Member Spotlight: Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din

by Sarah Panzer, Rising Tide Intern

The Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din is a trans-denominational Bet Din located in Los Angeles that provides support during the Jewish conversion process. They serve members of the Jewish community across four counties in Southern California. They require 

candidates to immerse in a mikveh to finalize conversion, collaborating with another Rising Tide Member, American Jewish University Community Mikveh, to provide an immersive conversion experience. The Bet Din emerged 20 years ago with the goal of creating collaborative standards of conversion across Jewish movements. These standards were established by a small team of rabbis working across denominations. Today, the Bet Din has a team of about 125 rabbis from all liberal streams of Judaism to facilitate a trans-denominational, dynamic Jewish conversion experience.  

The Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din truly emphasizes the importance of community support during conversion. Executive Director Muriel Dance explains that too often during the Jewish conversion process, recently converted Jews are left “dripping at the mikveh,” unfortunately finding themselves with a sudden lack of community resources and support after conversion. To combat this problem, the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din has twenty-five conversion mentors. Dance describes conversion mentors as “friends to walk next to new members” during their first year in the Jewish community post-conversion. They are currently expanding this program to specifically provide additional support to Jews of Color during and after the conversion process.  

The Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din is unique because it worked on collaborative standards for conversion that require candidates to immerse in a mikveh and for men to have Hattafat Dam Brit or Brit Milah, neither of which are required by all Batai Din. To make immersion meaningful, they equip their rabbis with liturgical and poetic resources to make the mikveh ritual personalized, transformative, and truly special. Sponsoring rabbis are also required to create and host a welcoming ceremony for candidates within their community. These ceremonies ensure community support and celebration for candidates as they navigate the conversion process. Muriel Dance finds the most unique aspect of the Bet Din to be their emphasis on collaboration among Jewish denominations. While they recognize that the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din might not be the model for every rabbinical court for conversion, the organization encourages others to consider working collaboratively across denominations.   

The Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din joined Rising Tide in 2017 with the intention of potentially connecting with other pluralistic Jewish organizations. Muriel notes that the fundraising resources available in the Rising Tide Resource Portal have been especially useful, and that they helped to organize a gala that ended up raising $30,000 for the organization. She is currently interested in exploring potential relationships between Rising Tide’s Seven Steps Online Mikveh Guide Training and Sandra Caplan’s conversion mentor training, and thinks that these programs have interesting overlaps to pursue. To learn more about the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din, visit https://scbetdin.com/.