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In March 1959, at the age of 27, Elizabeth Taylor stood before Rabbi Max Nussbaum at Temple Israel in Hollywood and formally converted to Judaism, taking the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel. She later explained that the decision was not prompted by marriage, Mike Todd had died the previous year, and she was about to marry Eddie Fisher, but by a profound spiritual search that had begun years earlier. “𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 𝘑𝘦𝘸 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦” Her embrace of Judaism was neither casual nor fashionable. She studied Torah and Jewish history with seriousness, collected antique menorahs, and kept a kosher home for periods of her life. When she died in 2011, she was buried in a strictly Jewish funeral at Forest Lawn, with Rabbi Jerry Cutler reciting the mourner’s Kaddish. Almost immediately, her new identity intertwined with an equally passionate love for Israel. In 1959, only months after her conversion, she purchased $100,000 in Israel Bonds (the equivalent of nearly $1.1 million today) The gesture enraged several Arab governments; Egypt and Syria banned her films and placed her on a blacklist of “supporters of Zionism.” In 1962, Egypt refused her entry to film Cleopatra because she was Jewish, forcing 20th Century Fox to relocate the production to Rome at enormous cost. Taylor never flinched. In 1967, during the tense weeks before the Six-Day War, she and Richard Burton organized a star-studded fundraising gala in London that raised $840,000 for Israel in a single night. She canceled a planned trip to the Moscow Film Festival that same year in protest of Soviet anti-Israel policies. In 1975, when the United Nations passed its infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution, Taylor signed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times denouncing the resolution alongside Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and other prominent women. A year later, after Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France plane and separated Jewish and Israeli passengers at Entebbe, Taylor offered herself in exchange for the hostages. She wrote directly to Idi Amin and told the press: “𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘦. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥.” Israel declined the offer, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin later thanked her personally, calling her “a true daughter of Israel.” In interviews throughout the 1970s and 1980s she repeatedly described Israel as “the one place on earth where I feel completely at home.” Elizabeth Taylor’s love for Israel was never abstract or diplomatic; it was visceral, defiant, and deeply Jewish. At a time when many in Hollywood urged silence on the subject, she chose to speak louder, give more generously, and stand more visibly, because, as she often said that being Jewish was the core of who she was. Her legacy remains one of the most luminous examples of a convert who did not merely join the Jewish people, but embraced them, and their homeland, with fierce and unapologetic pride. May her memory forever be a blessing.