Beyond Orthodox Conversion to Judaism

A very common question that comes up when going through an Orthodox conversion is can I still homeschool my child? While many today homeschool, most beis din's will not look to favorably upon this for various reasons. The first reason is that a person converting to Orthodox Judaism needs to integrate into the community as best as possible. Integrating means that the children attend the local Orthodox school or schools in the city in which they live.

This cannot be over emphasized. It is going to be hard enough to fit into the community and this will certainly make one stick out! Another reason that homeschooling is really not an option is because you need someone to be able to teach the child the basics of Judaism and what things mean and why we do them. A parent most likely (unless they themselves are Torah scholars) will not be able to do this. Even to hire Torah scholars to learn with the child is not such a great option because of the integration issue we mentioned previously.

The argument could be made though that there are issues with the schools (whatever they may be) that would prevent a parent from sending their child to that particular school. The only reason that homeschooling may be appropriate is if there is no other place to send them, in that case, the beis din won't convert you anyway until you get to a stronger community.

No school is perfect and there may be a number of issues that we in the Orthodox community have to work on specifically in the realm of education, nonetheless, this is the system that we have and we must make the most of it.

As a convert to Orthodox Judaism and learning about Judaism yourselves, you must make the effort and get the children into a school, run by Orthodox Jews that perpetuate Orthodox Jewish values. If someone is on the outside looking in, keeping the children in a situation where they won't thrive is a mistake.