Why the Jewish people should welcome converts

Judaism, Summer, 1994 by Lawrence J. Epstein

CONVERSION TO JUDAISM HAS RECENTLY BECOME A prominent subject of discussion among American Jews, primarily because it has been held out as a perceived antidote to intermarriage. Whatever efficacy conversion may or may not have in reducing the number of intermarriages, the linking of the two subjects distorts conversion's crucial role in Jewish theology, its centrality at important eras in Jewish history, and its promise as a component of Jewish renewal.

Conversion's importance to Judaism will come as a surprise to many Jews; their reluctance to welcome others to their faith is so embedded in their conception of Judaism that it has become part of the faith itself.

Part of the problem is definitional. "Welcoming" is used here to mean openly proclaiming the willingness of the Jewish people to accept sincere converts, accepting them as genuine and authentic Jews when they do convert, and integrating them fully into the community after the conversion. "Welcoming" excludes using any physical or emotional pressure, deceit, bribery, or intrusive behavior to gain converts. It excludes belittling the faith of others or promising eternal reward for convening or eternal damnation for not convening. "Welcoming," that is, specifically excludes the tactics used by some non-Jewish missionaries. It also excludes an understanding of Judaism which refuses to offer Judaism to interested Gentiles, which creates so many obstacles to conversion that the obstacles become tantamount to a refusal to accept converts, or which does not accept converts as fully Jewish.

The question of why so central a Jewish enterprise as welcoming converts became peripheral and then antithetical to what was defined as mainstream Judaism, requires a recapitulation of conversion's fate within Jewish thought and history. Such a recapitulation provides the background for an explanation of the Jewish reluctance to welcome converts, a reluctance which has had and continues to have a profoundly negative effect on the fate of Judaism and the Jewish people.

It is notoriously awkward to talk of Judaism as a specific religious worldview. Especially prior to rabbinic Judaism and after the Enlightenment, Judaism contained multiple, sometimes contradictory, intellectual strands which, even when intertwined, retained some of their distinctiveness. Additionally, ideas in Judaism proceed text by text, whereas in reconstructing those ideas to make a unified thesis, the ideas are ripped from different texts at different times. Such a process can easily result in doing violence to the idea and the texts.

Despite these and other difficulties in interpreting Jewish thought, it is still possible to discern, broadly, Judaism's central views about conversion to Judaism.

It is first important to chart the location of conversionary activity in the logical geography of Jewish thought.

The foundational ideas of Judaism are a belief in one God, the idea that God made an incursion into human history to offer a revelation, the Torah, and that the ethical and ritual instructions in that revelation, the mitzvot, are the divine commandments which define a good life. The theological structure built on such a foundation rests on these beliefs. The revolutionary notion of monotheism, for example, led to the view that God was not just a God of the Israelites but of all the cosmos, and therefore of all people. After all, the Torah begins with creation, not revelation; the first human created was not Jewish. Such a God was concerned with the morality of all people. Any divine plans for humanity rested on the notion that humans were part of a unified family, and the spiritual message that God wanted to give was not to be limited to just some people but was available and meant for all.

The Jews were elected by God, who revealed to the Jewish people a universal moral instruction that was meant for all humanity, not just the Jews; Jews were to be the messengers, bringing such instructions to all. At first, it seems strange that a universal revelation should be given to a small, powerless people in the middle of a desert after an escape from slavery. Of course, it is this very strangeness that helps identify the reasons for such a divine choice. Human freedom requires the ability to choose disbelief. Had God chosen to give a revelation obvious and available to all people, the human choice would have been restricted; humans would have bad to accept God's moral precepts. Had the message been given to a powerful people, the freedom to accept or reject such a message would also have been restricted, because it would have been difficult to separate the message from the power of the messengers. However, when the message was given to a landless group of ex-slaves to transmit, the message would have to be considered entirely on its own, and humans would be free to accept or reject it only on its merits. A desert is the perfect spot for a universal divine revelation because the desert belongs to no nation (as the Mekhilta on Exodus 19:2 makes clear), and so none can claim exclusivity over the revelation. The notion of giving the message to the newly-liberated constructed a powerful psychological and social tie between attachment to God's message and the significance of freedom--both in the notions of free choice and political and economic freedom.