Read the introduction to WHEN THE STATE WINKS: THE PERFORMANCE OF JEWISH CONVERSION IN ISRAEL, by Michal Kravel-Tovi. In a rich ethnographic narrative based on fieldwork in conversion schools, rabbinic courts, and ritual bathhouses, Kravel-Tovi follows conversion candidates—mostly secular young women from a former Soviet background—and state conversion agents, mostly religious Zionists caught between the contradictory demands of their nationalist and religious commitments.