Rabbi Capers Funnye, the spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, doesn’t look Jewish—at least to some Jewish eyes. “When someone comes into a synagogue, the last thing you’re supposed to ask them is ‘Are you Jewish?’ Well, if I’m here on a Saturday, and I’ve got this book in my hand, how about just assuming I’m Jewish?”

Well, at least he sounds Jewish.

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Funnye (pronounced fun-AY) was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one the nation’s leading black religious denominations. When Funnye was 17, the minister at his church noticed his gift for public speaking and asked him if he was interested in becoming a preacher. The question got him thinking about religion and set him off on a spiritual quest that led not to Christian ministry, but to rabbinical school.

The rabbi was one of 80 ethnically diverse Jewish leaders who gathered at a San Francisco hotel this spring for the Be’chol Lashon International Think Tank, a six-year-old project sponsored by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Be’chol lashon is Hebrew for “in every tongue,” and the meeting lived up to its title with participants from 15 countries, including Uganda, France, Slovakia, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Colombia, Cuba, India, Portugal, and Spain.

Check your “Chosen people” stereotypes at the door. Some of these folks were born Jewish and some converted. Some among them urge the Jewish community to offer up its religion to any and all shoppers in today’s increasingly competitive spiritual supermarket. That’s a radical departure from the general understanding of Judaism as a religion that prohibits proselytizing. Cal alum Gary Tobin, Ph.D. ’75, Think Tank participant and president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, believes it’s time for his people to get over the idea that “Jews don’t do that.” This year’s invitation-only gathering was devoted to the issue of conversion, which has bitterly divided the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform branches of Judaism.

Conversion stories like Rabbi Funnye’s stir up both hope and discord within the Jewish establishment in the United States, Israel, and around the world. Various Jewish sects and religious denominations have markedly different answers to the question, “Who is a Jew?” The Orthodox follow matrilineal descent (you’re Jewish if your mother was Jewish), while the Reform movement posits a more inclusive definition. That has created a situation in which many children born into mixed-faith Reform marriages are not considered “real Jews” by Orthodox Jewish leaders—including the Israeli rabbis deciding who has “the right of return” to the Jewish homeland.

Traditionally, most conversions come from the marriage of a Jew and a Gentile, after the couple decides to raise their children in the Jewish faith. But a growing number of converts are “Jews by choice,” spiritual seekers who adopt the faith through a personal religious or philosophical revelation. In recent years, some Reform movement leaders have urged that Judaism be open to those who are not formal members of any religious group, people who are “spiritual, but not religious.”

Tobin is one such outspoken advocate. He would like to see Jews actively market themselves and reach out to spiritual seekers. “The Jewish community should be committed to outreach and growth,” he said. “Instead of 14 million Jews in the world, there should be 50 million. Instead of 6 million Jews in the United States, there should be 12 million. And there would be if we were open to denominational switchers and seekers like every other religion.”

Other conference attendees, such as Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Viñas, see themselves as returning, not converting. Viñas, a first-generation Cuban American, is from a family known as the isleños, Spanish colonists who came to the Caribbean via the Canary Islands. The isleños called themselves Catholic, but they had some unusual family customs—quirky practices they did not share with outsiders. “Our grandmothers were always in charge of arranging our marriages. There were certain families that we could marry and certain families that we couldn’t marry. Our grandmothers knew, and they passed it down. We were never to tell a true confession to a priest. My grandmother lit candles on Friday night. We did not eat meat and milk together. Imagine a Cuban family that didn’t eat pork! When we came to America my father saw for the first time people lighting Friday night candles, and he remarked to my mother, ‘Isn’t that amazing. People here do publicly what we only do in secret.’ They didn’t know these things were Jewish.”

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