in the IDF. By contrast, she says that some prospective converts outside Israel are hesitant because they are concerned that the current worldwide wave of antisemitism will affect them once they convert. 

As a result of what she learned in her conversion process, Noa Arazi says that she not only feels more Jewish, but “the fact that I know more makes me feel more Israeli and gives me a closer connection to Israel and the Jewish world that was missing beforehand. Something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I feel more complete and more myself. I chose this for myself, and I worked at it.”

Arazi lives happily in Jerusalem, working on videos and strategizing how to make her story and knowledge of conversion into a career. Fittingly, the first apartment where she lived in Jerusalem after converting was located on Ruth Street. After all, where else would a convert feel so welcome? 