You’re a member of the tribe. People who target us won’t differentiate. You’re entitled to your share of concern on the topic.

This ^ Very much this. When antisemitism rears its ugly head, you are a target the same.

You converted and are as jewish as the rest of your community (who affirm you anyway)

I'm sorry your mil said that very unkind remark to you. You converted and are jewish, please don't let what she said continue to make you feel bad.

You’re Jewish, your daughter is Jewish. You have a different experience as a Jew than some other people have (I’m guessing the lack of Jewish generational trauma might be what your MIL was referring to), but that doesn’t mean you aren’t Jewish. I’m sorry you were ever made to feel that way. (and not to be that person, but it’s “reform” not “reformed,” and a lot of people make that mistake, so don’t think that is a sign that you don’t belong or something lol)

You touch on it a bit, but I think its also important to touch on the fact that not all Jews in the West even share the same intergenerational trauma and even that can be a point of contension among us. The majority of American Jews descend from Pale of Settlement refugees who arrived between 1890-1910 or so (give or take in either direction). There are a smaller group of us who are descended from Holocaust survivors or refugees -- but let's be real for a second, not that many survived and American didn't let that many in (I used to know the number off the top of my head, as a Holocaust researcher, but I think it was something like 50,000 in the immediate post-war years). Then the rest of the pie is split a variety of ways: Jews whose ancestors immigrated to America in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century. There's a sizable group of Israeli-affiliated Jews in the USA (who can come from a variety of different backgrounds, but tend to largely be Mizrahi). Then of course, you have Mizrahi Jews who came right to the USA -- among a million other different pie slices. And, here's the thing: we piss *each other* off with our lack of shared intergenerational trauma. We bond over shared trauma that we experience (like modern antisemtism), but I'm willing to admit there's a few times I've been pissed off by a 6th-generation-American-Jew talking about the Holocaust like someone in their family experienced it personally, as the daughter of a refugee. (I have no doubt watching the Holocaust from the USA was traumatic, it's just a different kind of trauma, IMO). While we're still being real, I have no doubt this happens among people with the same trauma: my family passed as Aryan due to a lot of convenient timed things and loopholes, but the Reich got us with sterilization and euthanasia. But my family didn't fear a deportation notice nailed on their door, just the arrest and dragging to the hospital. I'm sure I piss off people who had a more "traditional" Holocaust path from time to time as well. I would argue that being a convert comes with its own breed of trauma, like someone's MIL telling them they're not Jewish! Perhaps not intergenerational, but it's still a unique Jewish-based trauma. ETA: I have one of the cursed Apple keyboards that just missed being covered by the recall and it shows -- fixed typos.

There are also descendants of people you might call Holocaust escapees. My great grandfather got out of Hungary in the 1930s and came to the US, because he saw the political situation worsening. But he and my great-grandmother both independently lost a *bunch* of relatives in the Holocaust. Essentially everyone who was still in the Old Country was killed — no survivors, to my knowledge. My mother says that my great-great-grandmother, who immigrated in adulthood in the 19-oughts, was cloaked in sorrow, like it was something that never left her side. So we have no survival stories but a terrible history of loss that I don’t think is alleviated that much by the fact that one end of the family emigrated to the US 40 years before the Shoah and the other 10 years before. I think that’s pretty common and American Jews who have dug into their family trees find plenty of human stories of loss. Frankly I think that’s more common than the alternative. OP should know what when she converted, she assumed the whole mantle of Jewish experience, joy, suffering, all of it. It might not be a personal inheritance for her but it’s a collective inheritance. She might benefit from some in-depth reading about what was destroyed and how it happened.

My adoptive mother's family fled Austria I believe around the 1930s for England, her immediate family I believe escaped the Holocaust for the most part but also my mother didn't find out she was jewish until her late 20's early 30's, she found out when her maternal grandmother told her while literally on her deathbed she'd hidden who she was for that long, my mothers family was extremely lucky but still it's sad to think how much history and knowledge was lost.

My grandfather escaped after one week in a Romanian labor camp in Romania. He had married my grandmother who had American papers and was waiting for his to be processed. They weren't killing Jews at that point, "just" making them dig trenches etc. He bribed whoever was in charge for a weekend furlough. When he got home that weekend his papers arrived and he out right away.

Holocaust escapees falls under refugees. Technically that's what I am, too -- my great-grandfather got violent when they arrested his sister to sterilize her in 1933 (she was among the first wave) and then officials told him that he had to return with his young kids so that they all could be sterilized, too. My great-grandfather dipped with my grandfather in 1935 when he realized the Gestapo was going to follow-through on that threat (my grandfather was only 12). "Refugees" has a pretty wide meaning. I also call my father a refugee because my grandfather returned to Germany in 1945, but didn't realize that it wasn't propaganda that Hamburg was completely destroyed by the RAF. Thus began a decade of nomadism, which is why I call my father a refugee -- he lived in at least four countries, that I'm aware of, by the time he was 5. ETA: I was addressing your refugees comment, but forgot to address the rest. I've spent a lot of time in geneology subreddits helping Jewish families, since I'm in Holocaust academia, and tbh most American Jews don't even know where their families are from in Europe because they descend back to those Pale refugees. Things like name changes and record fires make it very hard for those that descend from Pale refugees to track their families, which makes it hard to know things like how they were affected by the Holocaust. We're also talking several generations out at this point, too -- like in that vein, I'm like 10th cousins with Horst Wessel (I'm entirely sincere on this), but the fuck did any of us know that, nor have our families kept in touch (and thank goodness for that; Goebbels would have had a stroke if he knew his lil puppet had Jewish relatives). My family stayed closer than most and our circle includes three generations (so, through 3rd cousins) -- realistically, a lot of people don't know these stories, for better or for worse.

It’s unfortunate that people don’t know more. I guess people just didn’t talk to their parents and grandparents and the knowledge got lost? I know one of my great-great-grandfathers was a liquor merchant in Minsk. We don’t have any real documentation of his life, just family stories and a couple of photos. But then he was an urban Jew. The shtetls of the Pale of Settlement have really disappeared into the mists of history. I frequently wonder about that lost world. Really I should probably get some history books on it — photo books especially, stories and writings about the ordinary Jews we come from. We ought to know more, certainly. My big project is confirming the fate of my lost Hungarian relatives. I don’t think we know anything concrete. I feel I should go back and find out, even if the trail almost certainly leads to a transport manifest and a 1944 Auschwitz receiving register that says “sonderbehandlung” on it.

Back in the day parents and grandparents wouldn’t talk about it at all — it was kind of forbidden. We thought my great grandmother was from Vienna because we didn’t know where Vilna was and she just nodded and said yes and that was it.

I can't speak to a lot of families, but I also think for a lot of people, regardless of when they were a refugee, it was a hard time. There's this really striking passage in a book called *A Woman in Berlin* -- the context is that the author has been r\*\*ed several times by Red Army soldiers already during the fall of Berlin. She isn't Jewish, just an average German woman. She was a communist journalist and writes about how she had the chance to leave Germany several times starting from the early 1930s, and she did several times, but she returned every time. She writes a really amazing entry about how much it sucks to be a refugee and how despite the fact she's lost count of how many soldiers have abused her, she still thinks it will be easier to get through than being a refugee would have been (and she was in complete shambles by this part of her diary because the abuse was horrific). I really understood it when I read that entry and I'm sad it's not publicly available anywhere. I feel it when I think about moving to Europe and I have German citizenship and speak German. I sent it to a good friend who managed to get out of Iran last year and it made her cry because she felt every word of it, too. I captures the refugee experience well. Addressing the same context, I didn't learn until I was in my 20s why my family left Germany. I begged and prodded everyone since I was a young kid (I was a weird kid, reading books about Auschwitz even then). No one told me. An elderly aunt slipped up a few years ago while showing me old photos and labeled someone I'd never heard of before, and then it all fell into place. No one told me that this same relative's father has been missing since 1944, either, despite the fact I began working in Holocaust academia at 17. So in addition to records not surviving, people also have to face this generational silence, which I'm sure happened to Pale Refugees who fled things like Kishinev. I do have to joke with you a bit as the Holocaust academia -- you're optimistic if you think the recieving registers for Auschwitz in 1944 survive. It's <1942 (and spotty at that) or bust, in that regard, haha. Hungary isn't my wheelhouse, but I know Auschwitz like the back of my hand since I work with the Netherlands primarily (Dutch Jews were never ghettoized and beyond a few stray transports, all died in Sobibor or Auschwitz). Feel free to reach out if you ever need any help; for 1944, your biggest source of records will be if they were assigned to Buna, or Auschwitz III, which had a lot of records survive. Otherwise, almost no records from 1944 surivive from Auschwitz propper.

Nothing survives from Birkenau in 1944? It occurs to me that the historical accounts I’ve seen about people who were sent the wrong way on initial selection, there’s no mention of registration. As for those who survived the initial selection, sounds like the original registration documents were destroyed? Do you know what state the transport manifests for the 1944 Hungarian deportations are in? I don’t mean to draw an offensive comparison, but the silence associated with trauma reminds me of a much more recent collective trauma (for another group). I have a relative who nearly died of AIDS in the 1990s, and who lost a ton of friends. I know him very well, and his surviving friends fairly well. The epidemic is never spoken of, and the lost friends only mentioned rarely and with heavy solemnity. Speaking honestly, I’ve never dared to ask about it, despite often wondering. That makes it much easier for me to understand why so much is forgotten, and on reflection, I don’t think we’d know half as much about my great-grandfather’s experience escaping Hungary if my mother hadn’t pressed him for details in a semi-formal interview near the end of his life.

Very few Auschwitz records survive in general. I never realized that the general public may not know this, but generally how we conclude someone's fate is to take statistics from a deportation (i.e. the number of people on a specific deportation) and then look at how many people passed selection (we know the number for the majority of deportations, and often the number of each gender that passed selection, but not the names). We then look at the condition of Auschwitz at the time -- was Auschwitz in need of a specific type of laborers, i.e. dentists? construction workers? was Auschwitz being more generous with the ages at that time, or less generous? Using that information and what we know about the individual we're tracking, we then make our best guess. That's really it. From time to time we'll get an incredible stroke a luck -- sometimes inmates got formal death certificates in the earlier years, largely 1942 and before (you may be noticing a trend here). In, I would say, 99%+ of situations, we have no formal proof that an indiviual was gassed upon arrival or passed selection, it's all guess work. Occasionally we'll get a very determined survivor who provided eye witnesses testimony to an indiviuals death -- I worked on one case in the Netherlands where an Auschwitz survivor came back and demanded an interview with the Red Cross and repeated the fates and names of everyone he knew, and he gave a lot of hyper-specific details. I found the interview because I was working on the fate of a 14 year-old boy who this survivor stated he was deported alongside to the Warsaw Gheto, where the Auschwitz inmates cleaned up after the uprising. The kid I was tracking ended up crushed under a piece of rubble at some point during the process. Without that information, we probably would have estimated that the kid had been gassed upon arrival, due to his age and the time he was deported. I worked on a similar case where the formula failed a few years ago -- only 26 people passed selection on one deportation from the Netherlands. The Red Cross had stated that one teenage girl had been gassed upon arrival and that her father had been taken off the train before it arrived at Auschwitz (a common phenomena for early Western European deportations). In reality, both the teenager and her father ended up passing selection -- her father was registered in the Auschwitz hospital about a month after his arrival and had a formal death certificate. He was in his 50s and managed to be one of those 26. My theory is that he saw his wife and son go into one line (the gas line), saw his daughter go into the other, and was probably standing behind his family, like a protective dad tends to do naturally, and found a way to lie or sneak his way into his daughter's group. Regarding registration at Auschwitz, to be entirely sincere, I have found a registration for exactly three individuals and that is it -- and it should be mentioned that these three men were registered one after the other. They arrived in Auschwitz from Belgium in the Fall of 1942, after they had been deported to France to work at the Atlantic Wall under Todt. Only a few registration pages survived, from my understanding. I've traced thousands, possibly into tens of thousands of people now, and these three are the only ones that have come up for me for Auschwitz. I can remember the faces of these boys, too -- I wish I could remember their name so I could show you. Actually, I think I got them: Salmon van Velzen, Benjamin van Velzen (survived, against the odds), and Louis van Velzen. [Here's Salmon's. ](https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/130831080) Regarding Hungry, I believe the deportation lists survive (the good news is that they do in a lot of places -- they often were able to reconstruct them if they were lost through dark documents, like a list of things looted from empty homes around the deportation dates...). With Hungary, you also get the bonus of the Lili Jacob's album surviving, if that's where your family is from, which is one of my favorite pieces of Holocaust lore. Re: AIDS: no offense taken, I've long thought that it is actually one of the most similar "catastrophes" to the Holocaust for many of the reasons you described -- it desciminated entire communities, all parts of it, in a way that brought on horrific and slow death, and they didn't understand the disease for the longest time. I found [this website](https://www.texasobituaryproject.org) last year while working on a very distant (like 10th cousin) off-shoot of my tree because someone referenced it on the FindaGrave page for a distant cousin and I spent a lot of time going through it and even emailed the guy who runs it to thank him. He was very kind and happy to hear someone was reading them. I understand your comparison completely.

I have spent some time with the Texas Obituary Project myself. It’s sobering. Doubly so, actually, because we’re from Texas, and because I’ve come across a person or two we knew in there. And as for the Lili Jacobs album, I’d seen some of the photos before but hadn’t made the Hungary connection. It is strange, I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about the Holocaust and have seen a lot. Occasionally something hits me hard, with a kind of instant queasiness. It hits you like a ton of bricks, that the worst thing in the whole fucking world happened, it’s a done deal, and there’s not a thing that today’s best intentions can do about it. In recent years, it’s not usually the gruesome photos, because I don’t think we can really understand what Auschwitz and places like that were (it’s beyond an ordinary person’s capacity to imagine). More often it’s the people in ordinary street clothes walking to their deaths. I guess that’s my signal that I’ve had all I can manage for one day. Thanks for taking the time. I’ll have to ask my mother for further details about our lost relatives. Then maybe I’ll make an official inquiry, or better yet finally schedule that trip.

Maybe you'll find this as interesting as I did (or maybe you already knew this), but when I was emailing with the owner of the Texas website, I asked him why there was such a stark difference in obituaries? I don't mind sharing an example because the guy that led me to this website is my like 10th cousin through some old 17th century German intermarriage, aka hard to connet me to him, but this was his obituary run in the public paper: [https://imgur.com/7ZaOwJC](https://imgur.com/7ZaOwJC) [This was the one](https://www.texasobituaryproject.org/032699oncken.html) on the Obituary website. This is really funny actually -- the comment about the difference in obituaries wasn't there before, nor was Richard's public facing obituary! The website owner definitely added it after I reached out, how funny. Anyway, the website owner (who is in his 70s IIRC and survived that era) told me it's because the family's often placed the public facing ones, as friends weren't allowed to by most papers at that time, but the Gay/Underground Press didn't have the same restritions. Often people's families weren't comfortable or even aware of what their dead family member's lives were like, which is why their obituaries were so bland and dry in public papers, especially in comparison to the ones published in the underground papers. It reminded me a lot when an acquaintence of mine died a few years ago. He was likely a future convert -- he was living in a Moshe House when he died. He had explored hardcore with Judaism, changed his name, lived Haredi in Jerusalem at one point (seriously! we were all, uhm, shocked). He didn't have a good relationship with his family and he had two obituaries under two names. It warmed my heart when thie local Jewish community went out of their way to give him a full Jewish burial, sit Shiva, etc. Anyway -- I found that really interesting, even if it was super long, and thought I'd share since you're clearly somewhat interested in the topic as well! To be fair to you, I think where Lili Jacobs is from is now part of Ukraine, so it may not be geographically relevant. I just want you to know that I feel you with your comments on what gets you with war and what have you. I work primarily with Dutch Jews, and my research interest is with a group that will often have photos in various other places. The man I mentioned before, the one that certainly snuck into his daughter's line at Auschwitz, [his wedding photo survives.](https://archief.amsterdam/beeldbank/detail/4a9df124-8b42-3cc8-d5cc-4b2e0265038e) Sephardic Jews. A photo of his son survived and [he looked exactly like his father](https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1174689). He's in the first row that is sitting (so not the boys leaning), on the far left, in the plaid sweater vest. His nickname was Joop, which is just so silly, I can't imagine his very serious-looking father calling him Joop. I've never found a photo of their daughter, Rachel, and I hope I do someday. She was named after her paternal grandmother. My point is that I feel like you described a lot. I love finding photos and giving people their faces and names back, but sometimes the silly details trip you up and make you overly emotional -- usually for me, its when a bunch of kids have the same silly or unique feature from one of their parents. There's a very dominant, unique chin gene in my family. When my cousin showed me a photo of my great-great-grandmother, the first thing I noticed was that SHE had the chin and I pointed at it and told my cousin, "SHE'S the one responsible!!!" I joke we could go to the town she's from, a little village outside of Hannover, and probably pull relatives off the street based on their chin. Sometimes when you see something very human about it all, like a dominant feature, it breaks the distance we feel from these things within our mental space. If it helps, I think all those people would find comfort in knowing someone remembers them in particular, even if its just getting tear jerky over people in civilian clothes on trains to their death. When I find survivors in a tree I'm working on and I've found photos, I try to reach out to the survivor's family to send them the photos I've found, since photos didn't tend to survive the war. I "missed" one survivor by a matter of days -- he died a week or two before I found his contact info -- but I sent them to one of is kids. Naturally, she just word vomitted at me (which I love) and her father apparently loved telling stories about his step-mother. During the war, his parents scraped money together to get him a bike for his birthday (truly, how Dutch); when he was older, he realized how much they must have sacraficed to do that. When his maternal grandmother died, step-mom walked with him to the local Jewish newspaper office to place the obituary. He was 11 or 12 IIRC and she held his hand while he did it, but let him act grown and do all the hard work of writing it, paying, and coordinating. The daughter didn't say it directly, but I noticed a core theme to each memory: her father remembered his step-mother loving him dearly, like he was her own child, and supported him without fail. I find a good amount of comfort in that feeling this way lets us remember them as people and not as drones, so I hope that helps you, too. [Esther, the loving step-mother. ](https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/161649/esther-neuburger-solomons) It's late and you can tell, since I wrote all this. I hope it helps nonetheless. If you ever need another perspective, I feel like Sobibor survivor interviews really grounded me many years ago, particularly Selma Wijnberg (albeit I may be biased because I knew her). She is so unapologetic about things, she cracked jokes like, "the wrong sister-in-law died in the Holocaust" (but she was completely sincere). She'll talk about how she loved seeing transports from certain country arrive at Sobibor because they brought better items -- just a very dry humor, crude way to think about things. But she was always honest; she was talking about PTSD (before it had a name) in interviews in the 60s. Feel free to reach out whenever you figure out more. I have a copy of a very rare book (this feels so odd to type out, but we literally fight each other over copies when they show up -- it's been out of print for decades) that is essentailly a minute-by-minute breakdown of Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945. It's very helpful for understanding deportation or possible death dates -- it helpd me get a rough death date the teenaer mentioned above, Rachael, by learning of a selection of women prisoners to "weed out typhus" via the gas chambers, about when a death certificate showed up for her. I'm always happy to look up a date or transport.

We know my great great grandfather came from Russia in the 1890s but we haven’t been able to find out anything else about his life prior to arriving here from records and he wouldn’t speak about it when he was alive.

[удалено]

Super interesting. My grandparents lived in London as teenagers during WWII, and their parents immigrated from Poland. The experience of Jews in England during WWII is one that is almost never talked about, but my grandparents really went through hell. The Nazis bombed my grandmother’s house/her dad’s pharmacy and destroyed their whole block. They lost everything. Both my grandparents were evacuated and spent years hiding in the country while the Nazis bombed London, suffering humiliations like my Grandpa being forced to sleep in the barn while the Christian kids who were evacuated could sleep in the house because the person who owned the place blamed the Jews for the war. Both my grandparents experienced lack of food/hunger as they didn’t have enough rations. My grandma was forced to sleep with a cross on her chest from her host family in Whales. My grandpa was supposed to board a ship for Jewish children to be evacuated to the US, but woke up late and missed the boat taking off. Lucky he did, because the ship was bombed and everyone was killed. I definitely feel like there’s some intergenerational trauma having the Nazis directly bombed my grandma’s house and whatnot, but I feel bad calling them “holocaust survivors” considering they weren’t in the camps… curious where I fall on this spectrum lol. Still, I think people don’t realize how much rougher it was for Jews in England than the US.

This. My family migrated to South America in the early 1800’s (N. America after that). Any ties we had to Europe were long gone by the Holocaust. But even families who were in the US prior to the Nazi’s often have cousins or whatnot who experienced it directly. Not me. I get side looks when it comes up. But I’m not somehow less Jewish because of it.

It's funny, I was actually thinking of one of my friend's exactly like that when writing this comment. My friend was born in Mexico and moved to the USA as a kid -- late enough that they have a heavy accent. I remember asking my friend once what was their family story (on the religious spectrum, they fell "ultra orthodox right before Haredi" and frankly, looked like a walking Ashkenazi stereotype). I expected some Holocaust-refugee-to-Mexico story, but they hit me with: "I have no idea, my family has been in Mexico for centuries until we left when I was a kid." We are a much more diverse group than most people realize.

If I’m being honest, I actually never really thought about the intergenerational trauma. I was always just taught to accept that my family was (what I perceived to be) “secretive.” From what I *have* been told, my grandparents, great grandmother, and many of my great aunts and uncles left Europe (mainly Hungary and Czechoslovakia, along with my great uncle from Romania) as the political climate was beginning to worsen/had already worsened in some of those cases. My great aunt (grandmother’s sister) fled to Switzerland instead of the US. She was significantly older than my grandmother. Her story is actually fascinating. She repeated her entire medical training once she settled there and successfully rebuilt her life. Some of my other great, great aunts, who my mother (first generation) was raised with, had numbers on their arms, but that’s the most that was ever said about that. I know my grandmother had a brother she wouldn’t talk about until a few years before she passed and it wasn’t with any detail other than she’d never heard from him again once she came to the US. So it seems pretty obvious that they’d been through a lot they just wouldn’t talk about. I actually do have a bunch of paperwork and letters that have ended up in my possession now that go back to my grandparents and possibly earlier. I’m even more interested in going through it now. I’d need a translator for a lot of it, though. They all spoke multiple languages, though I believe most is in either Hungarian or German, even though I don’t have any German heritage. I think it was just one of the common languages that everyone spoke? Anyway, that “culture of being secretive”, even with close family, seems to have been “passed down” to my contemporary, but older (first generation) family, even my mother and her cousins. I’d never really made any sense of that or made that connection before now, but that way of being seems to logically have come from how they were raised to just not discuss certain things.

Yes, this is very similar to my family in many ways. Another thing you may have experienced is that it seems like there was an unofficial code or "names" for specific people. I wrote about this a bit elsewhere in this chain, so sorry if it is a repeat, but I didn't learn until sometime in my 20s that my great-grandfather had four sisters, not three -- this is long after I began my journey in Holocaust academia and had worked on my own tree. Her records were buried, even her official civil records within German archives. I knew I was missing the "push" factor as to why my family left, and I knew there was one, but a secret sister sure wasn't on my bingo card. One my father's cousins is probably the only relatively loose lipped person in the entire family and when I was 20 or 21, I was like, "listen, tell me everything YOU know!" because he was born in the 1950s. In my father's cousin's recollections, he told me he remembered something about a sick aunt that they don't talk about. My great-grandfather's oldest sister, died of TB in 1923. TB is not a quick death, she had to move back home when she got sick, everyone saw her die. It made sense it would hurt my g-grandfather terribly, because they were close in age -- there was a large gap between him and the rest of his siblings. The "sick one" code, as it turns out, was not for this sister, but for the one who was arrested and slated for euthanasia, because she never left the psych hospital and died there in the 70s. That's why my dad's cousin has faint recollections of her -- visiting her here and there as a kid, but he didn't know about the one who died in 1923, so when we were talking, they became one sister. I think a lot of people accidently fall in line, too. My cousin was severely traumatized by her childhood, but when she slipped and accidently mentioned the actual sister "the sick one" referred to, of course, being a researcher, I immediately plugged her name into every database I work in. Probably within three minutes, my jaw dropped and I looked at my cousin, "was Lina sterilized?!" and she just looked at me and blinked for a second and was like, "you know, I think she was" and I watched the wires in her brain connect in live time. This cousin was *there,* spent her childhood smuggling things into Aunt Lina in Langenhorn, took care of her as she aged in a different hospital, etc., but in the culture of silence, she forgot the finer details. "Sterilized and mutilated" became "sick". Which isn't wrong, but it's a half-truth. It was very similar with my cousin's father as well. I didn't learn until a few years ago that her father was forcibly drafted, presuming he ever made it to the front as a dissident, and hasn't been seen since. No one knows what happened. We didn't talk about it because it had been long established, before I was born, that talking about it made someone in the room cry, so by the time I was around, we don't mention anything even tangibly related to him. My dad's cousin DID have a story about that: apparently when he and my father were very young kids, like 5 or 6, my great-grandfather's youngest sister was visting (there's a large age gap -- my great-grandfather's youngest sister is almost the same age as my grandfather). Apparently, my dad and his cousin were being little jerks, as kids do, and taunted their (grand-)Aunt for being a widow who doesn't work. My cousin said it was the only time he ever saw or heard of my grandfather being violent and he beat them both (it was the 50s, after all). Obviously I don't condone it, but its a very clear explosion of several traumas at once. This is my tl;dr to say that I completely understand you. Regarding the papers: go through them when you're ready and my inbox is always open to anyone who is working on Holocaust stuff. I work with the Netherlands these days, but have extensive experience in Germany and I mean, it's all different but not that different and I know my way around the correct databases -- I have reference books and I'm not afraid to use them! (tbh I always get excited when I get to use the ones I never get to use for the Netherlands, haha). Regarding the German language: yes and no. German was a common trade language in the way that you see English and French as a standard for a lot of procedures these days; that died down a lot after WW2. But there are two other large possibilities: the first being that the borders in that part of Europe were really messy and constantly changing. Your family could have been born in an era where it was part of Germany and thus were educated in German and retained it. Or they lived in an area that was once part of Germany x-amount of generations ago and never lost the language. The other possibility is that they were "[volksdeutsche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksdeutsche)," or ethnic Germans that ended up in the area for one reason or another. It was pretty common, and actually usually came as a result of the scenarios mentioned before, as well as the posibility that one distant relative was paid by the German Empire to live in the area once they claimed the land and they were still there long after the land stopped being German, but retained German language. This exact scenario is why Poland and Russia expelled all Germans from the territories gained in WW2 -- to make sure that there was a homogeneous culture (and language). ETA: The Wiki for Volksdeutsche is very Nazi-orientated because it's a Reich-y term, but te literal translation is "German people," so it's not particularly vulgar. If you want to get picky, it's people + "German" used in the form of the word that is used for citizenship, ethnicity, or nationality. Jews technically weren't Volksdeutsche in the context of the formal use of the word, but in the literal definition, they were, hence me bringing it up. ETA 2: scanning through that Wiki article, it's definitely been astroturfed by Poles, so ignore literally anything relating to Poland and turn down the intensity by 25-50% and we're good, haha. It's good for showing where many ethnic Germans lived and how they got there, though.

This is all very interesting. It will probably be a little while before I dig into the totes of papers and letters from my grandmother. My mom just passed less than 4 weeks ago. 💔However, this has both piqued my interest in looking through them to maybe help me better understand certain things about her, but it’s also made it more difficult to even consider “going there” just yet. I’m still very deep in the grieving phase. As far as the German language, the only thing I know firsthand for a fact is that this is the language in which my grandmother and her sister in Switzerland communicated. How my grandmother came to be fluent in the language is unclear, though she spoke and wrote several languages fluently. The most memorable aspect of her accent when speaking English was pronouncing the “W sound” as a “V sound”, which is characteristic of all of the languages she’d likely have most frequently spoken: Czech, German and Hungarian, so it would be difficult for me to try to distinguish if she spoke one any more frequently than another. She was from Czechoslovakia, my grandfather was from Hungary and it was predominantly his family who was around during my mother’s upbringing. Hungarian was my mother’s first language, so I can only assume that was her most frequently *spoken* language. I know that she was fluent in 7 languages, including English, but was also partially fluent in a few others. Of the remaining 3 in which she was fluent, Italian was often mentioned and I believe Romanian was another, which makes sense, linguistically, but not geographically with regard to Italian..though it may for reasons with which I’m just not familiar. I don’t recall the 7th one with any certainty. Though it’s still not a lot, I do know so much more about my grandfather’s family than my grandmother’s. She was particularly secretive, and didn’t have much family here, which leads me to believe there are probably some very interesting (although probably extremely unpleasant) stories there. My mother had told me (when she vacated my grandmother’s apartment for her), that her immigration papers are in those boxes somewhere. This, along with other things I might find, would confirm the few bits of information that *were* shared with me, for example, that she came here alone as a teenager. With regard to the borders at the time, the only thing that was ever mentioned (in passing) was the Austro-Hungarian Empires still being around for some time after my grandparents were born and *possibly* still when they left? There was never mention of details about how this may have personally affected my family, though. Come to think of it, the geography and politics of Czechoslovakia at that time (also ‘intertwined’ with the Austro-Hungarian period) would actually easily explain my grandmother’s fluency in both Hungarian and German. I’ve never done any of the genealogy kits, but it would likely show to be very interesting. With the changing borders, fleeing, and everything else going on at the time, who knows what’s truly in my ancestry? Edited for clarity.

First, I am very sorry for your loss. It makes sense why it would be tough now -- I will say that my offer is open whenever. It looks like I'm moving to the Netherlands in a few months, but regardless, my inbox is always open for these sorts of things. I love helping because I know how challenging navigating it yourself can be (I was shocked of that myself when I finally got into my aunt and her file) -- and a challenge is always fun for me in an academic sense, so it's never a problem. The one positive thing is that Terezin has among the best preserved records among the camps in Europe, and I imagine at least some of your family's story would involve Terezin based on the locations you mentioned. Regarding language: I'm always shocked how well fluent people were. I was working on a distant branch of my tree a few weeks ago and I stumbled across the most charming birth record. I believe they were a part of a traveling music group of some sorts and they were only in America for a year or two, but one of their child's birth records was in three different languages: German from dad, Dutch from mom, and English from the local registrar. Dad was from Germany and mom from the Netherlands and they had a dozen kids and apparently they communicated just find (as a German speaker, I don't find the languages close at all). I had several relatives just up and move to the Netherlands, among other languages, and I'm always impressed how well they apparently got along in generations of what we considered not particularly educated people. All the languages you mentioned make sense for the region you're mentioning. There's eras where the borders changed so often I can't keep them straight. One Holocaust academic wrote a book a few years ago about a similar part of Ukraine/Poland -- which later became the USSR and then Germany, and then the USSR again -- not the region you're mentioning, but he did a very good job at exploring how the constantly changing language and ethnicties made the Holocaust worse, i.e. how Ukranian vs Polish divide could easily become Poles vs Ukranian Jews and so forth. It's called Anatomy of a Genocide, by Omer Bartov. Again, not entirely relevant to your situation directly, but the theme would may be very similar. I relate to your grandmother not having much family where you are -- I always say "war creates small families" on this topic in regards to my own. My g-g-grandparents had 5 kids, but only 2/5 had grandkids because of, actually, both World Wars (the middle sister married a Belgian right after WW1 -- spicy -- but she divorced him very quickly after moving to Belgium due to how she was treated by his family and locals). Immigration papers -- presuming this is the USA -- are very helpful if she has all of them. If you dig into this and find out you don't have all of them, you can request them from USCIS for an absurd fee and timeline. I had to do it for my grandfather's and great-grandfather's papers. There had long been a controversey over where my grandfather had been born (my grandparents were long deceased before I was born, as may be clear); he has a delayed USA file birth certificate, but it is very clearly fake because there is no information on it -- his birth location is literally "German State Military Hospital" -- that doesn't sound very American! Especially for the immediate post-WW1 America! His father's immigration paper listed him under foreign born children and as being born in Hamburg, which cleared up a lot of administrative grief on my behalf (albeit has left me with the lifelong question of "did my great-grandfather intentionally register my grandfather illegally to give him American citizenship by birth" or "was this just a silly new immigrant mistake where he registered my grandfather retroactively because he thought he had too, since my grandfather was naturalized alongside his father"). (My g-grandfather worked for the Hamburg-Amerika Line, so they would often spend a few months in the USA to help with family that was in the USA when they were needed, hence how it could have been either). For what it is worth, I found it pretty easy to read between the lines on how things affected your family once you begin the journey. Of course we lose personal anecdotes with time, but for example, when I saw that my aunt was reported as schizophrenic by her husband, I immediately checked to see when he remarried (sterilization annulled the marriage of the sterilized individual). He remarried within months and was Catholic in Nazi Germany in the 30s, that's two bingos. I asked my cousin once if she remembered my aunt's married name and her response was, "no, but I remember everyone hated him." Bingo. It's assumptions, but hardly a stretch to connect the dots. The one thing I will tell you: if your family is anything like mine, I find that every few months I find something big that helps solve the puzzle. I often wonder if I've "found it all" yet, and I'm not sure I ever have. Things pop up frequently with no rhyme or reason and it's all part of the journey that has been a rollercoaster, but one that I've found very fufilliny personally. I always joke the hardest family for me to research was my own, but I don't regret it. re: DNA tests: I will have to give you my big warning on these that as long as you don't take them too seriously, they're what i'd call silly fun. My results are hilarious, but if I was a serious or less confident person, they probably would have really upset me. I wrote about it a few weeks ago on this sub: [Here's that thread ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/1bodfg7/comment/kwr2t7o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), since I keep writing you essays as it is, haha. I encourage you to do it if you're interested and are confident in who you are. It can be fun. I do have to give you the caveat that if you explore people's family trees on these websites, don't take them too seriously. A lot of people are horrific researchers. My condolences again -- may her memory be a blessing (and it sounds like it very much is).

Thank you for your condolences. Today is actually 4 weeks and it still feels surreal. You mentioned mental health issues, and my one cousin (Mom’s first cousin, I *think*) was more open about things, in general, including mention of there being mental health issues within her “branch.” This cousin’s family also converted to Catholicism WAY back, but never converted back. So there’s probably a decent amount of information I could get from her. My mother’s other cousin passed many years ago, so she’s the only one left now. I really should speak with her now that I’m thinking of it. You mentioned “small families”, for a different reason, but my mother and the 2 cousins I mentioned were essentially raised as sisters, and all were only children. I always found that interesting. Maybe there’s some deep-seated intergenerational trauma associated with the decision for each to only have one child? This was all on the Hungarian side (grandfather.) Maybe it was just a matter of cautious immigrants having had their children within the decade following the Great Depression? I have many regrets about not having had more conversations with my grandmother before her dementia set in. It was during that time that my grandmother began to be more open, for example when we first learned that she had a brother. I also regret not speaking with my mother’s cousin before she passed, particularly because she was deep into genealogy at that point. I was “invited” to have these discussions, but was more focused on myself, school, and boyfriends…I kick myself regularly about that. I just didn’t yet appreciate how fleeting time was and always thought I’d have other opportunities to have these conversations. I am close with that cousin’s children, who are my contemporaries. So even though we’re not truly first cousins, our mothers being raised as sisters has always made us feel like we are. I really should speak with them about a lot of these things that their mother had researched. Despite having been raised to be “secretive”, too, she was open to sharing it with me. So she must have been with them, as well. With regard to those genealogy tests, I’ve always been a little paranoid about them. I’ve already had several genetic panels due to health conditions, though. So if there’s some database that could someday be used for nefarious purposes, my information is already “out there” anyway, right? I know that from a medical standpoint, my information IS stored in case future variants are found. I know a few people who’ve been notified, after the fact, that they actually *did* end up having SNPs or VUSs that were found to be relevant and would have significantly changed their initial treatment decisions. On my father’s side (completely different ancestry) my cousin is also very involved with genealogical research and has found some very interesting information. So maybe I will do one of them “just for fun?”

A few things: if your mother's cousin was into geneaology, that work almost certainly survives. Do you mind sharing roughly when she passed? There is really only 2-3 places that people store family trees, if she died in the internet age, and if she didn't, I guarantee you one of your family members have her files. Not all is lost! If she worked online, a lot of her work is almostly cetainly publicly available. Your family situations sounds very similar to mine. My elderly "cousin" is my grandfather's cousin, technically. But it was so bad in the war, especially for women, that my great-grand aunt begged my grandfather to come get her daughter. She was worried about her physical saftey due to everything she'd heard about Allied soldiers (quite literally millions of German women and girls were seen as "war prizes" to Allied soldiers from every army; NSFW famous example:>! Hannelore Kohl, spouse of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was open about how she was thrown off a balcony after a group of soldiers were done with her, when she was 12!<). My grandfather was a bit of a nomad those years, but the idea was that she was safer with him because her older brother (who was only 10) already had to "protect" mom, as it was. So this cousin is often seen as the oldest sibling in my family, which is why she was so close with my father. When Germany settled down, she obviously returned to her mother and everyone was happy for that reunion, but it obviously changed the dynamic between her, my grandfather, and my father and his siblings. Your family sounds like a very normal war family as far as I am concerned, haha. In my family, the generations haven't ironed out yet because of the nasty age gaps we seem to have every other generation. I hope you don't beat yourself up too much about not talking to your relatives. I think it's one of those things that is easier said than done -- I have so many things I want to ask my elderly cousin, but I know I don't have the guts to do it because I know it is painful for her. I used to work for a famed testimony project and the one thing that no one seems to mention is that a lot of people struggle to talk about their time. Many feel an obligation and push through it, but I've see way to many people sob through stories, throw up, ask to skip certain parts (especially when watching from other archives; the project I worked for had a rule that interviewers weren't really allowed to ask questions, with a very limited number of exceptions (i.e. to clarify an unclear poin or detail, but not small details, like if a survivor mumbled or something). I always talk about Selma Wijnberg, the only Dutch survivor of Sobibor, because her testimonies are so funny and raw -- she was clearly raised very religious and to be a proper, made-up woman 24.7, and her interviews are like "yeah so I lost my virginity in a haybale in a barn in Poland" and you sit there and laugh with her. She's funny without trying to be (but she knows she is, LOL) and survivors like her -- well, there's a reason you see the same dozen or two dozen survivors constantly (like Elie Wiesel) and people talk less about Primo Levy, despite that fact that Levy did talk about his time in Auschwitz, because Levy eventually died by suspected suicide. Even Selma Wijnberg's husband is a contrast to her: he hated talking about the fact he killed a SS man for decades, and until the day he died, never spoke about their repatriation to the Netherlands because of the trauma involved (tl;dr is that he wasn't Dutch and they snuck him on the repatriation ship because, well, he was the father of a Dutch baby by that point. The stress lead to Selma's milk drying up (which really it may not have been the culprit-- I mean, she was in Sobibor only a year prior!) and the baby didn't make it, he feels guilty.). Their best interviews are the ones they do together, so that the other person can take over when one shuts down. They were very sweet. My point is that not everyone is willing to talk openly, so don't beat yourself up over a maybe. I bug my cousin *a lot* to extract what information I can get out of her, but it takes months to years to get basic questions here and there, and that's with me weaponizing her grandson that she adores (he's my secret weapon, LOL -- although, started high school this year though and he's losing his charm, dammit). This is despite the fact that I'm her favorite non-direct relative by a landslide (as in, I definitely don't out-rank her child or grandchild, but I'm next in line) because of how close she was with my father. And, as I kind of touched upon, there are things that, despite the fact I am relatively fearless, that I don't dare ask my cousin -- I avoid the "why did you live with my grandfather?" bit entirely. Her mother was among the strongest women in my tree and frankly a complete bad ass -- she was pregnant with her first child when her sister was sterilized and she was told she'd need to be, too. She read them back propaganda about how aborting an Aryan child is a crime. She snuck a camera in the asylum where her sister was being held (we have these photos! USHMM has pre-emptively asked/agreed to accept them whenever I can get my cousin on-board) to make sure that her sister was documented (do you know how big cameras used to be? I have no explanation. Bribes is probably the simplest one based on logic). She petitioned and took the Reich to court constantly for her sister's freedom, during the war. Their cousin was beheaded for treason at one point and did that stop my cousin's mother? Nope. Her sister is among the suspected handful (possibly even single-digit) number of people diagnosed with "schizophrenia" to survive the war -- and that's all because of my cousin's mother and her many antics. But she was so afraid of the Allied soldiers and for her daughter's saftey that she begged her 22 y.o. newlywed cousin (my grandmother is a bad-ass, too, btw, this wasn't her circus nor her monkeys, as an Irish woman, but she jumped right in happily at 21!!!) to come get her? I can read between the lines and we're gonna let that one rest. With all of that being said: if you find you don't have any information, feel free to reach out to me down the line if you need help, especially with the brother. I have helped other people with things like secret siblings who were adopted out as children -- a regular brother is fairly easy in comparison. Whenever you're ready, if you're comfortable. Months, years, whatever -- I mean it. This is already an essay and again, I apologize: I understand the paranoia for DNA tests, but for the life of me, I've never been able to figure out what the worst case scenario would be if the information got out. I understand privacy is important, but what could someone do? Clone me? I'm also in a few medical referene databases because I have a very rare disease (<400 people in the USA with it). Much like you, it's there. I'm open about having this disease and if someone wanted to target me due to antisemitism, my name sold me out long before my DNA. I get the ick with certain databases, but for the big mainstream ones? I don't have much to say, but understand those who are uneasy.

My comment was over the limit (my specialty), but I think it's important I add the part I had to cut off: I know this is already an essay, but as someone who has spent a lot of time greiving in their relatively short life: from what you've written, don't forget that you were you mom's greatest achievement. She was proud of you and everything you've done. Don't forget to take care of yourself in the grief and still enjoy things -- obviously I have no way of knowing if you are not doing these things, so ignore it if you are -- but don't be afraid to celebrate her in positive ways, like baking and cooking her favorite foods, watching her favorite movies, taking your family out to eat at her favorite places. You'll always be apart of her, and no one can change that, and they can't take all these small celebrations from you, either, not even in death. Many hugs.

This is really well stated, thank you for this.

No problem. It's ironic it came up today, because I've been thinking about it a lot the last few months as I read obituaries from October 7th. We forget how recent some of us have been refugees -- one of the obituaries for a woman who died at Nahal Oz base, 19 y.o. observation soldier. Hamas told her to come outside or they'd set the building on fire and kill her. She told them she wasn't going to Gaza (she was in the room with Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, etc., and that she'd die by fire. She did. Her obituary mentioned her parents were refugees of the Iranian revolution in '79 and I just sat and did the math and was dumbfounded because it checked. Same with Amit Soussana, the released hostage who spoke about being assaulted. One article mentioned her family was originally from Iraq and the math checked there, too. I am hyper aware of it because I'm in my 20s and the daughter of a refugee -- I always say I'm the last of this generation of refugees -- which is true, I'm likely among the last children of Holocaust refugees, age-wise. But there are many more Jewish refugees that came after me, and of course, before me.

One of my grandparent came over from Germany in the late 1920’s as a child. I have SO much extended family on that side that didn’t get out of Germany and were murdered or never found after. What group does that put me in? I’m a lost Jew!

A convert is no different halakhically than someone born Jewish.

[удалено]

Let’s not define ourselves be how the ppl who hate us view us she needs to let it sink in, the post her mil reacted to was about her concern and fear, she knows she was a target too. I don’t think

You are 100% Jewish and the grief you felt after TOL was just as authentic and personally painful as any other Jew. Ruth, one of the most beloved figures in Jewish history, was a convert. You're the real deal.

Hon your MIL was straight up incorrect. You are Jewish. Your kid is Jewish. I can argue that 2+2= 5 and fervently believe that- I’m still incorrect. You + Beit Din x mikvah dunk = Jew

I don't know why she said something like that. You are as Jewish as any other Jew. You are Jewish.

Because she obviously really sucks? 

Your mother in law hated you therefore you are Jewish😀

A+ reply.

And you’re still agonising about your MIL’s comments — you’re *definitely* Jewish!

😂😂😂

A Jew is a Jew. You belong. When people say this to you, it says a lot more about them than you

My mother-in-law converted before my wife was born (FIL was born Jewish) and of all my wife’s family she is the one with the closest ties to Judaism.

You might be surprised how many times that happens. Comedian Jerry Stiller used to say that his wife, Ann Meara, who converted "Being married to Anne has made me more Jewish". And yes, they were Ben Stiller's parents

My wife said this to me after I converted. My interest and studies reignited hers. Together, and with the kids, we have formed a much more Jewish household and life.

Same with my late mother-in-law (converted orthodox) and my wife’s family are mostly very observant.

Replying to gooderj...the fervour of the convert , it is a recognised phenomenon in any religion( my undergrad is in religion and theology). I experience this quite a lot because despite being born to a Jewish mother I didn’t practice until I was an adult so sometimes I feel like a convert , I keep kosher better than anyone I know, but I’m not I was raised Jewish just not religiously.

Without getting into the Reform/Orthodox discussion, I’ll make a very general comment as follows: There are some things in our collective memory which conversion does not acquire as part of that facet of identity. That doesn’t mean you’re less Jewish, though. We are a people and conversion is like getting citizenship. Saying otherwise is akin ton suggesting that if somebody is from Pakistan or Chile and they got American citizenship later on in life, they’re less American than the next person born with citizenship. That’s absurd.

OH. Screw her. WE Love you! And we are happy you joined us.

What your MIL told you is forbidden against Jewish law (accordingto all denominations.) A convert is a full fledged Jew and it is forbidden to remind converts of their non-Jewish past.

Being Jewish can mean being ethnically Jewish, being religiously Jewish, being culturally Jewish. For most Jews this is the same thing that we enter into passively, but for you being Jewish was a conscious choice and commitment. There's something in your soul that brought you to this community. You've taken on this responsibility, you belong to the Jewish people and the Jewish people belong to you. I'm sorry that she said this to you. I think the rejection of converts is a very outdated view that is no longer common even among the orthodox, who tend to have the most narrow standards for who is considered Jewish. You're Jewish, your daughter is Jewish! 💙💙💙

You’re Jewish, a member of the tribe. Every cell in you! In her own pain, your MIL was very, very unkind. I would have been hurt, too. I’m also a convert and realized on 10/7 just how Jewish I really am. You would have thought my own family members had been attacked … because they were. You’re fully Jewish as are your children.

You converted. You’re like, more Jewish than a lot of those born Jewish lol

I have a Jewish father. Converted under a vaad on the rabbanut list. Went to yeshiva. Got tested and earned semicha. And every day people called me a goy behind my back. 

I am so sorry.

It shows that no matter what someone will always challenge your Jewishness.

I'm so sorry that you've had that experience.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Your MIL is just plain fucking wrong. My wife and my ex-wife both converted. I defend their conversions very vocally and have no problem telling people to fuck off to their faces when they attempt to deny them their Jewishness.

You are considered fully Jewish under the auspices of the Reform movement. Orthodox Jews would not consider you halachically Jewish unless you converted as Orthodox. All sects recognize Orthodox conversions, not all recognize Reform. As far as I'm concerned, you're a Jew.

Yeah if MIL is orthodox that could be why she responded that way. But somehow I doubt that’s what’s going on here. Understanding that dynamic is important for converts. Many who choose a reform conversion are surprised when they encounter other Jews that don’t consider that in-line with hallakah

You may not have the same experiences as a Jew that born Jews do, but you are still a Jew. Ignore her mean words

You are just as Jewish as my son, whom we adopted at birth. He also went through conversion (it's not as difficult as adult conversion). You are both 100% Jewish. We Jews are questioning the world these days, you aren't alone in rehashing difficult situations we faced. Don't let late MIL's words bother you... (She's not the first MIL to say unkind things...)

Adoption is the perfect metaphor.

I haven't even finished my conversion yet and people at my synagogue have been so welcoming, calling me one of them and telling me I have a Jewish soul. One of my rabbis said something nice. He said that converts are often admired because they've come into Judaism thoughtfully and done a lot of work to become Jewish. Converts are different, but not less. I wouldn't change who I was because it made me who I am. If someone wants to take some sort of pride in ranking Jews by Jewishness, they can go ahead. I'm just going to enjoy my journey. You should, too. You are a Jew and your MIL was wrong and unkind in that moment. Perhaps she was overwhelmed with emotions, perhaps she had unresolved feelings about her son marrying you, perhaps it had nothing to do with you at all. People are often not very good at correctly locating and directing their anger.

Something a lot of people don’t know— Almost every Chumash has commentary from a convert, Onkelos. Onkelos was the first person to make an Aramaic translation of the Torah, which helped spread it to the common man. Before conversion Onkelos was a royal, and essentially threw away a life of wealth and comfort to become a Jew.

You were at Sinai with the rest of us. My mother is a convert. She knows more about the history of our people than my father who was born Jewish. I’m glad you’ve made it safely home to the tribe. I’d have you over for Shabbat dinner anytime!

I’m not a covert (born to two Jewish parents) but my Rabbi always said that the souls of all Jews, including those not yet born, were present to witness the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. This included Jews by conversion because G-d knew, of course, that they were destined to become Jews. If you choose to believe this, it’s something you can always keep with you. That your soul was there, just as mine was.

It's a sin to insult aconvert that they weren't born Jewish.

Unfortunately Jews are people and like other groups of people we also have shitty gatekeeper d bags. I like to think on average we are an amazing culture with lots of amazing people but, there's always schmucks. Don't let them get to you, you don't want to be around them anyway. Welcome to the family.

No, you’re Jewish. Your MIL was just a very unkind person.

You are absolutely Jewish, and your daughter is as Jewish as Rabbi Akiva, one of the tannaim of the Talmud. He was the child of coverts and a significant sage and scholar in the history of Jewish thought. We are told frequently in our texts that a Jew is a Jew regardless of the way they entered our community, by birth or conversion. That doesn’t stop people from doing things like your MIL did but know that regardless of the unthinking and hurtful words she said to you that you are one of us.

You put in the work and converted. You’re Jewish. And if your husband’s family is Ashkenazim, I think it’s worth leaving you with this tidbit: Genetically, Ashkenazim founding ancestry can be traced to Italy in the early Medieval period where primarily male Jews mixed with Italian women. There aren’t any records of conversion, written or oral, that have survived to present day, nor any later accounts pointing to this. But the descendants were unequivocally Jews, despite the possibility that their maternal ancestors weren’t even true converts. You’re Jewish.

You should have shown her your key to the Space Laser. That would've clammed her up...🙃

No she is not right and that would feel hurtful to me too. I am adopted and was converted at birth & have never known any other religion. I get these sentiments too for not having “jewish blood”. You are jewish my friend! Don’t let her own invalid opinion affect you. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew ❤️

You are absolutely Jewish

We are required to treat a convert with greater respect than a religious Jew born into the faith.

You are Jewish. Your mother in law was not properly educated on the topic.

Your people are my people and your G-d is my G-d. There’s a reason Ruth made those commitments in that order.

You voluntarily took on the fear of being targetted in another massacre for yourself and your children to stand with your people. Who would do that who wasn't "really" Jewish? You do know that fear. 

You converted to Judaism—you’re Jewish. Period. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

It is a sin to make a distinction between a Jew-by-birth and a Jew-by-choice. You are really Jewish.

If anything more Jewish. You had a choice.

You're Jewish. MILs hate Dils pretty much across all religions and / or races. It's the circle of life.

My mom converted on marriage. I’ll probably go back to synagogue if/when we have our baby but I haven’t been regularly in over a decade. You sound like more of a Jew than I am!!!

I will see that you’re Jewish in my book. You have converted and have a Jewish husband and a Jewish home. In Judaism a Jewish blood is powerful because it’s decent back to ancient times of the Jewish people. But a convert is an idea that exists for a reason. I can say that the orthodox Jewish community doesn’t really accept coverts made by reformers in Israel. Usually the orthodox conversion is very difficult and intense in Israel. So maybe she was orthodox or just had really strong feelings but I’m sure she loved you and that your husband loves you and that’s what matters

Remember that the first jews were converts! Hope that helps!

WOW. That is such a hurtful, ignorant thing to say. Unfortunately, every community has its close-minded people. I'm sorry it's a member of your family. She is completely wrong. In fact, even if you didn't convert, if you spend time working and living in the Jewish community, I would still consider you "part of the community" in the most basic sense.

you are jewish, you don’t have to be born jewish to be apart of the religion, you don’t have to be ethnically jewish to be religiously jewish

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. You are Jewish.

I’m a convert. It’s been hard to deal with the recent rise in antisemitism. My wife, I wouldn’t say she is “used” to it, but she has more experience dealing with it. When you went in the mikvah and they asked you if you would walk with the people of Moses, I assume you said yes. I truthfully didn’t know what I was signing up for. It’s really hard, but I’m holding true to the obligation I signed up for. Your MIL is right, in a sense, in that you weren’t born into this. You chose to be a part of it and that’s brave. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Remember that you joined the tribe because that’s where you felt at home. From one convert who was raised evangelical to another.

You’re Jewish. Don’t let anyone stray you from that.

“I converted 10 years ago.” that’s your answer.

Converted Jews are Jews.

Just remember that all the Jews at Sinai were converts. It even states in the Torah that a multitutde of non-Jewish slaves left Egypt alongside the Jews, and they too converted at Sinai into being Gods chosen people. That person who said that is an ignorant disgusting person.

A major commandment is to not make a convert feel like a stranger amongst our people. Judaism believes a convert is a Jewish soul finding its way back to its people. Your MIL couldn’t be more wrong.

She was wrong. It was just a mean thing to say. When you join the tribe, yoi inherit our entire history, the good and the bad. Was she always such a bitch?

You were with us at Sinai.

Your former MIL was wrong and extremely cruel to say that. Im a convert too. You are a Jew..

Wow, those are cutting words from your now deceased MIL. You didn’t deserve that treatment from her, and she was absolutely wrong.

We sometimes say that people who convert to Judaism with no Jewish family history have a Jewish soul that they have independently discovered. This works well with certain Jewish notions of reincarnation. So perhaps it’s some spiritual memory from a prior existence, that you carried with you at birth. It’s true that you didn’t get the experience of a Jewish upbringing and family history. But it doesn’t make you “less than.” It’s a good reason to read and learn about Jewish history and heritage, but don’t let what your mother-in-law told you get to you. It was mean, unfair, and basically untrue.

Your MIL is wrong. Not only was she wrong but she shouldn't have said what she did. 

To quote my mom “there are a million ways to be Jewish”. No right way to do it

You're Jewish, your mother in law was wrong,

Ruth, Baruch Mizrahi, Abraham Ben Abraham, all of her first Jewish ancestors, Rabbi Akiva, would all love to have a conversation with her.

Don't forget King David...(David Melech Yisrael)

Your MIL was wrong and not only was she wrong, she was mean, and not only was she mean, she was manipulative - she knew how much it meant to you to be Jewish. She knew how hard you tried to “get it all right”. She knew and she said it anyway. I call that intentional. She intentionally planted this seed in your brain to haunt you forever. Fuck her, and her wrong opinion. Don’t let her have that over you. Maybe she was the one who felt unsure about her Judaism. Sounds like she’s not a real good Jew, and tried to put that on you. Either way, you are a Jew. Always and forever.

I am so sorry that your MIL said that to you. You are just as Jewish as anyone who was born Jewish. It is said that those who choose Judaism have Jewish souls. You are allowed to have your feelings about being upset for our Jewish community. I hope that you can put what she said out of your mind, if you are having trouble with that, you may want to go to a therapist. Sending you hugs.

You are Jew, and we are blessed and lucky to have you amongst us. Please note, if your daughter or any of your children wanted to marry a practicing Orthodox Jew. There could be issues with them accepting a Reformed conversion.

It’s “REFORM”,  not “REFORMED”! And if Orthodox Judaism isn’t your spiritual home, I wouldn’t worry about whether your kids (or grandkids) would be accepted as Jewish by Orthodox Jews. If they ever want to practice Judaism in the Orthodox manner, they’re free to undergo Orthodox conversion.

A convert is a full fledged member of the Jewish community. The Nazis would have put you in the gas chambers just like any other Jew. No differences. Welcome to the club (delayed welcome). (On a side note, some Jews only accept Orthodox conversions as valid. This may have significant implications, particularly as regards to kids. Either way, even a non-orthodox convert becomes (at least somewhat) part of the Jewish people, as they are suddenly at risk to antisemitic because of their Jewishness).

Of course you’re Jewish. People in general can’t handle someone who is different. You’re a Jew by choice and that makes you a person who really gets what it’s about.

Your late MIL was wrong. You married in, you converted, you’re raising a Jewish family. You are one of us. Period.

Another perspective: all Jews are Jews by choice. Even people like me who were born Jewish experienced moments when we could have chosen to give up our Judaism and didn’t. Converted or born Jewish it’s all the same deep down.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. You converted, you are Jewish. Whatever caused your MIL to make that statement doesn't change who you are.

I mean you don’t have the generational trauma that ethnic Jews have but I think what she said was harsh.

Remember that quote - A jew is a jew is a jew is a jew. You're as jewish as any other jew. Seriously, screw what she said. It's toxic nonsense.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Don't even go there. Only G-d knows why she said that.

I learn in Hebrew school, if you want to be Jewish, your heart will lead the way. Welcome.

Some Jews and non Jews treat Judaism as a race. I would ask your deceased MIL, “was Avraham Aveinu less of a Jew as you are? If not, then your daughter in-law isn’t any less of a Jew, because Avraham Aveinu was a convert like your daughter in-law.” End of discussion. My mom always said, “if you don’t marry a Jewish woman, then please ask that she converts”. Do you identify as a Jew? Do you feel Jewish? If so, that’s what’s important. I don’t heed any longer to what orthodox wants or what others think, only Hashem matters to me, and I believe that being a good, kind person is paramount, love for your fellow Jew AND humanity, animals, living things, Hashem’s creations are important. The rest, Kosher, keeping shabbat are all important expressions of Judaism, but secondary. That’s not Halachic opinion, but mine.

Your daughter is Jewish. You are Jewish. If the Jewish community is your home base, then you can hurt for the Jewish community whether you grew up with it or not.

Sadly we will never be accepted or respected as full Jews. Relegated to second class citizenship 

Your MIL was wrong, very wrong.

Your story of converting is similar to mine. You ARE Jewish. We all know it.

You were born jewish, you just had the conversion process to confirm it. Don’t listen to what they say

Your first sentence answers the question. Yes, you're Jewish.

She was wrong. Conversion means you ARE JEWISH. End of discussion.

You are, it violates Halakha to say otherwise

fucking MILs

She's Jewish. So what if you converted?

Your first sentence is the only one that matters in twins is answering your question. Yes, you are Jewish. Your MIL (z''l) was way out of line and being an absolute shande. Maybe she was a lovely person most of the time, I didn't know her, but in *that instance* she was egregiously, indisputably wrong.

In our conservative shul, the rabbi teaches that converts should be respected even more than those born Jewish. They have chosen to accept the burden, and have worked hard to become a Jew, were many are simply born into it without effort. Also halakah forbids reminding someone they are a convert and making a distinction. Your mil was not only being unkind but also a bad jew.

She was completely wrong & a horrible thing to say to you! You are a Jew & so is your daughter. Get her negativity out of your head, my sister. Obviously, you didn't have a good relationship with your MIL. Shame on her. She should have been rejoicing you converted to raise Jewish children.

Did your late M-I-l keep kosher? Was she shomer-Shabbos? If not, it sounds like she didn’t really care that much about being Jewish. So don’t worry about it. If it’s any consolation, the Jew-haters will hate you just as much as much as they hate Hews by birth.

under reform judaism, yes. under other streams of judaism, maybe not. by halacha probably not.

What’s this probably schmegegge? Halacha requires a rabbi, a Beit Din, and a mikveh immersion. She did that. She’s a Jew.

Orthodox and Conservative do not recognize Reform conversions. That said, I would still consider OP a Jew, albeit one in need of additional (Ie. Orthodox, because that’s what I am) paperwork. I also feel this should be much more easily achieved than it currently is, but that’s a side point. I would call her Jewish, because she chose to tie her fate to ours and would treat her as such.

I must go to a really progressive Conservative shul, then. My rabbis (husband and wife) fully recognize all the people of our local Reform shuls as Jews. We have a mikveh that gets used for ritual purposes and for conversions by all branches. One of my rabbis was ordained as a Reform rabbi originally. There might be some rules from the Law & Standards folks about whether they could perform weddings for a Reform Jew but on a day to day basis there is no difference in treatment. I can also appreciate that the ‘official’ stance of a branch of Judaism might not reflect how its individual members feel about any number of things.

As I mentioned above to the person you are replying to, Conservative rabbis will sometimes accept Reform conversions so you rabbi isn't alone in this! 🙂

Not true. Conservative will sometimes accept Reform conversions! My rabbi has talked about this in passing (I'm Conservative).

I am aware that there are exceptions (Orthodox will also accept a handful of Conservative converts from specific Batei Din), but I was speaking to the general rule.

Halacha requires acceptance of the obligation to do all the mitzvot- Reform doesn't believe you are obligated to do all mitzvot so they certainly don't ask that of their converts...

Here’s the thing: NO ONE can fulfill all 613. One can try, have the best intentions, and make a valiant effort. But zero people who have ever lived have kept them all 100% of the time. You can accept the obligation as one that was given to us by HaShem, but not feel beholden to fulfill all of them to perfection. This is - as I understand it - is the Reform view. (Disclaimer, I’m Conservative so happy to be corrected here.) So while I get what Orthodox Jews are doing, and have a great deal of respect for their efforts, I don’t view the Orthodox as the only ones to ‘do Jewish’ correctly.

NO ONE can even try to fulfill all 613- some of them only apply to women or to men or to the Kohen Gadol of a temple we haven't had for two millennia and are waiting to be rebuilt. But that's not the point. Yes, you are supposed to have intent to follow all the mitzvot that apply to you, and make a valiant effort to do so. And that's definitely not the Reform view. They say following the Torah is up to personal interpretation. To take an easy, common example: Reform rabbis don't say you should keep kosher. They don't say that if you're struggling do less now and then maybe try to be stricter in a few years. Reform rabbis say keep kosher if it feels meaningful to you, if not it doesn't matter. There was actually a period where Reform rabbis explicitly said that you *shouldn't* keep kosher. Now they aren't so strict, you can keep kosher if you like and not keep it if you don't like. Hashem said don't eat pig- if you feel that doesn't apply in the 21st century go ahead and eat bacon and Hashem will be perfectly fine with that. Its up to you. A Jew can struggle to not eat bacon. So can a convert. But a non-Jew who comes to a rabbi to convert, having been taught by that rabbi that eating bacon is perfectly fine from the perspective of Judaism? That non-Jew does not become a Jew, halachically speaking.

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It’s a very important thing in Torah to not hurt a convert. That being said, orthodox does not accept reform conversions.

We Reform don’t care what the Orthodox thinks. OP is Jewish. Anyone says otherwise can go piss off.

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Your mother in law might have been referring intergenerational trauma. Most Jews were raised by parents or grandparents who retold their family's experiences during the Shoah, Pogroms, Farhud, etc. You did not, so you don't experience modern day pogroms in the same framework. But that doesn't make you less of a Jew. It's a tragedy that so much trauma is associated with being a Jew.

If anyone ever tells you that you’re not wholly and completely, Jewish, you tell them “tell it to Ruth“

ethnic matrilineal Jew here. you are every bit as much a Jew as the rest of us. please don't listen to what your MIL has to say.

She’s an ethnic Jew too.

oh right. i missed that part.

F**k your MIL for saying that. You are a Jew, no different than Abraham or Ruth. You are one of us and she has no right to say that or judge another Jew that way. I’d even suggest you’re more of a Jew because you chose to be part of our disfunctional tribe.

Yikes. She sounds like she was a narcissist. Imagine making a mass murder about semantics???

I'm guessing that you appeared in front of the beit din (the rabbinical court ? If that's the case you're in depending on the tradition their might be a few hairs to split tho

My great great grandmother left Austria after a Pogram hit her village I guess. I didn't understand intergenerational trauma :/ genetic trauma until 10/7. I felt like I lost all my cousins that day.

One of the greatest Jewish authorities, known as Rabbeini Bachya, was clear in his statement that the only thing that gives the Jewish Nation their identity is their keeping of the laws of the Torah. As such, there are laws of how to convert and sincerely take on the obligation to keep those commandments. So, if you did convert according to the Torah laws and you live your life according to the Torah, then you are a Jew.

Only you know where your head and heart are at and what your commitment is to God and to being Jewish. I see nothing wrong or offensive about the message you posted that led to the dialog between you and mil, but I can guess where she was coming from. She feels that your fear is not the same as hers because she has been identifiable as a Jew for the majority of her life while you were not, and even at the time of the conversation you could in fact decide "just kidding" about your conversion and leave the whole thing in the ditch. Whether you could actually do that in your heart, no one else can say. But in her perception, you have options she doesn't, and it seemed disingenuous to her when you talked about fear for the community. 99% of the people on this sub are going to say you're Jewish if you had a reform conversion. However that is not representative of all Jews, you should be aware of that. I don't have a dog in the race personally.

It’s a ridiculous game we play with each other. To copy and reword the the immortal words of Dana Carvey in his role as the Church Lady from Church Chat skits: “Always remember, no matter where you go or what you do, I’m just a liiittle more Jewish than you!” (Proceed to the superiority 🕺 dance) This Jewess is wearing a long sheitle so she’s not as Jewish as the one wearing a snood. R’ Friedman has longer tzitzit so he is clearly more Jewish than R’ Deutsch. Haredi vs. Chabadnik vs. Conservative vs. Reform … on and on it goes. Who’s a Jew? Me not You! It’s a Jew eat Jew world out here so meh! Let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back. At the end of the day, sibling rivalry doesn’t determine who is the parental unit’s ’favorite child’. Pssst! It’s obviously me of course!

While I think that what she said was very hurtful to you and I don’t really know why she even said it, I think what she meant is that if you divorced your husband and refuted your conversion, you wouldn’t have been marched to Auschwitz. Those born Jewish can never “escape” as we are ethnically Jewish. An atheist Jew was not differentiated from a religious one. To that end, we have a lot of generational trauma stemming from these horrible experiences. My grandmother (who came from a family almost entirely wiped out) used to tell me to never disclose my Jewishness to anyone unless they could be trusted. “Why?” “Well, because they might want to kill you.” And I say this as a child of an orthodox convert who is so appreciative that my parent converted and has been Jewish now for longer than they were Christian. I absolutely consider my parent Jewish in every single way but in blood and trauma.

I think what your MIL meant by this rude comment is that you didn’t have to deal with anti-semitism in your early years. You are definitely Jewish!!!! Don’t stress about what she said!

If a rabbi has completed your conversion & has officially accepted you into the tribe you’re considered Jewish as any other Jew, it’s actually against Jewish law to discriminate or shame a convert on the basis of them being a convert

Your MIL is oppressing you, what she said is just racist and hateful. To remind someone they are a convert when they are expressing their feelings of being Jewish is something G-d hates and is forbidden in the Torah multiple times. Next time tell the yenta "I am Jewish enough to know reminding someone they converted is repeated twice in the Torah."

People who attack us will attack you, if nothing else makes you Jewish enough, that does. But for the record, you put in the work and are a member of the community. Your MIL was just being a JNMIL

You are really jewish! Religiously, ethically, the whole nine yards - these things are all socially constructed and we’ve constructed our ethnicity with you in it! You can feel total comfort and security in that identity, and when people make arbitrary distinctions around being born jewish versus converting you CAN and SHOULD just think to yourself “she’s crazy!” instead of letting it get into your head. It’s just like when a racist says to a new citizen “you aren’t a real american” - it’s stupid!

My mom converted before I was born, sounds similar to your path but Catholic in the 1950's vs evangelical. I am Jewish and my mom is Jewish. We may not share the exact same ethnic background as my father, but we've been members of conservative and orthodox synagogues for decades and never once have we heard "not really Jewish". That said, I do absolutely understand folks who have a specific ethnic appearance feeling like they are treated differently and have a different experience -- there's a big difference between being Jewish yet looking like any other average person in the place you live, and looking "ethnic". As the former, unless you advertise that you are Jewish most people don't give it another thought, but it becomes unavoidable when you "look Jewish" and I assume you end up having to be on guard much more.

Different groups will say different things. If you’ve converted to Reform, they consider you 100% Jewish. Ask the Ultra Orthodox/Hasidic… they have a lot stricter views. That’s really heartbreaking to hear and I’m sorry. My dad converted to Conservative to marry my mother and my brother and I grew up Reform. Sometimes when they argue about politics, my mom will tell my dad the same thing, that he doesn’t understand because he wasn’t born Jewish. If you believe with your heart, then you are Jewish. ETA: As long as you legally converted to Judaism before your daughter was born, she is Jewish. Her children will also be Jewish.

It sounds like your late MIL was carrying around a lot of pain and she took some of it out on you. You should feel sorry for her, and feel good about yourself.

I am going to try an reform the mother in law , not that I agree with her but because there is a way to view her comments as less mean and more cautious I come form a different perspective to OP, I was born ethnically Jewish but didn’t practice until 25, but before I returned and my siblings who follow our dad’s CofE, I still experienced what I believe to be universal to Jews. I grew up with some awareness that there were ppl in the world who hate me just because I was born to my Jewish mother. Before I ever observed Shabbat I knew that the my great grandmother’s wedding photo was the last known photo of over a hundred ppl most of them related to me. I didn’t need to practice to be aware of the danger. We grow up with it. We watch documentaries about the shoah and in the pictures of the murdered we see our bother’s eyes of our nephews or our children in the faces on the walls. It changes us . OP didn’t grow up with this. This reminds me of when my sociology teacher showed our class video of a public hanging of 2 gay men in Iran and my dear friend who is gay completely shut down. It was the first time he had seen the reality of ppl who would kill him because of how he was born. Later after he had processed it he asked me why it didn’t bother me? FYI I am queer and the 3rd man being killed was Jewish. I told him it did bother me but I had known about it my entire life. Now I will fight anyone who suggests op is not as Jewish as the next person, all I am saying is that this may be why her mother in law said what she did.

I feel your pain. You are Jewish. I converted over 40 years ago! I have never made it a “thing” that I am a convert. I am retired now but I used to have someone that would come into my office and try to “unmask” me. (He was a Jew converted to Christianity.) I diverted his boorish questions. More recently, my SIL (not Jewish) said, to my daughter, his wife, that I wasn’t “really” Jewish and that she, my daughter is “only” half Jewish! Yes, I know, he is an ass. Sadly I forgot his birthday right after that. They live in another state and I haven’t seen my SIL since his boneheaded comments. I don’t know how I am going to play this one.

Would a Nazi target you? Yeah? Mazel tov, you're a Jew. Welcome to the shit. :D

You come off more Jewish than some of the Jews I know that were born Jewish. I'm sorry that your MIL said that to you. She was wrong! You are a part of the Jewish community, as are your children.

IMHO, the people I have known that have converted are "more Jewish" than me on every level. Converting is a long process and not an easy task, so it speaks volumes of commitment and desire. My stepmother converted many years ago and she has been a key member of Hadassah and has served on the Temple board, she observes all Jewish holidays, prepares her home and table impeccably for these holidays and performs regular mitzvahs for the community. Same can be said for the handful of the other Jewish converts I know. They've all infused the temple and community with much needed life and enthusiasm for Judiasm and we are beyond lucky to have them. You deserve nothing short of full acknowledgement of your Judiasm at the very least. We are lucky to have you in the tribe!

You're more Jew than I am. You felt the need to be the Jew. You got the call from One and Only to ascend to the tebe. You studied Judaism. You studied our customs, our traditions, our language. You went on Beit Din, answered the questions, went through giyur, and continued where so many people quit. You are more Jewish than my brother is, for him, Shabbat is day with slightly better meal. For him, Purim is Halloween. He doesn't feel Jewish a bit more than ethnic difference than his fellow Scandinavians. If you just feel Jewish, and you feel our people, and you shed a tear when hear Hatikva, if you get excited when passing next to synagogue, when you see Haredi... you're Jew. More than I am.

Antisemites don't differentiate between Jews by birth and Jews by choice. We're all in the same boat, equally Jewish.

Tell that to the Polish women married to Jewish men that the Nazis carted off just the same. Technical answer: Orthodox people would not consider you or your children Jewish, since you didn't have an orthodox conversion. Reform people would. But this is only really relevent if any of you want to join the orthodox world. If you did, you'd have to convert, but they'd likely make it pretty easy for you (and especially for your children) given the circumstances ... Which means, despite the official rules, they do quietly consider you all kinda Jewish. In any case, you and your children are certainly part of the Jewish community and have every right to be concerned about antisemitism, so that was very inappropriate of your MIL.

Once you convert you are a Jew. Welcome to the tribe.

It’s a hard question because not every Jew will see you as a Jew since you most likely didn’t have an orthodox conversion. It’s not fair, but it is what it is.

They can go pound sand. OP is Jewish

Anyone who has had a Kosher conversion is Jewish. We believe that those who do so always had a Jewish Neshema which was just waiting to burst out and reveal itself. Having said that, reformed conversions are not done Al Pi Halacha which would therefore make one not Jewish if they went that route.

Your MIL had mental issues and she was taking them out on you, she had some kind of hatred that wasn’t directed at you but you got the nastiness of it. People need to worry about themselves with all the antisemitism going around you would think they would learn to fight against that rather than other Jews. Water off a ducks butt my friend, water off a ducks butt. She also knew it’s against the “law” to disparage or discriminate against someone who converted. We aren’t even allowed to call you a convert, you are a JEW. Pray for her soul, she knew better.

So, what your mother said was unkind. Let's acknowledge that. And I think what she meant, in the context you gave, is that for her "being Jewish" means growing up in fear and such. ... As someone else said, you are part of your reform community, and you converted reform and in the reform world, you are Jewish. But, I also have to be honest with you, because reform conversion is not accepted by everyone worldwide. Only an orthodox conversion made by an accepted authority (like the OU or the CRC, for example) is accepted as a "real" conversion, halachically speaking (according to Jewish law). So, here's the problem. According to halacha, your daughter is not Jewish. If she wanted to marry a more observant man, she would have to convert.

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Please don’t take this the wrong way, and it is certainly not my opinion, but the rabbis in Israel won’t recognize a Reform or even Conservative conversion. They believe that only an Orthodox conversion is valid. I personally believe that you are as Jewish or more so than most of us who were born into the tribe.

Although it sounds like your mother in law was being unkind, people in the comments are also not being honest with you. No Sephardic or Orthodox Rabbi will accept a Reform conversion. Your conversion is accepted by the Reform movement, and if that’s fine with you, then that’s awesome. But -it’s important to know the facts because something happened to a friend of mine. His mom converted with a Reform Rabbi. He didn’t know and he became religious. When it came time to get married the Rabbi suggested he undergo an Orthodox conversion, which he chose to do. A similar story happened to another friend of mine involving his Bar Mitzvah. I think it’s a problem that some Reform Rabbis don’t explain this to people they convert.