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From: "Yeshivat Har Etzion's Virtual Beit Midrash"
To: yhe-halak@vbm-torah.org
Subject: HALAKHA61 -13: On Conversion

YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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TOPICS IN HALAKHA

On Conversion

By Harav Aharon Lichtenstein
Translated by Dr. Michael Berger

The status of gerut (conversion) as a subject of discussion and debate is not a recent phenomenon. For ages, indeed millennia, this topic has been implicated in a broad range of problems. Some have been disturbed by the option of gerut, per se. For those who have stressed the unique, inborn holiness that characterizes the Jew - for instance: Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, the Maharal of Prague, and the School of Chabad - the ability of a non-Jew to convert aroused varied difficulties and objections. Quite apart from this primary issue, however, the problems can be further subdivided.

First, how is one to treat the candidate for Judaism? This question has practical consequences in determining the actual conversion process. Shall we pursue the proselyte or avoid him? Repel with the left hand while attracting with the right or vice versa?

Secondly, how should we relate to the ger (proselyte) after his conversion? Needless to say, the possibility of derision is out of the question; the Torah explicitly admonishes us: "And the ger you shall not deride nor oppress."[1] And the Rabbis state: "...He who derides the ger violates three negative commandments;"[2] R. Eliezer the Great numbers thirty-six distinct places -
and according to one opinion, forty-six - where the Torah forewarns us to respect the ger.[3] But beyond this, assessment of the nature of the ger and his integration into the Nation of Israel appears unclear - perhaps in dispute. Encouragement on the one hand and repulsion on the other; some esteemed the ger while others approached him with cautious apprehension.

GERUT AS SPIRITUAL REBIRTH

However, the issue of relating to the ger is not the one I wish to address. My focus is on the process of gerut itself - the phenomenon, per se. If we wish to define and describe it, we will discover that the essence of gerut is its being a turning point. Its foundation is a radical transformation: an uprooting from one world to strike root in a different one.

This point specifically characterizes Jewish gerut and distinguishes it, historically, from parallel movements in the classical world. As Arthur Darby Nock emphasized, whereas adoption of one of the religions that dominated the Helellenistic world - Orphism, Mithraism, and others - meant merely a supplement to the local tradition and not the former's total negation, Judaism (and consequently, Christianity) presents conversion as a total metamorphosis. The ger is compelled to abandon his past background and enter the realm of his future, for commitment to Judaism is based on Elijah's question[4]: "How much longer will you oscillate, wavering between two options?" In the words of Nock, conversion demands "renunciation and a new beginning. What was required was not merely the acceptance of ritual, but rather a willful attachment to a theology; in a word, faith: a new life in a new nation."[5]

This should not cause surprise. Gerut, after all, embodies - nay, constitutes - the forging of a covenant, which is, by its very nature, exclusive: "And the two of them made a covenant"[6] - to the exclusion of others. Nonetheless, the question still arises: what type of turning point? How does it take effect and in what manner is it realized and manifested?

It seems to me that in gerut,[7] both in the process and in the outcome, there exist two elements that are to some extent parallel, to some extent complementary, and to some extent contradictory. On the one hand, gerut is grounded in a profound revolution. In its ideal form, its root is a longing for holiness; its core, desire for the Infinite, gravitation to a sublime and exalted ethic, striving for a world wholly good and wholly true. "David called himself a ger, as it is said:[8] 'I am a ger in the land.'"[9] Of course, he was not a ger in the strict halakhic sense (although he was descended from proselytes); rather, in the realm of religious experience, he had penetrated the soul of the ger and related to it: "As a hart panting after water brooks, so my soul pants after You."[10] Here is the essence of gerut: a craving that can dislodge one from the society of one's youth and which finds expression in the overcoming of the confines of group and nation.

The source and character of this element are, to be sure, apt to change. In certain cases, its essence is reaction to a sullied past, a renunciation of a life filled with iniquity or deprived of meaning and purpose. In this form, gerut is included in teshuva, repentance; it is precipitated by regret over the past, abandonment of sin, and resolve for the future. At other times, the motive propelling the proselyte is the glow of the future, rather than the sordidness of the present. The potential ger, despite his being in a setting that is not necessarily defiled, but merely defective, sees himself as isolated, "in a dry and thirsty land, without water." In his anguish he pleads: "O God, You are my God, earnestly I seek You: my soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs for You."[11] At the practical level, as the Rambam put it, the ger desires "to enter the covenant and to be absorbed under Divine aegis, and to accept for himself the yoke of the Torah."[12] But categorizing the different types of gerut is merely a matter of detail. The fundamental motive here is one - a religious experience, a spiritual effervescence - sometimes feverish, ofttimes tranquil; in short, the birthpangs of a Jewish soul. This creation is private and personal - if you will, even subjective. Essentially, it is the ger's intimacy with the Holy One. "The king has brought me into
his chamber," and no stranger will trespass into the inner sanctum. Nothing is more a matter of the heart than gerut, and, in the channels of the heart, can there be room for external involvement?

This principle finds expression in a simple, yet famous, halakha: "A ger is like a newborn babe."[l3] ...

FOOTNOTES

1. Shemot 22:20; compare ibid. 23:9 and Vayikra 19:33.

2. Bava Metzia 59b. See also the Rambam's Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, the beginning of the ninth shoresh (in Rav Heller's edition, pp. 19-20), in which he explains, in light of his opinion of multiple warnings for one commandment, that the transgressor does not violate three actual negative commandments, but rather only one, which is merely "strengthened" by the repetition or the
admonitions. But in the Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Mekhira 14:15-17, the Rambam sets down that one does transgress three negative commandments, literally. However, his words there require further explanation, in their own right, for it appears that in reference to a ger, he ruled that all who vex the ger either verbally or financially violate both prohibitions, whereas for a vexing Jew, he made a distinction between the two. See also the prohibition raised by the discussion in the gemara, ad loc. The Rambam's commentators have dealt with this extensively in their comments to the Mishneh Torah, ad loc.

3. See Bava Metzia, 59b and the sources cited in the notes of Rav Chaim Heller on the Sefer Ha-Mitzvot loc. cit.

4. I Melakhim 18:21.

5. Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion (Oxford, 1933), p.12.

6. Bereshit 21:27.

7. My approach here is phenomenological, and I am dealing with types. Of course, from a sociological standpoint, the issue must be dealt with entirely differently, but the two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

8. Tehillim 119:19.

9. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Mishpatim, portion 18; in the Horowitz-Rabin edition, p.312.

10. Tehillim 42:2. I quote the verse in light of the explanation of the words that are in the Targum: "that desires." The Septuagint translates, likewise, epipothei, and from there, the Vulgate, desiderat. But Rashi accepted the interpretation of Dunash, that the verb refers to the ram's cry; the Midrash Shocher Tov there, following in the same vein, understood the whole psalm as placed in a time of exile and calamity.

11. Tehillim 63:2.

12. Hilkhot Issurei Bi'ah 13:4. His three-way division is of fundamental importance, but this is not the place to analyze it.

13. Yevamot 22a.

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