Norma-tive Judaism

Win some, lose some:

The Daily Mail today reports that Lindsay Lohan proposes to convert to Judaism. According to Ha’aretz this morning,

Actress Lindsay Lohan is planning to convert to Judaism to show her committment to her Jewish girlfriend D.J. Samantha Ronson, according to the British Daily Mail Online.

Lohan, 22, announced on her facebook page that she planned to eschew her Catholic faith and then flew to London to attend the bar mitzvah of Ronson’s half brother, Joshua, according to report.

“She’s exploring Judaism right now. She’s explored the Church of Scientology, she tried Kabbalah, and now this. I think it’s just another phase,” her estranged father Michael Lohan, who became a born again Christian and then minister after a period in jail, was quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.

By tradition, a prospective Jewish convert is refused twice and only considered upon the third application, and then only after a considerable period of study and a review by a rabbinical court. It is to be hoped that Ms. Lohan will have enough time to find another religion before she is accepted as a convert. Somehow, “Lindsay Kohan” does not have the right ring.

By way of consolation, the gifted soprano Natalie Dessay, currently in New York to sing Bellini’s La Somnambula at the Metropolitan Opera, did in fact convert to Judaism to marry husband and baritone, Laurent Naouri. They have two children. This information appeared in a March 2 profile of the singer by Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker . We’ll take Bellini over Hollywood any time. Call it Norma-tive Judaism.