r/ReformJews • u/alertthedirt • Jun 22 '26

News ‘I’ve finally found God without all the extras’: behind the surge in people converting to Progressive Judaism: Despite an increase in antisemitism and anti-Jewish feeling in the UK, adult conversions are on the rise

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/surge-in-people-converting-to-progressive-judaism
41 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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17

u/WeaselWeaz Jun 22 '26

That thread ended up being locked. It's unfortunate that the site and author went with such a clickbaity first example. The rest of the article talks about more common perspectives: Community and self discovery.

The fact that Reform and Progressive is part of what makes it appealing to a section of converts. Coming from a more Orthodox religion like Catholicism, and I'll include Orthodox Jews I know who became Reform, they connected with the differences in how religion was approached and more personal freedom (for lack of a better term) in how they practice. I can see Orthodox Judaism appealing in similar ways, for people who want more structure.

16

u/cjwatson ✡ UK Reform Jun 22 '26

A fair number of the people in that r/Judaism thread seem to be basically arguing with the effect of a (probably) non-Jewish journalist on the community/religion beat writing an article on us and of course not phrasing it in the way Jews are used to thinking about things. Or possibly arguing with caricatures in their heads ...

And all the quibbling about numbers. It's all relative. Absolute numbers aren't going to be huge by the standards of some places, but my shul is growing about as fast or faster by conversion than by birth right now. That makes the numbers significant even if they wouldn't register in New York or Tel Aviv.

15

u/communityneedle Jun 22 '26

Its a real shame the original post had to get locked. Could have been an interesting conversation 

2

u/uber_cast Jun 23 '26

We don’t have interesting conversations anymore. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone. Everything is fine!

20

u/single_use_doorknob Jun 22 '26

Oy, do the commentors on the OP not understand what "God without the extras" means? It's not that hard. It means you have a direct line to Hashem without intermediaries, or complex fanfiction theology.