Because we read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot, one of the themes of the holiday is conversion: those who decide that wherever the Jewish people go, they will go.
For some, the desire to join the Jewish people is as compelling as it is for Ruth.
I had dinner last Shabbat with a friend who recently completed conversion, and like most Jewish converts she had been in the process for years. I was honored to be invited to her mikvah ritual, then a short ceremony at the shul where she converted, and a breakfast afterwards. Unmarried, attracted to Judaism for emotional and intellectual reasons, she is part of a trend:
What statistics there are — and they’re too decentralized to be conclusive — do not show a rise in conversion, but Levithan’s own experience as an instructor at Derech Torah at the 92nd Street Y indicates “a change in the profile of the convert: More people are coming to Judaism on their own, and there’s much greater diversity.”A secular Upper West Side Jew who met her previously is curious about my friend's story, and I explain. (My friend is open about her process, so I feel comfortable doing this.) Learning that my friend didn't convert for a relationship, the woman's face contorts. "Why would anyone want to become Jewish if they didn't have to?" I am taken aback. I try to figure out a polite response. "Well, I like it just fine," I mutter. Later, the woman apologises and tries to walk back her statement. Okay. Maybe my friend's delight in her chosen path will inadvertently stimulate a bit of self-reflection in someone she barely knows. I tell my friend this story without identifying the person. She smiles wryly. "Imagine trying to explain it to your gentile friends and family. If they're secular, they can't even grasp why you want any religion at all."
There is fierce controversy about whether to insist that non-Jewish partners convert. There is evidence that
. . . proximity to Jewish life breeds love for it, not contempt. Rabbis in the field report that non-Jews in their congregations begin by attending services, then they enroll their children in Hebrew School, and by the time the kids reach bat or bar mitzvah age, the non-Jewish spouse is often ready to convert. "We're seeing a great increase in people who are converting later in life," [Reform movement's national outreach director Dru Greenwood] says. "Through the act of raising a Jewish family they find that their sense of self and Jewish identity has shifted."I am close to a family which fits this description.
One of the classes I took at the retreat was about a genre of Talmudic stories of imagined sexual encounters between rabbis and Roman matrons. The context is the Hebreophilic upper class Roman society of the 1st Century, arguably the peak of Jewish influence prior to present-day America:
Jewish proselytizing was so successful, it's estimated that by the first century C.E. fully 10 percent of the Roman Empire was Jewish, close to 8 million people. . . . Jews only stopped open proselytism because of pressure from Christian and then Muslim rulers, beginning in 407 C.E. when the Roman Empire outlawed conversion to Judaism under penalty of death.Some Jewish leaders think we should again be confident about proselytizing, as our ancestors were before they were traumatized by the loss of our nation and systematic state persecution.
Miriam notes some counter-productive behavior. Even more from Francine Klagsbrun.
UPDATE: Zachary Sholem Berger - who initially introduced me to the ideas in this post - is writing again about reinterpreting the role of the ger toshav.
posted by Judith @ 6/15/2005 10:59:00 PM
5 Comments:
As a ger myself I was interested to see you discussing conversion. But please, your 'conversion' link is not going to help anyone seeking true spiritual fulfilment nor is it going to help the Jewish people. The website you linked to is (how can I put this delicately?) flakey. Kashrut? Do whatever you like as long as you give a nod to what God required of us. Shabbat? Light a candle or two. Pathetic. And the icing on the cake were the photos of men and women in their bathing suits dipping in the ocean as the 'rabbi' looked on.
I feel sorry for those people: they looked so happy - as if to confirm the poet's observation that ignorance can be bliss. The 'rabbi' however boasts that he comes from a rabbinic family stretching back over 700 years. If that's true then I doubt he can plead ignorance as a defence. His role is far more sinister. He - and those like him who try to lower standards in order to make Judaism more 'inclusive' - are creating an eruv rav. In a proper conversion, candidates' sincerity has to be proved. Converts' practice and behaviour has to be raised as high as possible to overcome their yetzer hara. By indulging their yezter hara and accepting them into the Jewish people without proper instruction and expectations is in reality indulging the lax standards prevelant in much of the Jewish community. How does that bring us closer to God?
Judith, thanks for posting this.
Well, I dunno--I'd never be anything except Jewish but whenever I see converts I think of the one about the guy who comes home early from work and finds his wife in bed with his best friend.
"Max!" he exclaims. "I have to. Why you?"
Even "weirder" than converting alone are people like me and my wife, who converted simultaneously after being married for almost ten years.
They wouldn't let me ogle her in the mikveh, though.
Our rabbi, when discussing the notion of born-Jews who are aghast that anyone would voluntarily become Jewish, states it succinctly- some people don't like being Jewish, but they like not liking it.
Alex Bensky's comment would be quite cute if it wasn't so cliched. And the fact it's cliched is profoundly sad. So many Jews see their identity and practice in negative terms: Holocaust, antisemitism, can't eat on Yom Kippur, can't eat hamburgers, can't do this or that. They lose sight of the extraordinary positives about being Jewish in a practicising community (I live in north-west London amid thousands of people who take the performance of mitzvot seriously and happily): the strong sense of community/good neighbourliness/mutual support, the warmth of Shabbat hospitality, the ability to put the onerous things of life (such as being stuck in an office for a third of the day) into perspective, the strong sense of a positive purpose in life that doesn't depend on transient material performance. I look back on my upbringing in non-Jewish society - a not untypical secular, middle class English family - and find it astonishing that my family and those around us could subsist in such a sterile emotional and spiritual environment. My family had dinner together every evening - that, nowadays, is pretty rare I understand. But the only real celebratory family dinners were birthdays and Christmas. Now I have a 'Christmas' every week - on Shabbat. No distractions of phones and TV and business and weekday worries - just good food, good company and lots and lots of love.
Why, Alex, would anyone not feel that they have to do that?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1118888334120&apage=2
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