Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Ellenson, President and I. H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College–Jewish institute of Religion, is a distinguished rabbi, scholar, and leader of the Reform Movement.Daniel Gordis is President of the Shalem Foundation and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism.

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Pledges of Jewish Allegiance

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................ixIntroduction. Who Is a Jew? What Is a Jew? Jewish Identity, Jewish Status, and the Challenge of Conversion........................11 Conversion in Jewish Tradition: An Introduction to the Classical Sources........................................................132 Trends in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century German Orthodox Responses to Conversion and Intermarriage.....................383 Hungarian and Central European Writings on Conversion and Intermarriage.........................................................704 Europe and the United States in the Modern Period...............................................................................905 Israel: Conversion to Judaism in a Jewish Society...............................................................................121Conclusion........................................................................................................................165Notes.............................................................................................................................171Bibliography......................................................................................................................191Index.............................................................................................................................199

Chapter One

To most modern Jews, the institution of conversion seems a natural part of Judaism. Conversion and converts are found in virtually all segments of Jewish society. Most Jewish communities welcome converts. In the United States alone, thousands of Gentiles convert to Judaism each year. The tradition itself seems to welcome converts, declaring that a convert is an Israelite in all respects1 and warning that one who derides the convert violates as many as forty-six negative commandments. The Mishnah in tractate Bava Metzia even forbids a Jew from reminding a convert that his ancestors were Gentiles.

Despite these positive views of conversion and converts, no formal institution of conversion or ceremony for such a purpose is mentioned in the Torah. Indeed, a careful reading of Jewish texts reveals that Jewish tradition has always been conflicted about conversion as a possibility and about converts as members of the Jewish community. This ambivalence stems, in all likelihood, from the fact that the Jewish people is not simply a theological community but a historical and ethnic one as well. One can adopt a theology, but it is much more difficult (and perhaps even impossible) to fully adopt a history or an ethnicity.

An interesting reflection of this ambivalence is found in the Mishnah, the statutory collection of Jewish laws compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince from the second century C.E. In its discussion of first-fruit offerings at the Temple, the Mishnah says that though a convert must bring first-fruit offerings, he may not say the words "which the Lord has sworn to our fathers, to give unto us" as part of his liturgical declaration because his ancestors were not part of that historical experience. Apparently, the convert can become Jewish enough to be obligated to bring the offering but not Jewish enough to claim to have the same history as other Jews.

The convert thus occupies a strange and somewhat conflicted role in Jewish life. Jewish tradition permits the convert to join the Jewish people but often makes it difficult for him to do so. Even the Bible's word for "convert," geir, reflects this conflict, for geir means not only "convert" but "stranger" as well. The Bible refers to the convert as a geir even after he has joined the Jewish people. In some sense, therefore, he remains a stranger forever. At the same time, reminding him of his past as a Gentile is forbidden.

This ambivalence about conversion is palpable even today. Contentious debates over the Law of Return in Israel, the status of non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel and in the Diaspora, high-profile decisions of a few American Jewish communities to disallow conversions, and harrowing accounts of immigrants to Israel who can find no place to bury their children—all these might seem to point to crass politics but can be traced to conflicting undercurrents regarding what defines a person as Jewish. By implication, these disagreements as to what makes a person Jewish are actually debates over what Judaism is—and those discussions date back almost three thousand years. Any attempt to appreciate the confluence of conversion, law, and politics in the modern Jewish world must therefore begin with an examination of the ancient sources that reflect these competing attitudes.

In Orthodox Judaism, the arena in which conversion, law, and politics meet in modern Jewish life is halakhah, or Jewish law. Like all Jewish communities, the world of Orthodoxy grapples with issues of Jewish identity, social policy, and boundary maintenance. But it does so primarily through the halakhic, or Jewish legal, process and by engaging in legal discourse, because Orthodox Judaism in general and the Orthodox rabbinate in particular are theologically committed to the belief that God's will finds expression within the classical texts of the Jewish legal tradition and their ongoing interpretation. And because halakhah (like many other legal systems) is precedent-based, it is impossible to appreciate the subtleties of contemporary arguments without reference to the legal texts and cases to which they allude, whether explicitly or implicitly.

In the following pages, we lay the foundation for our discussion of conversion in the world of contemporary Jewish Orthodoxy by introducing the major texts, trends, and conflicts that have long undergirded Jewish legal discussions of this pivotal issue, particularly as they relate to the motivations of the convert. As we will see, when it comes to conversion, the conflicts of modernity have their roots in the ambivalences of antiquity.

The Biblical Period

As we suggested above, the mere notion that Judaism once had no institution of conversion seems unthinkable, but this is indeed the case. The conversion ceremony is essentially rabbinic, not biblical, in origin and apparently has its roots in postexilic Jewish history, sometime after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E.

The English word "conversion" comes from the Latin convertere, which connotes a spiritual orientation. In most religious conversions, converts are those who come to see their way of life as fundamentally spiritually inadequate and who consciously choose a new system of spiritual belief and behavior.7 But the Hebrew Bible does not describe any process to promote such transformation and says nothing about the fundamental spiritual transformation that conversion ought to be reflecting.

At times, conversion in the Bible seems to be accomplished simply through marriage. By virtue of marrying an Israelite, at least in some instances, a wife joined her husband's community. Judah...