What are the statistics for the last 50-100 years as to how many people convert and become Geirim yearly?
asked Dec 26, 2012 at 18:37
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2Being that there is no central authority (at least outside of Israel), I can't imagine how there would be. I'm a ger and as far as I know, I was never "registered" anywhere beyond the NYC rabbi who coordinated it.– yitznewtonCommented Dec 26, 2012 at 19:52
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@yitznewton, if your rabbi is part of an umbrella organization he might have submitted a copy of that certificate to their archives, but AFAIK there's no one central collection point for such documents.– Monica CellioCommented Dec 26, 2012 at 22:24
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@yitznewton A lack of registration does not prevent statistics. What you do is count all the conversions in an "average" city (for better accuracy you pick some small, medium, and large cities), then extrapolate to other cities. It's not exact, but will at least give an idea.– ArielCommented Dec 27, 2012 at 1:26
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@Ariel I doubt you can find enough cities that have both significant conversion stats, and are representative. Our communities are so diverse and relatively few, and some are known specifically for encouraging conversion. In other words I would strongly expect major skew.– yitznewtonCommented Dec 27, 2012 at 16:53
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1 Answer
In the US, about 1.5% of self-identified Orthodox Jewish adults say they had a formal conversion, according to data from Pew's 2013 survey of American Jews. This amounts to about ~7000 people. (According to this article, the RCA says that 1275 people had converted with an RCA-affiliated beit din over a seven-year period, although, as the article says, plenty of Orthodox conversions take place outside the RCA's system.)
Research by the Israel Democracy Institute says that 80,000 people converted with the Rabbinate from 1995 to 2015, including 45,000 from the Ethiopian community who underwent giyur l'chumra.
