||Marlene and Vittorio Ishak point out their wedding photograph, displayed prominently at the Beit Daniel Reform synagogue in Tel Aviv. Marlene, 53, married Vittorio, 81, in a civil ceremony in Cyprus. Today they are jointly attending an Introduction to Judaism course, part of the synagogue’s conversion process. Photo by Jacob Wirtschafter||
||Rabbi Galia Sadan teaches the Introduction to Judaism course, a requirement for conversion candidates at Beit Daniel, the largest Reform synagogue in Tel Aviv, Israel. More than half of the participants in this course are Filipino women with Israeli partners. Photo by Jacob Wirtschafter||
Jacob Wirtschafter: “We come every Friday and feel like we are part of the congregation,” said Jennifer Yehuda, 33, who came to Israel in 1998 from Cavite, a town nine miles south of Manila, the Philippines. “These are warm and accepting people who make it possible for us to come here as foreigners and make us feel like we are at home.”
“The Orthodox rabbis want to check that you have separate sinks and dishes for meat and dairy,” said Vittorio Ishak, who joins Marlene, his Filipino-born wife, at the synagogue’s weekly conversion course. “Here the rabbi wants to check that you understand the meaning behind the prayers and customs.”
Last year, Beit Daniel certified 135 of the 200 conversions performed in Israel by the Reform movement. About one-third of these new Jews are of Filipino origin.
While those from the former Soviet Union states still constitute about half of all candidates for conversion, Filipinos have emerged as the second largest ethnic community in the conversion cohort at Beit Daniel.
As Southeast Asians in a country where most immigrants are of European and Middle Eastern descent, the Filipinos are a highly visible new element in an increasingly diverse Reform Jewish community in Israel, which also includes gay couples.
“It is understandable that many of the Filipinos are participating in their services,” said Professor Zvi Zohar, a scholar at the Center for Halacha, at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “They come from a country where people take their religion seriously.”
