By Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
Adriana Fernandez had a unique path to social media fame. For years, her almost-90,0000 followers online have enjoyed her posts, pictures, and videos reflecting her insights and experiences as a non-Jewish nanny working in observant Jewish homes. She even adopted and leaned into her moniker, “Non-Jewish Nanny.”
It all began when she was a student studying opera in college when she took a job on the side babysitting. The first family that found her on the babysitting website was Jewish. Adriana didn’t have Jewish friends growing up and knew little about the Jewish people’s practices and lifestyle. As she began babysitting in observant Jewish homes, it quickly became much more than just a job or source of earning money. She came to not only love the children she interacted with but the lifestyle they and their families were leading.
She began to share her “non-Jewish” perspective and thoughts on Orthodox Jewish laws, traditions, and rituals, and it went viral. From insights and observations on tznius and shaitels to kosher recipes and Jewish holidays, people were enamored by her energy, positivity, and capacity to pronounce the “ch” sound. As her following grew, kosher and Jewish businesses took notice, sending her clothing and other products to feature and promote. All the while, she continued to serve as a nanny in Orthodox Jewish homes, developing meaningful relationships with the families she cared for, particularly the children.
Online, people saw her following and influence grow. What they didn’t see was that offline, the influence of the families she was working for was growing on her. Adriana wasn’t just curious and intrigued by the Torah way of life, she began to want it for herself. Adriana approached a rabbi and rebbetzin in the neighborhood where she was working and they agreed to sponsor her in the geirus (conversion) process. She took it seriously from the start, learning, reading, reviewing, studying the curriculum, attending davening and classes, and integrating among observant Jewish friends. (Every detail here is published with her permission.) When the Beis Din became involved, being an “influencer” didn’t accelerate her process; if anything, it made it go slowly, methodically and in a way that would build confidence this interest was genuine and not a way to grow her following or any other motivation.
While the change in her dress and her life was noticeable, Adriana never discussed her journey and process with her followers. She never announced the program she was in or what she was working towards. And finally, after a lot of work and patience, the day came. She immersed as Adriana and emerged as Adina Shoshana. A few days after the birth of her new identity came the transformation of her online profile. The “Non-Jewish Nanny” became the “Now Jewish Nanny.”
The Gemara (Yevamos 62a) teaches that ger she’nisgayeir k’kattan shenolad dami, one who converts is like a child that is born anew. But the language of the Gemara is puzzling. Shouldn’t it be a goy she’nisgayeir, a non-Jew who converts? Why do our rabbis phrase it as, “a convert who converts”? The Chida (Midbar Kedemos) explains that Chazal were teaching that the conversion reveals that it wasn’t a non-Jew who converted, it was someone who was always destined to be Jewish, whose soul was also at Sinai. Ger she’nisgayeir, the would-be convert, converts.
Adina Shoshana is the real deal: genuine, authentic, knowledgeable, spiritual, and Torah-observant. She should be admired and appreciated for her journey and encouraged and supported as she continues her next steps as a full-fledged, proud, and practicing Jew. Her Rabbi and Rebbetzin deserve enormous credit for their guidance, care, and time teaching her how to live as a Jew. The Beis Din who enabled her to fulfill her dream will forever now be tied to Adina like everyone they convert, getting credit for her mitzvos and also carrying a responsibility for any shortcomings.
I share this story with you because it is fascinating and inspiring but also because I think there are other, unseen people in this story who deserve great credit and who obligate each of us.
The families that Adina worked for live a Judaism, and interact with people around them, in a way that that someone who was working for them and living with them wanted be a Torah-observant Jew. That is extraordinary and a tremendous credit to them. Adina shared that it was the children in particular—their sweetness, their patience in sharing their learning and lives with her, their joy in being and living Jewish—that most inspired her.
An important lesson of the Now Jewish Nanny’s journey and the families that inspired her is to ask ourselves, if someone worked in our home, lived with our family, was involved in our lives and lifestyle, would that draw them closer to Judaism or push them away? Would it inspire them or turn them off? Would it make them want to be more like us or to have nothing to do with us?
We find ourselves in the weeks leading up to Pesach, a time of tremendous work, planning, expenses, and often stress and pressure. What is the atmosphere in our homes? Are they places of joy or misery, excitement and positivity or resentment and negativity? Will those in our homes, whether our children or outsiders, be inspired in the future to look forward to Pesach or to dread it?
The Talmud (Bava Metzia 59b) stresses that the Torah obligates us to love the convert and to refrain from causing anguish or pain no less than thirty-six times. But it isn’t only the convert we should treat well. All who work in our homes, and in whose places of work we frequent, Jew and non-Jew alike, will be impacted by how we behave in general and by our attitude towards our Judaism in particular.
When he was older, Rav Yisroel Salanter no longer baked his own matzah before Pesach, but rather he asked his students to bake his matzos for him. The students, knowing that baking matza is not always a simple process, asked him, “What are the Chumros (stringencies) the Rebbe makes sure to adhere to when he bakes matzah?” He replied, “I am very careful not to yell at the woman who cleans up between every batch of matzah baking. She is a widow. Please speak kindly with her.”
We may not have asked to be role models or to be responsible for others’ impressions of Judaism, but we have been entrusted with this sacred mission, one we should embrace with pride rather than resentment. Not everyone we meet will go from Non-Jewish to Now Jewish, but if we live with positivity and joy, with honor and respect, they can go from “Never Liked Jews” to “Now Love Jews,” simply because of us.
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