Rabbi Bernice Kimel Weiss is the founder and director of The Washington Institute for Conversion and the Study of Judaism, now based in Washington, DC, and the author of Converting to Judaism: Choosing to be Chosen: Personal Stories. Rabbi Weiss earned a BS from the University of Pittsburgh and a MA from George Washington University. Upon graduating from the Academy for Jewish Religion in 1989, she entered the rabbinate. Rabbi Weiss received the prestigious Melton Senior Educators Fellowship for Jewish Education in the Diaspora and spent 1995 and 1996 at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is