All of which is to say that a gentile spouse may not be ready to convert before the wedding, but may very well commit to a Jewish home and raising Jewish children, and may be ready to convert after some years of participating in Jewish communal life. And I have seen this process take place with several families I know.
In Biblical times there was a place for such people in the Israelite community.
Because many gerim or their descendants in biblical Israel assumed an Israelite identity, or at least took to practicing Israelite rituals, the word ger eventually changed meaning in Hebrew and began to refer to an outsider who has joined the Jewish people. Indeed, this meaning can already be found implicitly in some biblical texts, as in Exodus's "And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee [ve'khi yagur itkha ger], and will keep the Passover... let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near it and keep it; for he shall be as one that is born in the land."Rabbi Steve Greenberg elaborates:
Such a ger was in effect a convert to Judaism, although not all gerim went this far. In rabbinic literature we have the term ger tsedek, the "just ger," to distinguish the sincere convert not only from the ger toshav, the "resident ger" who does not convert . . . in the heyday of the Roman Empire — in which, before the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, conversion to Judaism was widespread — we find yet another distinction between the true ger or ger tsedek (Latin proselytus or Greek proselutos), and the yerei-elohim or "God-fearer" (Latin metuens and Greek phoboumenos). The latter category consisted of individuals, perhaps comparable to some converts to Reform Judaism today, who identified with Jewish monotheism and its practice without committing themselves to a strict observance of the 613 commandments of Jewish tradition.
The ger toshav was not a convert. He was, according to the rabbis, a gentile who lived among the Jewish people, happy to be part of the Jewish world and supportive of the religious and social frames of Jewish life. He could eat tref (nonkosher) but was not permitted to publicly worship other gods, and if he was circumcised, he could partake of the Passover sacrifice. He was a lover of the Jewish people, though not a Jew himself. In many intermarried homes today, this characterization would aptly describe the feelings and commitments of the non-Jewish spouse.Rabbi Greenberg has carefully thought through how this category could be applied to intermarriages today - read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Head Heeb reminds me that he wrote about intermarriage as part of a reflection on a controversial Israeli immigration case.
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