Beyond conversion: Stigma, Jewish recognition, and the struggle for belonging among Reform converts in Israel

Social stigma extends beyond interpersonal prejudice to include institutional, religious, and social mechanisms that regulate belonging and recognition. This qualitative study examines how women who underwent Reform conversion to Judaism in Israel experience and negotiate stigma in everyday life. Based on in-depth interviews with Reform women converts from two distinct populations, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Filipina migrant women, the study explores how stigma is produced across multiple social contexts and how women respond to it. The findings reveal three interconnected forms of stigma. First, institutional stigma emerges through state bureaucracies and religious authorities that recognize the women’s Jewish identity only conditionally. This limited recognition affects their ability to marry and be buried as Jews, their citizenship and legal registration, and the future status of their children. Second, religious delegitimization frames Reform conversion (giyur) as inauthentic, while participants challenge Orthodox dominance by constructing Reform Judaism as a meaningful, egalitarian, and ethically consistent religious alternative. Third, social-ethnic stigma operates through ethnicized and racialized processes that mark women and sometimes their children as outsiders based on migration history, nationality, or appearance. The study demonstrates that stigma is a multilayered process operating through institutions, religious hierarchies, and everyday interactions. Rather than passive recipients of exclusion, converts actively negotiate belonging, contest dominant definitions of Jewish authenticity, and reconstruct positive identities within Reform congregations. By linking stigma theory with research on conversion, migration, and identity, this article illuminates the complex relationship between exclusion, recognition, and collective belonging.