Ger Tsedek but not a Jew?

I was recently interviewing for a job with a high-tech firm. They had an idea for an innovative project, which was to take a group of men out of yeshivah who were ready for full-time work, and to train them for a specialized career in a particular field of high-tech. (I don't want to give away any more than that, in case they would prefer to keep their project under wraps for the time being.)

The interviewer, who was the entrepreneur responsible for the project, was asking me about my experience in university and about what I had been doing since studying this particular subject. And somehow, he stumbled upon the subject of my religious upbringing. I don't know how, since it has nothing to do with that field of study, but I suppose he was asking about it on purpose. Eventually I had to admit I was a ger tsedek. (See this posting about why that bit of information was not listed on my c.v.)

And then he had a strange reaction. Was there a risk of my not being accepted among these former yeshivah guys? he wondered. Would they wonder whether I was really Jewish? Would they wonder why I was working among them?

I explained how I had spent enough time in yeshivah myself, learning under enough rabbanim and among hundreds of fellow yeshivah guys, that I seriously doubted it would enter anyone's mind to think so. If it had been an issue, it would have come up by now.

Besides, I had a renowned American beth din for my conversion, and the certificate that they wrote and signed for me has opened enough doors since then: aliyah, security for El-Al, and marriage through the Rabbanut, just to name a few.

So he explained to me the source of his fears. Geirut is a big mess in Israel right now, he said. He has a child in the Israeli army who teaches English to Russians immigrants who are now Israeli citizens serving in the army. "And of course, no one is allowed to ask right out who is Jewish and who is not," he said, "But our children are going to be marrying their children, and I wonder what will be with the future generations. "

Was I missing something? I was unprepared for such a hava amina. This guy was clearly brilliant and successful, in a land where one does not guarantee the other, and where neither guarantees survival (since the present government punishes success). But either he had not thought this issue through, or I was (and am) grossly unaware of something that he knows.

So I'll give you the simple answer I gave him, more straightforward and less diplomatic than I gave it to him.

A ger tsedek is authentic if he or she converts for the right reasons. And it is usually easy to check that out. How good was the beth din? And is he or she still religious? Because if he or she is not, or never was, they obviously did not know what they getting into. Or they knew what the rabbis wanted to hear, and misled them. Are you going to let your children marry such a person?

My interviewer quickly changed the subject, and we went back to high-tech. (I did not get the job, by the way, but not for that reason.)