The Orlando Sentinel ORLANDO, Fla. - At sundown Friday, when members of the Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation began services for Rosh Hashana, they beheld a sight that might seem unusual to those outside the faith.

The synagogue's rabbi, cantor and congregation president are all "Jews by choice" - converts to the faith - from Baptist, Episcopal and Catholic backgrounds.

"Sounds like a full house," says Rabbi Moshe Edelman, director of leadership development for United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. "It really demonstrates very beautifully the openness of the Conservative movement for anyone to study Judaism. Their spiritual needs can move them to a highest level of education to every position of leadership, the rabbi, the cantor, the president."

A 200-family, Conservative congregation, the Southwest synagogue is only about 10 percent Jews by choice and 20 percent interfaith families. But even those who are Jews by birth seem unfazed by the origins of Rabbi Mark Ankcorn, Cantor Doug Ramsay and congregation president Ted Brozanski.

Experts in each of the major denominations of Judaism say they know of no other congregations whose three leaders are Jews by choice. All say the number of adult converts is up recently, in some cases dramatically, but that those figures are still relatively small, ranging from a few hundred Orthodox, to the low thousands for Reform congregations.

Ankcorn, 36, is the grandson of a Baptist missionary who spent 40 years in Brazil. Trained as a lawyer, he spent the early 1990s as an assistant prosecutor in Orange County, Calif.

Ankcorn drifted from his Baptist faith as an adolescent, after his parents divorced. He became attracted to Judaism through his college and law-school roommate. His interest grew gradually, just as he was becoming burned out as a prosecutor.

Artzon saw the spark of a rabbinical protege and urged Ankcorn to attend seminary, which he did, working his way through school by practicing law part time.

Ramsay, 50, came to Judaism by a more conventional route - marriage to a Jewish woman he met while serving in the Navy. Raised an Episcopalian on Cape Cod, Mass., he stopped attending church while in college and did not decide to convert until the older of his two children, who were being raised Jewish, neared the bar mitzvah age of 13.

When the congregation was between rabbis, Ramsay used his newfound knowledge and skills to start leading a part of the Saturday-morning Sabbath services. He enjoyed the experience so much he left his corporate job and began studying with a cantor at a Tampa synagogue on Sundays for three years.

Raised in a Polish Catholic home in New Jersey, Brozanski came to synagogue because he was dating a Jewish woman whose son was training for his bar mitzvah.

This is cache, read story here