It's unusual without having unfortunate connotations. I think of Ginger as more problematic.

It all depends where you're standing. I was teased about my name, so I see unfortunate connotations.

But I love it, so I don't care.

It's only cheesy if you have third and fourth and fifth kids named Otto and Ophelia and Omar.

• shudder* At the thought of five kids, not the names.

I was called gingerbread a lot. Also, my middle name is Quinn, and I took a lot of "Quinn the Eskimo" ribbing. I suspect that no name is safe.

I suspect that no name is safe.

Kids are so cruel. That's pretty much a given. I knew a kid in grade school that could come up with a disgusting rhyme to match any given name. But he picked his nose a lot and didn't graduate high school so look where that got him.

So, I'm taking advantage of this Rosh Hashanah to do a lot of reading about Judaism. Specifically, gauging whether it makes sense to me, and reading up on basic advice for possible way-pre-converts.

It's annoying.

In order to marry my current girlfriend and be accepted by her community and family, who worship in Orthodox synagogues, I would have to convert Orthodox. This, however, would most likely (though not necessarily for absolute certain - I'm still getting details) require testifying before a religious court that I will always dress in a certain way, and will avoid physical contact with the opposite sex, and will not swim in mixed company. I may have to say I would not attend a family wedding held in a Christian church, or a funeral.

I can't do that. The annoying thing is, SHE doesn't follow these laws. She doesn't believe them. She has actually been known to get ANGRY at the mention of such laws. She actively avoids socializing with people who follow such laws. She gets away from synagogue as quickly as possible after each service, so as to avoid a throng of Orthodox Jew-boys throwing themselvs at her (without touching.) I'm pretty sure, based on the reading I've been doing, that she's much more a Conservative than an Orthodox, except for a very small number of traditions that are enough to keep her in the Orthodox world.

Most of the things she believes and does, I could promise to do. All of them, in fact, if I had to guess. I can believe in G-d - as presented in Judaism, it's almost easy for me. I can follow Shabaat laws and Kosher laws. I can observe holidays, and study Hebrew, and send my children to Jewish day schools. It would take some serious internal contemplation and thought for me to decide to do these things, major deliberation, but at least they aren't something I have to declare impossible. But that's not enough. It's quite likely that I'd get rejected for Orthodox conversion, just for believing exactly as the girl I'm trying to marry believes.

So why not convert to Conservative or Reform instead? After all, Conservatives are still Jewish, so at least the cultural divide is somewhat removed, even if we couldn't get married by her home Rabbi (who she disagrees with about most stuff anyway), right? WRONG. Conservative converts are not Jewish in the eyes of the Orthodox church. Technically, marrying a converted Conservative would be a (horror!) intermarriage. Marrying a Jewish guy who was raised Reform and is adamantly atheistic would be a Jewish marriage (if not ideal), but marrying a converted Conservative, NSM.

So in order to get married to this girl, I might have to confess a belief in things she actively HATES. Because it's okay to not believe those things and still be Orthodox, but it's not okay to not believe them and CONVERT to Orthodox.

She cares about the opinion of the Orthodox church?

Yes.

Not because of religious issues, necessarily, or not entirely (though there are laws forbidding marriages to non-Jews, so the rest does follow) but because of cultural ones. It's not enough for me to believe and/or follow laws of the Jewish religion - I would need to actually be Jewish. In America, there are only two ways to be officially recognized as Jewish by everybody:

1) Be born to a female Jew, whether she's Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, or Secular

2) Convert Orthodox

That's it. No other options.

ETA: It really is a lot like becoming a citizen in a country. You have to go through a lot of hell to become a U.S. Citizen - or, you have to be born in the right place or to the right people.

Hmm. well, I can think of one guy who's converted for marriage (FULLY converted, as someone stressed today), and he certainly doesn't follow those rules. I guess his wife doesn't care about a) him discarding the promise or b) him being considered Jewish by everybody. His wife sounds more observant than your girlfriend, but hey, these things are complicated.

if your girlfriend needs you to be Jewish, it sounds like she has some things she needs to resolve, before you even get started.

In America, there are only two ways to be officially recognized as Jewish by everybody:

But the thing is, this philosphy gives the Orthodox veto power over everybody else's religious views. (Man, this brings back the old "who is a Jew?" debate on soc.culture.jewish.)

I think the real problem is that your fiancee needs you to be accepted by the Orthodox community, not that she wants you to be a Jew. Otherwise, she'd be good with a Conservative conversion. Although I think in any case the rabbis are supposed to strongly, strongly discourage conversion, especially for the purpose of marriage.

Well, it's very possible that the web pages I'm reading are wrongish, and I could find Orthodox churches / Rabbies that would convert me without forcing me to dress in a suit or avoid looking at bikini-clad women. There are books, and I plan to read them.

And the GF is really quite observant, she just thinks that some (many?) Orthodox people draw the line at the wrong place in the "laws can be converted to modern times" thing, and gets really angry when they try to force their interpretation on others, especially others who are EXTREMELY serious about their religious faith. It's just like being a very serious Christian, and getting angry at Pat Robertson.

I'm not at all sure she has issues she needs to resolve, necessarily. Lots of Jewish people don't date outside the faith/culture/nation. It's a hassle, as the religion doesn't officially recognize marriages outside of it, and intermarriage is leading to the slow (or, actually, rather quick) degradation of the largest Jewish population in the world (yes, I'm pretty sure we've got more of them than Israel. Barely.), which is a reasonable thing to want to save. And the fact that she would want to send her kids to a Jewish school (like the one she went to), and raise them Jewish, is a priority I have no problem granting her. Everybody has their things that they care about - religion has never been a big one for me, but it is for her. The religion stresses family traditions and values to such an extent, though, that it would be basically impossible to raise an observant Jewish family if one of the parents were not an observant Jew.

The culture would have her acknowledge this impossibility of marrying a non-Jew as a reason to avoid socializing with non-Jews regularly, making good friends with them, and, definitely, dating them. Clearly, she rejects these (purely cultural, and in no way required) restrictions, for which I give her two thumbs up. But the fact remains that in order to get married and have kids with this girl, I'd need to be a Jew first.

She doesn't know I'm reading about this. She would probably be annoyed at me for doing so. Or at least seriously weirded out. It's still very exploratory for me, and not going to lead anywhere almost certainly. It doesn't hurt that I really would like to believe in a religion, and Judaism seems like a very fascinating one, so learning about it is fun outside of the context of the relationship.