Rav Dov Fischer On Conversion to Judaism

«Jews burn bread crumbs on sidewalks one morning every April.  We do not believe in ghosts, but we open doors for Elijah.  We pay a fortune to rent two sanctuary seats for a service highlighted by someone blowing into part of a ram's head (with inconsistent results) every ten minutes. We throw crumbs into lakes, pray for rain when the weather finally is perfect, move for a week into a squatter's hut.  We shake $60 lemons that must look perfect but have no flavor or use, and we discard them a few days later.  Men wrap leather straps around the arm, women take a handful of dough out of a pile and just burn it.  And we pay a guy five dollars or shekels to ransom a new first-born boy like from Rumpelstiltskin.
That's not all.  There's a night when adults enter synagogue all costumed ridiculously, shaking noisemakers and banging on pots during a profound religious Bible reading in the holy sanctuary — all while demanding that parents keep their children absolutely silent during the reading. Jews do not carry outside on Saturday unless the local telephone poles are wired together, with little upright things nailed to the bases.  Some food labels bear every imaginable kosher symbol, leaving almost no room on the label for the name of the product or its ingredients. Indeed, one rabbi endorses "star-k" but won't comment on "triangle-k" or "tablet-k"; another endorses "circle-k" but nothing about "half-moon-k" or "square-k." (No one has yet trademarked a "crucifix-k.") And that's not all.
If you drop a siddur (prayerbook), you kiss the book in front of everyone.  Drop a chumash (Bible) — kiss it publicly.  Drop a yarmulka — kiss it.  A Torah passes by — kiss it.  But your wife walks into the room — don't touch her in public! Meanwhile, when the books get old — we bury them. (No, we are not planting a library.)  We eat "bread of poverty" that costs $16 a pound.  (Not to mention swinging chickens one morning a year.)»

On Conversion to Judaism - Op-Eds - Arutz Sheva
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15907#.VFW4i_RDuYI




Kol Tuv,
RRW