In your JSF you are asking it to alter the titleId - so it does! The behaviour you describe above is 'correct' - that it works with @PersistenceContext is just a hack. Try this instead (actually alter the title the person has rather than the id of the title the person has) <h:selectOneMenu id="titleId" value="#{person.title}" converter="myConverter" /> View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4022966#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...