National Scholar Updates

THE PROSELYTE WHO COMES[1]

by Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon

(Rabbi Dr. Isaac Sassoon is a faculty member at the Metivta, the Institute of Traditional Judaism. Among his publications is his commentary on Torah, "Destination Torah.")

“We are gereem before Thee” (1Chr 29:15)

Rome was not surfeited with rulers as educated or as well-disposed towards the Jews as the Emperor Julian. And even though he evidently studied Judaism, Julian’s following remarks show him laboring under a sad misapprehension with respect to at least one element of Torah. For this is what he writes regarding the Torah’s attitude to non-Jews:

Moses says that the creator of the universe chose out the Hebrew nation, that to that nation alone did he pay heed and cared for it, and he gives him charge of it alone. But how and by what sort of gods the other nations are governed he has said not a word - unless indeed one should concede that he did assign to them the sun and moon... It is fair to ask ... Why G-d if he was not G-d of the Jews alone but also of the gentiles, sent the blessed gift of prophecy to the Jews in abundance and gave them Moses and the oil of anointing and the prophets and the law... But unto us no prophet, no oil of anointing, no teacher, no herald to announce his love for mankind ... Nay he looked on for myriads of years while men in extreme ignorance served idols [2]

His reference to the assignment of sun and moon to the nations suggests that he got the idea from Deuteronomy 4:19. That verse reads: “Lest you lift your eyes skywards and seeing the sun, the moon and the stars you are led on to bow down to them and worship them which Hashem your G-d assigned to all the peoples under heaven”. It is not difficult to see how this ‘assigning’ (especially if taken in conjunction with Dt 29:25) could have persuaded Julian that Moses considered idol worship predestined by G-d for all peoples except Israel. Indeed, some modern scholars concur with Julian’s understanding. For example, Jeffrey Tigay writes “The implication that worship of the heavenly bodies by other nations was ordained by G-d struck many traditional commentators as unlikely, since the prophets teach that one day all nations will abandon false religion and recognize the L-rd alone. ... However ... [t]he view that the nations will someday abandon idolatry and worship the L-rd alone is never expressed in the Torah, and Deuteronomy 4:19 is consistent with this.”[3] Too bad Julian did not consult one of those ‘many traditional commentators’! For as Tigay goes on to explain, those commentators include the sages who paraphrased the last clause of Dt 4:19 thus: “which the L-rd your G-d allotted to other peoples to give light to them”.[4]

But for the rabbis Scripture’s sombre depiction was not the worst news. Scripture portrays what is out there, and attributes everything to the Ultimate Cause. No, not depictions but the reality itself disquiets the rabbis, a reality that ostensibly bespeaks indifference to the spiritual welfare of the overwhelming majority of His creatures on the part of ‘G-d of the spirits of all flesh’. And their disquiet drives the rabbis now to ponder, now to agonize. One answer they came up with was that as a kingdom of priests (Ex 19:6) Israel was entrusted with the spiritual advancement of her fellow humans.

G-d gave Torah to Israel in order that they should bring it to the nations (Tanhuma Dt. 2).[5]
Hillel said: ‘[love your fellow humans] and draw them close to Torah’. This teaches that one breaks into people [’s lives] and causes them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings just as our father Abraham would break into people [’s lives] and cause them to enter under the shekhinah’s wings. Nor was Abraham alone; Sarah did the same as it says [Gen 12:5] ‘... also the souls they made in Haran’. Now even the whole world in joint effort cannot create so much as a single gnat. So what does ‘the souls they made’ signify? It signifies that the holy One blessed be He reckoned it unto them as though they had created [those that they caused to enter under the shekhinah’s wings] (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 12 [p.53]; Cf. Gen. Rab. 39:21). [6]
It says ‘If having knowledge he does not tell he shall bear his sin’ [Lev 5:1]. This means unless you preach me as G-d among the nations of the world, you shall have to bear the brunt (Lev. Rab. 6:5).

With these and similar exhortations the rabbis inculcated a sense of noblesse oblige. The fact that Israel alone had been graced with the precious gifts of prophecy and revelation imposed on her the responsibility to share with others.

The extent of that sharing seems to have been in dispute as witnessed by our citations. The first citations, that speak of bringing Torah to the nations and drawing humanity at large to Torah, would appear to go further than the third that requires only the essentials of the faith to be shared. Obviously the latter is a minimalist approach, and like all minimalism in the moral sphere, it should probably be thought of as less than ideal. The Talmud recognizes two types of ger (= convert). The ger toshav renounces idolatry and accepts the principles of Jewish morality that follow from belief in the One.[7] Then there is the ger sedeq who becomes a full-fledged member of the covenantal community of Israel. This is how the groups referred to as wood-choppers and water drawers were integrated: “You all stand here today before Hashem your G-d your tribal chiefs, elders, officers ... the strangers that are in the midst of your camp, from your wood-choppers to your water-drawers ready to enter into the covenant of Hashem ... that He may constitute you this day as His people” (Dt 29:9-11).[8]

Some have questioned whether conversion existed in biblical times. They seem to forget that Covenant with Hashem is always a religious make-over; hence conversion.[9] Later, when the idea of covenant receded, circumcision took over Scripture’s covenantal lexis or, if you like, circumcision replenished the emptying shell of berith (=covenant) discourse.[10] Thus Achan’s breach of covenant (Jos 7:11), conjures up for the aggadah an epispastic Achan (San. 44a). “They, like adam, they broke a covenant” (Hos 6:7) implies that Adam was guilty of the same delinquency as Achan (San. 38b). In Elijah’s day circumcision was neglected - according to a widely attested aggadah - for Elijah complains “the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant” (1Kgs 19:14).[11] “Were it not for circumcision heaven and earth would have had no abidance as it says [Jer 33:26] If not for my covenant [with] the day and the night, [if] the laws of heaven and of earth I did not establish ...” [12] It is not impossible that the ‘entering into the covenant’ of Dt 29 also came to be read (consciously or otherwise) as a reference to circumcision. But of course there was no need to rely on such tenuous allusions when Ex 12: 48 spells it out:

If a ger sojourns with you and would offer the Passover unto Hashem, every male of his must be circumcised and then let him come forward and offer it for he shall be as a resident of the land; but no uncircumcised one shall partake of it.

Just in case there lingered any doubt about the phrase ‘he shall be as a resident of the land’, one could always fall back on Numbers 15:15-16 - especially Onqelos’ rendering thereof:

O congregation, there shall be one and the same law for you and for the ger that converts; an everlasting law throughout your generations you and the ger shall be alike before Hashem. One Torah and one [system of] justice shall there be for you and for the ger that converts with you.

Thus the rabbis had unassailable authority not only for the acceptance of proselytes, but also for the ritual that sealed a ger sedeq’s transition from gentile to Jew.[13]

Going back to Julian, one gets the feeling that had Julian challenged the rabbis of his day like Tinneius Rufus two centuries earlier, their response might have tempered his bitterness. For Tinneius Rufus put it to R. Aqiba: “‘If your G-d loves the poor why does He not feed them?’ R. Aqiba answered ‘so that the rest of us might come to their aid and thereby escape Gehennah’” (B. B. 10a). As the rabbis see it, then, G-d invites humans to be active partners in bringing nourishment, both physical and spiritual, to those that lack. And in sharing His bounty with others, men and women find favor with G-d who will reward them accordingly. For it was axiomatic to the rabbis that the blessings G-d grants cannot be enjoyed selfishly. Or as Hillel’s apothegm expresses it “If I am for myself what am I?” (Aboth 1:14).

One could fill pages with the rabbis’ acclaim for proselytes and, conversely, their censure of those who were too quick to give up on potential converts. To cite two illustrations of the latter

1) Timna‘ was of royal lineage ... She wished to be converted. So she approached Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but none accepted her. Thereupon she went and became a concubine to Esau’s son Eliphaz, declaring: ‘Better to be a servant in this nation than a mistress in any other’. From her came Amaleq, who was to be Israel’s nemesis. Why so? Because they [the patriarchs] were wrong to turn her away [14] (San. 99b; cited by Tos. at Yeb. 47b s.v. qasheem).[15]

2) R. Yitzhaq said the night that Orpah parted from her mother-in-law she was set upon by hordes [of Philistines] and violated ... Thus it says [of Goliath in 1Sam 17:23] that he came [or was the result] of Philistine profligacy[16] (Ruth Rabbah 2:21; cf. Sot. 42b) [17]

In light of the foregoing, it might seem puzzling when we hear people assert (as they frequently do) that Judaism has reservations about conversion. Indeed many of us have heard conversion spoken of as if it were a concession - akin to divorce or the yefat to’ar law[18] - rather than a recommended or mandatory misvah.[19] And have we not just as often itched to tell our interlocutors that they were mistaken and to show them the adulation heaped by rabbis upon proselytes and the sacred institution of giyyoor? But then a little voice holds us back, admonishing us that it would be devious to show off one half of the picture without the other: the light without the shadows. For cheek by jowl alongside the adulation, the sources preserve traditions that discriminate against proselytes, including bona fide proselytes; and even a few that appear to discount the very premise of outsiders entering the Jewish fold.

Demurral vis-à-vis giyyoor has a long history. One of its earliest manifestations transpires from the polemic of Isaiah 56:3-8: “The foreigner who has attached himself to Hashem must not say Hashem will keep me separate from his people ... As for The foreigners who attach themselves to Hashem to serve Him, to love the name of Hashem, to be His servants, all who keep the sabbath and do not profane it and hold fast to my covenant; them will I bring to my holy mountain... This is the word of Hashem G-d who gathers the dispersed of Israel ‘In addition to its [Israel’s] dispersed I shall gather [others] unto it’”. Evidently, there were people in Isaiah’s society who, while not necessarily spurning conversion outright, saw those who attached themselves[20] to Hashem as not quite on a level with native Israelites. Some converts had apparently bought the myth of their own inferiority, until Isaiah was sent to disabuse them. Whether Isaiah succeeded in his own generation we are not told. What is certain is that qualms about converts and conversion persisted, notably among the Jerusalem priesthood of the Second Commonwealth. Although not all the sources displaying antipathy to gereem/gerooth can be pinned onto priests, nevertheless, the priestly belief that a person’s worth is like a thoroughbred’s, determined by seed and bloodline, fuels the anti-ger ethos.

Ezra chides Jewish men “who have married foreign wives thereby causing the holy seed to become intermixed with the peoples of the land” (Ezra 9:2). His indignation sparks off the zealotry of Shecaniah, spokesman for the chastened exogamists: “We pledge ourselves in covenant to our G-d to send away all these women and those born from them ...” (ibid. 10:3).[21] Had Ezra believed in conversion he might have modified Shecaniah’s plan of indiscriminately bundling off not merely the foreign wives but also their children. For surely not all these women and children living under the roof of a Jewish paterfamilias would have been diehard heathens. The fact that Ezra does not bother to ascertain the individuals’ loyalties, suggests that in his book, once a gentile always a gentile.[22] One scholar to reach the same conclusion as to Ezra’s probable motivation, is Daniel R. Schwartz. In his analysis of a certain Simon, whom Josephus mentions as a critic of King Agrippa,[23] this is what Schwartz has to say.

Examination of his [Simon’s] criticism of Agrippa will lead us further. For it is clear that his position is a priestly one ... it was predicated on a genealogical argument, on the assumption that there is an absolute link between descent and access to holiness... a typically priestly point of view, for priests... are, in Judaism, determined by their descent. He who is not (believed to be) a descendant of Aaron cannot be a priest, no matter how dedicated to piety and sanctity he may be. But if the question “who is a priest?” is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent ... it is natural to apply it to the question “who is a Jew?” as well, with the result that a gentile cannot become a Jew ... Note, for example, that when Ezra - as priestly as one could possibly be (Ezra 7:1-5!) - heard of the pollution of the “sacred seed” via intermarriage (Ezra 9:2), he apparently gave no thought to the possibility of conversion. but rather moved to destroy all the families involved. [24]

Schwartz hits the nail on the head. The Aaronide priests’ attitude to conversion was hardly fortuitous. Rather does it appear to have been a corollary of their fixation on pedigree and their literal, somatic understanding of ‘holy seed’. Both their preoccupation with lineage as well as their skepticism of conversion are widely attested. We believe these two tendencies to be intimately connected. Moreover, we strongly suspect that besides Ezra, most talmudic discrimination against gereem reflects the priestly legacy that, after the loss of the Temple, entered mainstream rabbinic discourse. This theory is supported by the fact that a predominance of the ‘discriminatory’ material pertains to priestly affairs, as we are about to see.

LINEAGE

Of the priests, the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, the sons of Barzillai ... these searched for their genealogical records[25] but they could not be found, so they were ousted from the priesthood. (Ez 2:61-62; Neh 7:62-63).

[A priest] who wishes to marry a woman of priestly family must check ... her mother, her mother’s mother, her paternal and maternal grandmothers, the mothers and grandmothers of both her paternal and maternal grandmothers. If the woman is of Levitical or [lay] Israelite family he must go back an additional generation (M. Qid. 4:4).

The chamber of Hewn Stone was where Israel’s great Sanhedrin sat and judged the priesthood. A priest whose genealogy failed the test would put on black [robes], wrap himself in black and go hence and depart ... (M. Mid. 5:4).

SKEPTICISM TOWARDS GEREEM/GEROOTH[26]

Tobias the physician as well as his son and his manumitted slave [i.e. a convert] all saw the new moon in Jerusalem. The priests accepted him and his son but rejected his slave (M. Rosh Hashanah 1:7).

[Even] after the Temple was destroyed priests comported themselves with haughtiness and refrained from marrying daughters of proselytes (Qid. 78b).

If the supreme court issued a ruling but one of its members knew his colleagues were in error and told them so; or if the court reached its decision in the absence of the court president; or if one of its members was a proselyte, a bastard, a Gibeonite or an old man who had never fathered a child - in all these cases the court is not liable [to bring the sacrifice prescribed at Lev 4:14]. Because here [Lev 4:13] it says edah and there [Num 35:24] it says edah. Just as that edah’s members must all be eligible to issue rulings so too this edah’s (M. Hor. 1:4).

It was taught in a baraitha A court of three who are as literate as [accredited] judges shall serve for halisah. R. Yehudah requires five ... How do we know that actual accredited judges are not needed? Because it says ‘in Israel’ implying that rank-and-file Israelites suffice [for halisah] ... But R. Samuel bar Yehudah said ‘in Israel’ comes to teach something else namely, that halisah must be performed in a beth din of Israelites not a beth din of gereem ... When R. Yehudah invited R. Samuel bar Yehudah to be one of the five members of a halisah beth din, he declined saying: ‘We have learnt that ‘in Israel’ means a beth din of Israelites and not a beth din of gereem - and I am a ger ... Rava said a proselyte is allowed by the Torah to judge his fellow proselyte as it says [Dt 17:15] ‘You shall appoint over you a king whom Hashem your G-d chooses; from among your brethren shall you appoint over you a king’. Only ‘over you’ do we require that he be ‘from among your brethren’, but there is no objection to a proselyte judging his fellow proselyte ... (Yeb. 101a-102a).

On exiting the Temple, the high priest was escorted by a throng who, on spotting Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, drifted away from him [the high priest] and followed Shema‘iah and Avtalyon.[27] When the latter came to take leave of the high priest he greeted them with ‘May the sons of nations[28] come in peace’... (Yom. 71b).

Aqabyah son of Mahalal’el[29] asserted four things ... that the bitter water ordeal is not administered to a proselytess or to a freed woman. The sages disagreed. They said to him ‘Karkemeet was a freed woman in Jerusalem and she was given to drink the bitter waters by Shema‘iah and Avtalyon’. He replied ‘the likes of her gave her to drink ...’ (M. Edu. 5:6).[30]

It was taught in a baraitha: What is the definition of a zonah [that Lev 21:7 forbids a priest to marry]? R. Eliezer says the epithet zonah is self explanatory.[31] R. Aqiba says a zonah is one who lives promiscuously.[32] ... R.Yehudah says a zonah is a woman incapable of child bearing. But the [other] sages say a zonah is none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship[33] (Yeb. 61b).[34]

Undeniably, the first two zonah definitions attributed to the [other] sages rob conversion of its essential transformatory character. Prior to their conversion, proselytes will no doubt have contravened Mosaic and possibly Noahide Torah in all sorts of ways. But no other law, Mosaic or Noahide, that a person may have transgressed prior to conversion trails the convert into Israelitehood. Why the exception for fornication - nay, the mere suspicion of fornication?[35] The answer can be found only in the priestly scheme where body dominates and spirit languishes. In that system a convert’s soul, permeated as it may once have been with idolatry, is capable of living down its idolatrous past. But the body once tainted is irremediable. The approximation of the giyyoreth-zonah equation to priestly concepts is sometimes explained as rabbis having resigned themselves to the priests’ de facto avoidance of proselyte spouses. If that is so, the citation of Lev 21:7 as prooftext will have been a rabbinic flourish.[36] For the priests’ eschewal owed nothing to Lev 21:7, but, as noted above, was another aspect of their entrenchment in genealogy and ethnic ‘holiness of seed’. Alternatively, the anonymous giyyoreth definition of zonah represents an autonomous strand within rabbinic Judaism (perhaps with Shammaite leanings) that, in stark contrast to the (Hillelite) love for converts, tended to misprize them (see infra).

But whatever its history, the superstitious belief in an inherent disparity between a biological and an adoptive Jew, consolidated; thanks largely to the allure such self-congratulatory myths have among the disenfranchised. Still, allure notwithstanding, the Hillelite tradition was never abandoned. Every rabbinic expression of reluctance towards gereem/gerooth, is matched, if not outweighed, by affirmatory pronouncements. Take the giyyoreth-zonah example just surveyed. For starters, neither R. Eliezer nor R. Aqiba subscribed to it.[37] Moreover:

It was taught in a baraitha: R. Shim‘on b. Yohai said a female proselyte who converted below the age of three years and a day may marry into the priesthood as it says [Num 31:18] ‘but every female minor who has not known man carnally spare for yourselves’ - and [the priest] Phineas was with them. But the sages say ‘spare for yourselves’ means take them [not in matrimony] but as slaves. Now all opinions [on marriage of priests to proselytes and to offspring of proselytes] are midrashically derived from a single verse [viz. Ezek.44:22] ‘A widow and a divorcee they [priests] shall not take to themselves as wives; but only virgins of the seed of the house of Israel’.... (Qid. 78a).

As the gemara at Qiddushin 78 proceeds to explain, those who forbid all female proselytes emphasize the phrase ‘Israelite seed’. R. Shim‘on, on the other hand, downplays ‘seed’ (or takes it less than literally). The word R. Shim‘on highlights is ‘virgins’, thereby arriving at the meaning: ‘those who attain their virginity in Israel’.[38] Thus according to this alternative tradition, priests’ avoidance of proselyte spouses has nothing to do with the stigma of zenooth. The presence of these two distinct traditions (Yeb.61 versus Qid. 78) within the Babylonian Talmud has occasioned lively and ultimately irresolvable debate, notably between Rambam and Ra’vad (Issure Bi’ah 18:3) and their respective followers. So much for the Bavli. The Yerushalmi preserves a third tradition: “It says ‘none but a virgin from among his people shall he [the high priest] marry’ [Lev 21:14] which implies that to marry a giyyoreth [not being from among his people] would be to transgress a positive command since a law inferred from one positive command is also positive” (Y. Yeb. 8:2 [9c], Qid. 4:6 [66a]). Another source not to recognize a giyyoreth as a woman forbidden to a priest under the terms of Lev 21 occurs at Sanhedrin 82a. A Hasmonean beth din is said to have decreed that a man cohabiting with a non-Jewess shall be reckoned guilty of violating four prohibitions. Two amora’im, R. Dimi and Rabin, agree as to the identity of the first three prohibitions but dispute the fourth. Rabin claims that the fourth involved a prohibition peculiar to priests viz., a priest who had relations with a gentile would be liable for consorting with a zonah.[39] R. Dimi, however, declares that gentile women cannot be presumed zonot ‘because their women are not so immoral’.[40] R. Dimi obviously rejects the giyyoreth-zonah equation. But as the 12th century Tosafist R. Moses of Pontoise points out,[41] even Rabin did not consider a gentile woman’s presumptive zenooth anything more than a Hasmonean innovation. And if a gentile’s zonah classification was merely Hasmonean and unscriptural, a fortiori a giyyoreth’s.

As for the high priest’s slur on Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it comes as no surprise. The only question is whether in calling them gentiles he meant quite literally to repudiate gerooth; or, as seems likelier, to convey the ingrained priestly position that gereem were unequal Jews. Today we have confirmation of such condescension towards gereem in circles associated with the sacerdotal clan. To quote once again Daniel Schwartz:

[In] conjunction with the usual rabbinic notion that the Torah “equates the proselyte to the native-born with regard to all laws of the Torah,” it follows that proselytes may enter [the Temple] along with born Israelites. But three pieces of earlier evidence, all from priestly circles, say otherwise. First of all, the inscriptions on the Temple mount which warned Gentiles not to enter referred to them as allogenes (“of foreign birth”) .... Already Clermont-Ganneau, who first published the inscription found intact [in 1872] noted that, if taken literally, it would exclude converts as well. Second, a Qumran text (Q4 Florilegium 1, 3-4) looks forward to the future Temple which ... will not be polluted by the entry of “the Ammonite, nor the Moabite, nor half-breed [sic], nor the foreigner, nor the proselyte (ger) ... our third witness: the Temple Scroll ... makes clear that the status of proselytes, at least with regard to entry into the Temple, is lower than that of born Israelites.[42]

Horayot 1:4 (item b cited above) implies that gereem were disbarred from the higher judiciary. Perhaps this disbarment of gereem went back to the days when the priesthood was in charge of the Temple. Since the Temple was where the supreme court convened, it would have been off-limits to gereem. Not that the Mishnah offers this etiology, or any other for that matter. Indeed, the Mishnah appears to take as given the proselyte’s inadmissibility to the Sanhedrin. But the Mishnah’s reticence is compensated by the gemara, especially the Yerushalmi (Hor. 1:4 [46a]) that offers the following explanation. “It is written [Num 11:16] ‘let them stand there with you’. Just as you [Moses] are neither a ger,[43] a Gibeonite nor a bastard,[44] so also shall they be neither gereem, Gibeonites nor bastards ...”.

Now Torah is quite forthright in itemizing its judiciary’s requisite qualifications. These include fortitude, fear of G-d, trustworthiness, having contempt for lucre (Ex 18:21); experience, being imbued with the spirit (Num 11:16-17); wisdom, discernment and understanding (Dt. 1:13). But absolutely nowhere does Torah so much as hint at DNA tests for judges or their progenitors. Only in the cultic realm does heredity reign (see Num 17:5), or to paraphrase Daniel Schwartz: the question ‘who is a priest?’ is answered necessarily and sufficiently by descent. In light of the scriptural evidence, perhaps we should understand the Yerushalmi’s patently forced derash[45] to be tongue in cheek, as if to say: if you can believe that Moses’ value resided in his pedigree, then believe also that pedigree determined the selection of his deputies. But needless to say, that is not the conventional reading. Instead, Horayot’s disbarring of gereem came to be viewed as normative halakhah, so much so that Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were felt to be an embarrassment. At that point, this pair of sages, described elsewhere in the Mishnah (Hag. 2:2) as president and vice-president of the supreme court, had to be transmogrified from gereem into descendants of gereem - conveniently forgetting that when they want, the sources know how to designate descendants. Moreover, if the ger status of one’s ancestors is the thorn in the side of the world’s Aqabiahs and high priestly purists, where’s their protest at other scions of converts, such as R. Aqiba[46] and those prophets descended from the proselytess Rahab (Meg.14b) who like R. Aqiba presided over bate din.[47]

But even if we grant that Horayot meant to deny the Sanhedrin the benefit of appointees such as an Obadiah[48] or a Yithra,[49] a Shema‘iah or an Avtalyon[50] - its denial was not necessarily the last word. As noted earlier, wellnigh every instance of ger-wariness is offset by its converse. The converse of Horayot 1:4 may be discovered at Sanhedrin 4:2. “Anybody can qualify to try monetary cases, but to try capital cases none qualify except priests, Levites and Israelites whose daughters would be allowed to marry priests.” Now we have seen a range of sources that prohibit matrimony between a priest and a convert - albeit each source invoking its own very distinct authority for the prohibition. The fact that these sources name specifically a giyyoreth, must surely imply that a born Jewess who happened to be parented by a proselyte would be above reproach.

So can a priest marry a ger’s daughter? Well, it depends whom you ask.

The daughter of a male halal[51] is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood for ever ... R. Yehudah says the daughter of a male proselyte is like the daughter of a male halal. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov says if a [native] Israelite marries a giyyoreth, their daughter is fit to [marry into] the priesthood; similarly the daughter of a proselyte father and a [native] Israelite mother. But if both parents were proselytes she is unfit to [marry into] the priesthood ... R. Yose says even if both parents were proselytes she is fit to [marry into] the priesthood (M. Qid. 4:6-7).

Thus R. Yehudah would disbar proselytes from the Sanhedrin for capital cases because a proselyte is a Jew whose daughter he deems unfit to marry a priest. R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose, on the other hand, in declaring the daughter of a proselyte father eligible to marry a priest, ipso facto qualify that father to try capital cases.[52]

Lastly, we must confront the painful teaching of R. Samuel bar Yehudah - which brings us full circle. As if no Isaiah had spoken, this proselyte sage dredges up the old ‘racist’ bias that the prophet had contested all those centuries before. More amazing still, Rava appears to endorse R. Samuel’s prejudice and to broaden it. The only court from which R. Samuel debarred proselytes was a halisah court because of a unique exclusionary phrase Torah employs in connection with halisah. Rava, however, would seem to extend the debarment of proselytes by narrowing the scope of Torah’s ‘you’ (as in “over you”) to exclude adoptive Jews.[53] In other words, Torah’s use of ‘you’ in addressing Israel yields ‘you who were born Israelite’.[54]

Such corporeal definitions of Israel strike most of us as extremely baffling, as well they should. For they drive an ethnic wedge between Jew and Jew, which would seem to run counter to declared fundamentals of rabbinic gerooth:

R. Yose taught A proselyte once converted is like a newborn babe (Yeb. 48b; see also Yeb. 22a, 62a, 97b, Ket. 61b, Bekh. 47a).
Once he has immersed himself and emerged [from the water] behold he is like an Israelite in every respect (hare hu ke-yisrael le-khol debarav Yeb. 47b).

PRO AND CON IN THE AGGADAH

Arguably the most familiar aggadic comment on gerooth is R. Helbo’s quip:

Proselytes are hard[55] for Israel as [the dermatological condition that Lev 13-14 calls] sappahat (var. is on the skin). For it is written [Isa 14:1] ‘The ger shall join them and become attached[56] to the House of Jacob’ (Yeb.47b, cf. 109b).

In his magnum opus The Sages, Ephraim E. Urbach reminds us that R. Helbo’s own disciple R. Berakhyah distanced himself from his master’s interpretation of Isa 14:1.

Job said ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ (Job 31:32). G-d rejects none of His human creatures but accepts them all; the gates are always open so that everyone that wishes may enter. Therefore, ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ can be applied to the Holy One blessed be He ... R. Berakhyah asked: to whom does ‘no ger shall spend the night outdoors’ apply? It applies to gereem who shall one day be priests serving in the temple as it says ‘The ger shall join them and become attached to the House of Jacob’ - and the root SPH connotes priesthood as it says [1Sam 2:36] ‘attach me (= sephaheni), I pray thee, to one of the priestly orders’. [57]
But let us not be unfair to R. Helbo. He was not disavowing (heaven forfend) Isaiah’s prophecy that gereem would be attached to the house of Jacob; he was merely warning that for Israel their absorption would not be without difficulty. Thus R. Helbo makes it perfectly clear that he is speaking from a national standpoint. For Israel’s composure gereem might be a bane (albeit integumentary - no danger to vital organs) and an inconvenience.[58] But then many misvot are at times inconvenient, and the path of avodat hashem is often strewn with trials and tribulations. In any event, whatever R. Helbo’s original purport, later amoraim declared that in acquainting the gerooth-candidate with the lofty responsibilities Judaism lays upon a person, R. Helbo would be satisfied. How so? Because frivolous candidates will be deterred by so burdensome a prospect (see Yeb. 47b). This shows that these later amoraim took R. Helbo’s words as an admonition to bate din to be on their toes. So long as a system was in place for weeding out the irresolute and gormless, R. Helbo asked no more.

Another aggadic passage often understood as cynical of gereem and their motives, occurs at Yebamot 24b: “Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] ‘the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you’ meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility”. To the extent we are able to fathom this cryptic pronouncement, its equilibrator may be located at Tos. Ber. 6:4.[59]

On seeing a place from which idolatry has been uprooted one says: ‘Blessed be He who has uprooted idolatry from our land; just as it has been uprooted from this place so may it be uprooted from all places of Israel and may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’. This last clause ‘may you turn the hearts of the idolaters to your worship’ need not be recited outside the land [of Israel] because there a majority of the population is gentile. R. Shim‘on [var. R. Shim‘on b. El‘azar] says also outside the land one must say it because they are going to convert as it says [Zeph 3:9] Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord.

Thus R. Shim‘on does not look forward to a moratorium on gerooth in the Messianic era, but quite the contrary.[60]

Even more distrustful of gerooth, is an aggadah domesticated by Rashi through his comments to Ex 32 vv. 4 & 7. At verse 4 he writes “The worshippers of the golden calf exclaimed ‘These are your gods o Israel’. They did not say our gods but your gods. From this we learn it was the mixed multitude [mentioned at Ex 12:38] ... who mobbed Aaron; they were also the ones that made it and then led Israel astray”. At verse 7 the words ‘your people has acted corruptly’ elicits the following from Rashi: “G-d does not tell Moses The people has acted corruptly but rather ‘your people’; ‘your’ denoting the mixed multitude that you [Moses] accepted and converted on your own initiative and without consulting me. You said ‘it is good that gereem cleave to the shekhinah [i.e. to G-d]’. Now it is they who have acted corruptly and corrupted [others].”[61]

One can scarcely imagine a damper more crushing to gerooth. If our master Moses is to be faulted for making converts without explicit divine concurrence, how far ought lesser mortals to run from conversion? Rashi, however, cannot be held solely responsible for the influence this aggadah has enjoyed. Maimonides outpaces Rashi by using it as underpinning for one of his more creative gerooth rulings. After codifying the ruling in question, Rambam continues “This is the reason the sages said ‘proselytes are hard for Israel as an affliction of leprosy’ because most of them have ulterior motives and mislead Israel. Yet, it is hard to separate from them once they have converted. Look at what happened in the wilderness in the incident of the golden calf and again at Kibroth-hattaavah. Indeed, the asafsoof[62] were in the vanguard of most of the [ten] ‘testings’[63]" (Issure Bi’ah 13:18).

Some have argued that the point of the mixed multitude aggadah was to warn against mass conversions; and no doubt, a sudden deluge of newcomers has the potential to saturate, or even disorient, a host community. Others bring up John Hyrcanus’ conversion of the Idumeans[64] to illustrate the mixed blessing of overambitious giyyoor. However, we must not discount the possibility that in John Hyrcanus’ day the atmosphere had already been infected with an aloofness towards gereem that got in the way of the Idumeans’ integration. Why, even King Agrippa was still being impugned on account of his Idumean extraction, at least in certain quarters. Earlier we had occasion to meet the erudite Simon, immortalized by Josephus for his gripe against Agrippa. As we saw, what bugged Simon was the king’s lineage, precisely the issue surrounding Agrippa in the Talmud’s recollection.

The high priest hands the Torah scroll to the king and the king stands to receive it but reads sitting down. King Agrippa, however, both received and read standing and was applauded by the sages. When he reached the verse ‘You shall not appoint over you a man who is a foreigner’ [Dt 17:15] he was seen shedding tears. From the crowd rose thereupon the cry ‘Agrippa do not fear, you are our brother. You are our brother. You are our brother’ (M. Sot. 7:8).
This story pulls back the curtains on a rare scene of the giyyoor polemic in full throttle. First to heave into sight is Agrippa reverencing the Torah and earning, in turn, the sages’ approbation. In the next tableau the king is weeping - whether genuine or crocodile tears or a mixture is left moot. But what brings on the tears is not in doubt. As his Torah reading progresses, Agrippa reaches Dt 17:15, the verse on whose strength his (priestly?) foes would dethrone him as a man who did not satisfy the verse’s miqqereb ahekhah stipulation. At which juncture the hoi polloi voices its (Pharisaic?) understanding of Torah brotherhood whereby the pious, Torah-committed Agrippa is hailed a true brother. So much for the Mishnah and its memory of the conflicting appraisals of Agrippa’s zygotic Jewishness among divers factions.

As noted earlier, priestly notions increasingly seep into rabbinic deliberations. In the process, Agrippa’s endorsement by his contemporaries, both scholar and commoner alike, is cynically written off as humbug. The Bavli records a source that lambastes the crowd as toadies sucking up to an imposter, while the Yerushalmi credits the flattery with deadly consequences. These sources take it for granted that his lineage disqualified Agrippa for an office limited to ‘brothers’ by Dt 17:15. In so doing, they align themselves with the position attributed to Rava (Yeb. 102a) that also treats as axiomatic the inter-fraternity of none but native Jews. Let it be noted, withal, how none of these sources feels the need to cite Holy Writ. Dt 17:15’s kingship law is unambiguous: no nokhri (= foreigner) shall be appointed king but only a man miqqereb ahekhah (= from among your brethren). Thus Deuteronomy sets the dividing line between ineligible foreigner and eligible brother. Being a brother among brethren, the ger must surely find himself, by definition, on this side of the divide. Or does he? Incredibly, for these sources a ger would appear to fall on yonder side, placed there not at Scripture’s behest but ‘because he pullulated from a tippah pesulah (=an unfit droplet)’.[65] But if droplets determine who is and who is not miqqereb ahekhah, then what of prophets?

Sifre (Dt. 157) construes the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 to exclude gentiles. Gentiles - not gereem.[66] Dt 18:18 stipulates that Israel’s prophets shall arise miqqirbekha me-aheka. Again, the way Sifre (Dt 175) deciphers the phrase, the only people excluded under the miqqirbekha me-ahekha provision are gentiles. Even Yehudah Halevi (d. c. 1140), whose racist theory of Israel's singularity notoriously correlates prophecy with pedigree,[67] never cites Dt 18:18. That is not to preclude the role the ger-versus-brother dichotomy may have played in shaping Yehudah Halevi’s thinking. All the same, he could not invoke Dt 18:18 because neither that verse nor any other Torah verse allows for gere sdeq to be classified as a distinct sub-division of Jews. No, it is not Torah that yields racism, but primeval instincts, primitive and feral, lurking just beneath man’s consciousness. The priests exploited those subliminal proclivities to rationalize an hereditary priesthood. Eventually the rationalization took off and was accepted as self-evident. That explains why those who view the ger as a breed apart never feel constrained to provide scriptural authority. Chickens develop from eggs; butterflies from caterpillars; and the ger from a mysterious, undefined entity called tippah pesulah.

To recapitulate. Many of the texts reviewed so far, grade people according to the putative circumstances of their siring. This kind of scale, that takes embryonic purity more seriously than individual personality, smacks of a priestly provenance. You see, priestly purity-cum-holiness and defilement though firmly rooted in physicality, were possessed of metaphysical potency. Everything was either pure and therefore metaphysically sound or it was neither. Jewish seed Ezra had declared holy; other seed who knows? Consequently, priests had little use for conversion. If outside priestly purlieus converts were welcome, the priests for their part would regard them as second-class Jews. But we have also seen the vitality of a less carnal school that conceives of ‘entering under the shekhinah’s wings’ as a total transformation - the ger retroactively standing upon Sinai and ‘shedding the scum implanted by the serpent’.[68] The school that abnegates priestly taxonomies, declaring “all Israel eligible for kingship” (Hor.13a), and requiring a misbegotten Torah scholar to take precedence over a high-born but churlish priest.[69]

Amidst these cross-currents of the Talmudic ocean, we find post-Talmudic sources struggling to navigate a path. The overall tendency of these sources is to err on the side of caution. Let us consider the following rather typical example. The Talmud rules that pukka giyyoor requires a beth din of three (Yeb. 46b). The requirement is treated as scriptural, and as such the judges would have to be accredited (mumheen). For the number three is derived from the same Scripture that mandates accreditation (San. 2b et al.). Now the Talmud (San. ibid.) registers an exception to the mumheen requirement.

As for the mumheen requirement it is waived in line with R. Haninah’s teaching. For R. Haninah said Torah law requires a single standard of cross-examination in all cases whether capital or civil as it says [Lev 24:22] ‘A single [standard of] justice shall you have’. Why then have they [the rabbis] suspended it for [certain] civil cases? So that the door will not be shut in the face of borrowers (San. 2b-3a).

Thus the scripturally mandated grilling of witnesses was set aside for cases involving loans in order to keep creditors lending; creditors that might otherwise be afraid of losing their money should the testimony break down under rigorous questioning. Likewise, insistence on mumheen posed an obstacle to borrowing. What about mumheen for giyyoor? Tosafot answers that question. “You may wonder how we [not being mumheen] can accept gereem. We would have to say that just as they worried about the door being shut on borrowers so too did they worry about the door being shut on gereem” (Yeb. 46b-47a s.v. mishpat). For Tosafot to extrapolate from the misvah of lending[70] to giyoor proves that in their eyes, giyyoor is a misvah of comparable standing. No doubt, Tosafot also took stock of the words Sifre places in Moses’ mouth. “[Moses] said to him, ‘pray, do not leave us [Num 10:31] ... Perchance you think [by leaving us] to increase the honor of Maqom whereas in reality you will lessen it. Think how many gereem and slaves you can cause to enter under the wings of the shekhinah. Therefore, be our guide [i.e. stay on] so as not to shut the door on gereem who [in the event of your departing] will reason: if Jethro threw in the towel what chance is there for us?’” (Sifre Num. 80 p.76).

A moment ago we referred to erring on the side of caution. In the context of giyoor it would entail giving candidates who are not blatantly bogus the benefit of the doubt. No judge hearing a giyyoor application, or any other business for that matter, is ever sure of a verdict’s repercussions down the road. Prognosticating forms no part of a judiciary’s halakhic warrant which is, instead, meticulously sifting information and critically examining their own integrity. For this is the halakhahic formula for judges: “a judge has nothing but what his eyes discern” (en lo la-dayyan ella ma she-‘enav ro’ot).[71] Provided no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of truth, and no recess of the soul unscoured for extraneous agendas and prejudices, the rest is up to Providence. Hillel will have followed the same course when deciding to receive gereem;[72] even the oddballs that his colleague Shammai had turned down. Although the Talmud avers that Hillel was no clairvoyant nor formally endowed with the holy spirit (San. 11a), he was obviously blessed with deep faith and compassion and the insightfulness that flows from them. Taking that first step of coming in search of conversion seems to have counted with Hillel, because Hillel starts out with the assumption that giyyoor is, in principle, pleasing in the sight of Hashem. Hillel preached “love your fellow humans and draw them close to Torah” (Aboth 1:12). It was also what he practiced. So how about Shammai? you ask. How did Shammai justify the short shrift he gave the gerooth-seekers knocking on his door?

Shammai’s strategy parallels Hillel’s inasmuch as it too plays safe when in doubt. Their major difference is the angle from which they view the world. Hillel, the devoted disciple of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon,[73] was convinced that conversion was G-d’s will as revealed in Torah. Had Shammai viewed giyyoor as a Torah desideratum he would not have sent his visitors packing. No. Shammai evidently had at least one foot in the priestly camp, treating conversion almost as a mirror image of divorce which though recognized by Torah, is restricted for use only in the event of flagrancy.[74] Once gerooth is classified as a misvah in reserve, to be taken out only on state occasions, Shammai’s behavior falls into place. Conversion is all well and good for that paragon of propriety and submissiveness who comes dispirited and devoid of ego, not for smart alecs of the type Shammai dismisses (Shab. 31a). Besides, if there is no great virtue in spreading Hashem’s faith, playing safe would presumably translate into sparing the existing Jewish community the effort of accommodating neophytes. If on top of that the ger is a Jew-not-quite (as some sources imply), then it is Hobson’s choice to reject all but the worthiest, i.e. the least obtrusive.

This ambivalence to gerooth may not be entirely unrelated to the Shammaite belief that Jewish survival was best served by isolationism and by closing ranks. Although the immediate impetus for the so-called Eighteen Decrees is thought to have been political, there is no escaping the Decrees’ xenophobic underpinning.[75] Survival mattered to Hillelites just as much, but their opposition to the Decrees stemmed from their alternative perception of the Torah’s call. By means fair or foul, the Shammaites managed to muster the votes and the Decrees passed into law.[76] But the triumph was short-lived. Perhaps the Shammaites had overplayed their hand. In any case, the Hillelite school rebounded, and the later rabbis came to believe that Hillell’s Halakhah, not Shammai’s, met with divine approval.[77]

That is not to say Shammaite Halakhah ceased overnight. In their personal observance, individual rabbis continued to practice it. R. Tarphon, for instance, adopted the Shammaite recumbent posture when reciting the evening shema‘,[78] while R. Gamliel in his own home followed Beth Shammai in three halakhot pertaining to the festivals.[79] But when it comes to gerooth, which is hardly a question of private piety, there is no recorded lapse to Shammaism. At least not until the 19th century when gerooth can be said to have entered a new phase. Prior to the enlightenment - culminating for many minority communities with Napoleon and his emancipatory initiatives - proseletyzing had been forbidden and was a risky undertaking for both the convert and his/her Jewish sponsors. As freedom of religion began to displace medievalism on the European continent, conversion to Judaism gained momentum. Another feature of the emancipatory stirrings, was the rise of modernist reforms within Judaism. Then, amidst the controversies between the emerging factions of what were to crystallize as orthodox, ultra-orthodox, liberal and arch-liberal strands of European Jewry, there recrudesces a Shammaite defensiveness towards gerooth. Or rather ostensibly Shammaite. For now gerooth itself was not the issue, but had become a mere pawn in a larger denominational struggle. It is understandable that Orthodoxy, which was an ideology in the making at the time, should try to demarcate its boundaries, especially vis-à-vis the progressives who were the irritant that had produced the orthodox pearl, so to speak. As with any demarcation strategy, each faction tended to illegitimate its rivals in the process of forging self-identity. In order to sharpen their respective identities each stressed the misvot the other downplayed. Because the progressives put the ethics of Torah above its ritual, Orthodoxy that came into being as a reaction, reversed its priorities, laying particular emphasis on praxis that suited a separatist agenda. But as noted, the separatism went hand in hand with an aggressive invalidation of all other Jews, not merely the card-holding Reformists, but any that remained outside the ever-narrowing confines of the orthodox fortress.

This is not the forum to rehearse the birth of European Jewish denominationalism. For one thing, the story has been covered in many serious studies.[80] Moreover, our sole interest in the 19th century is to discover how gerooth fared in the face of all the turmoil. To some degree it fell victim to the brawls. If non-Orthodox Judaism was inauthentic, then so were gentiles who adopted that brand of Judaism. Authentic Jews were exclusively the adherents of Orthodoxy, and for converts to reckon as Jews they would have to convert under Orthodox auspices.

From here on the story will be taken up by the manifestos[81] of R. Akiva Joseph Schlesinger (d.1922) a man who set much of the tone for an important branch of segregationist European Orthodoxy, and who later exported it to the Holy Land. When reading the manifestos let us remember that gerooth is not the butt of their animus so much as are rival groups who were admitting gereem on their own terms. The writing is also fueled by a palpable militancy born of fear; that insidious, gut fear of the unfamiliar and the alien. Even as we cringe at the author’s special pleading, it is only meet to try and visualize the unenviable predicament that beset Jewry in his place and time. However, no amount of sympathy for Rabbi Schlesinger can justify reliance upon arguments such as his (for he was not a lone voice merely the most articulate, and some might say, candid). With the benefit of hindsight we may understand his siege mentality and its pretexts - pretexts that afford us no fig-leaf of cover in today’s vastly different circumstances.

1) Selections from the General Introduction to Lev ha-‘Ivri[82]

By divine plan humanity was predestined from the beginning to be divided into four species (or classes) each with its distinct mission. ... The first was given the seven Noahide laws ... and above all the misvah (or duty) to make the earth habitable through diligent study of nature, putting that knowledge to use for the benefit of the world. Never may they shirk this misvah even if they mean to exchange it for another misvah as it was taught [San. 58b] ‘A gentile who observes the Sabbath deserves death’... Later, the holy One blessed be He separated the second species that He chose to be unto Him a kingdom of priests. From them He withdrew the misvah (or duty) of making the earth habitable. G-d’s Torah alone was to be their care; and their life’s purpose to carry out the 613 commandments, the written Torah and the oral ... The third species is the priestly that must be completely removed from all things mundane ... The fourth consists of the high priest of whom it is written [Lev 21:12 ] ‘out of the sanctuary he shall not go’. Furthermore, the Cause of all causes established and fixed each of these [classes] in accordance with their respective souls and the quarry whence each was extracted so that each may attain the goal divinely willed for it. G-d also ordered that they shall endure for ever at their allocated posts and in their appointed positions, never interchanging from one to another and never trespassing or moving outside their boundaries. Thus, the Torah given at Sinai, being an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, none of the other nations is allowed to delve into Israel’s Torah - especially the oral - because the Torah has decreed that a gentile who occupies himself with Torah deserves death. Conversely, the Torah decrees that Israelites, whose sole enterprise must be Torah, any one of them who gets involved with the learning of the nations, likewise, deserves death. For anyone transgressing the words of the sages is worthy of death (Erub.21b) and is called a renegade (Nid. 12a) ...
And even though the holy One blessed be He granted permission to a Noahide to transfer from his patrimony by converting and entering the Israelite collective, nevertheless it is not a preferential (or glorious) misvah to accept proselytes as indicated in tractate Yebamoth: Proselytes will not be accepted in the time to come when the prophecy ‘The whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the L-rd’ is realized. Because even then every nation shall still maintain its immutable position ... May the Merciful One speedily bring to pass [the promise of‘ Zeph 3:9] ‘Then will I give the nations pure lips so that all may invoke Hashem’s name and serve Him with one accord’ - Noahides according to their duty, Israelites according to their statutes, priests on their watch and the high priest in his sacred office ...[83]

2) Remarks on the Acceptance of Proselytes that is on the Rise in our Generation[84]

‘The heart of a king [and of princes] is in the hand of Hashem’ (Prv 21:1) and it is from His hand that this thing has come upon us - this recent movement towards eliminating religious divisions and hatreds. Like wild beasts, they envy the Jew no more. Instead, people go their own ways following their hearts’ promptings ... Ever since the declaration of liberty (also called freedom of religion) for all inhabitants of the land, it is no secret that the number of those attaching themselves to the House of Jacob has been increasing from day to day. But as for you, my brethren, what you need, is to know Hashem’s will in His Torah and to keep His statute.
To be sure, our Rabbis say ‘The holy One blessed be He, exiled Israel only in order that proselytes may join them’ (Pes. 87b). On the other hand, they tell us ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’ (Yeb.47b) which hardship Rashi and Tosafot understand to inhere in the failure of proselytes to observe misvot punctiliously which, in turn, sets a bad example in Israel. These two statements would appear to contradict each other, and one must reconcile the contradiction. As it turns out, there is a third text that does just that. The text occurs at Yebamot 24b: ‘Proselytes are not accepted in the Messianic era. Likewise, they were not accepted in the days of David and Solomon. R. El‘azar provided scriptural support. It is written [Isa 54:15] the one that sojourns with you will fall upon you - meaning to say, whoever joins you in your affliction shall abide with you in the days of your tranquility’. Thus we see that the acceptable proselytes were those that suffered and risked their lives to enter under the Shekhinah’s wings. For that kind of convert was Israel exiled. But those who come on a whim, let alone for their own satisfaction, they are unto Israel hard as sappahat. Of their ilk were the children of converts, or rather children of a mixed multitude, that were accepted in the days of Moses. From among them and their likes have emerged our tormentors: sappahat and [that other dermatological condition called] baheret Sadducees and heretics. But as birds of a feather flock together, so these, whose actions demonstrate that they are not of the children of Israel, exult to make converts in their own likeness. As the Rabbis predicted (ibid.) When many gentiles attach themselves you have sappahat and baheret.
And what is the exultation all about? Far better had they remained in their gentileness! Both for them and for us it would have been expedient because Sadducees and heretics are worse than idolaters as stated in our pure Shulhan Arukh (Hoshen Mishpat 34:22). We do not seek to swell our ranks. O that the nations would take away some of ours; those among us who crave their ways, their tongue and their ideas, in their thousands and tens of thousands. Then Jacob might well rejoice [and] Israel be happy that our dross and dregs have been removed. Hashem has said ‘You are few’ (Dt 7:7). Then shall the redemption come without delay, as the Rabbis teach ‘Proselytes [and those who marry underage wives] delay the Messiah’ (Nid. 13b).
And please do not raise an objection either from the Talmud’s description of Hillel’s lenient acceptance of converts or from the analogous story at Menahot 44a. For as explained in the writings of the ARI [R. Isaac Luria d. 1572] of blessed memory, They [i.e. Hillel etc.] recognized the source of [peoples’] souls. But we need not dabble in the esoteric; a thoroughly exoteric source says virtually the same thing. Tosafot (Yeb. 24; s.v. lo) accounts for [Hillel’s leniency] as follows: ‘Hillel was confident that [the people he converted] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven’. Hillel, then, was acting upon ‘Hashem’s secrets revealed to those who fear Him’ [Ps. 25:14, cf. Sot. 4b].[85] Moreover, the Talmud rules that halakhah is not to be inferred from ma‘aseh (B.B. 130b).[86] Thus for us there is nothing outside the words of the Torah that are written in our pure Shulhan Arukh: ‘When a proselyte comes to convert, they must say to him ‘Are you not aware that Israel at the present time are despised and downtrodden?’etc.’ (Yore De‘ah 268:2). The ShaK (R. Shabbetai ha-Kohen) comments on this text that they must also be daunted (or intimidated)[87] perchance (or in the hope) they will withdraw because ‘Proselytes are hard for Israel as sappahat’. Now it is true that Beth Yosef (in his commentary to Tur Yore De‘ah 268) writes that even if the daunting was omitted the conversion is still valid. However, in his [later work] Shulhan Arukh he does not mention this, which suggests that he changed his mind. And in any case [R. Moses Isserles in his] Darke Moshe disagrees with Beth Yosef and states quite explicitly that without intimidation the conversion is invalid (see also Rambam Issure Bi’ah end of Chapter 13, where explanation is called for).[88]
In our present situation, so it appears to me, everybody would agree that the intimidation is indispensable and that, if anything, it ought to be redoubled. For today we are not exactly downtrodden and despised, thank G-d. Therefore one must be even more exacting upon them with regard to the stringencies of the misvot. These are the words of Rambam (Issure Bi’ah 13; also Shulhan Arukh Yore De‘ah 268:12): “When a proselyte comes to convert they check to see lest the motive be money or marriage etc. If no such ulterior motive is found, then the proselyte must be apprised of the heaviness of the yoke of Torah and the effort involved in observing it so that they might withdraw” etc. Rambam continues: ‘Anyone that gives up idolatry for the sake of a worldly vanity, is no righteous proselyte’. Moreover, in Hilkhot Melakhim (8:11) he writes “only if he accepts them as being commanded by the holy One blessed be He, and as being made known to us through our teacher Moses. But if he observes them because his mind dictates it, then he is neither a toshab proselyte nor yet a righteous gentile”. And further on (Melakhim 10:9) he writes: ‘This is the general rule. They must not be allowed to invent a religion or their own man-made misvot. Their only choice is to become a righteous proselyte or else to stick with their own [Noahide] Torah. They shall neither add nor subtract’. Mark these words!
As for those who jump at the chance to multiply converts and apostates, it is upon them that the Rabbis pronounced their malediction ‘Misfortune upon misfortune shall visit those who accept proselytes’ (Yeb. 109b). They also say (Bek. 30b): nokhri habba le-hitgayyer afillu me-qabbel alav kol ha-torah hootz diqdooq ehad middibre sofreem en me-qableem oto (A non-Jew who comes to be converted even if he takes upon himself the entire Torah except for a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words, he shall not be accepted). [89]
Make sure, once the checks, searches and intimidations are done, that they take it upon themselves to be of the number of the downtrodden Jews, recognizable by their distinctive names, speech and attire; and where applicable, by sisith, sidelocks and beard. So beware that you bring them into Judaism rather than into Sadduceanism, heaven forfend. So now you know!
These two texts bristle with Shammaism. First of all they divest Hillel’s example of its ability to serve as precedent by kicking it upstairs. The inference: Shammai must have lacked Hillel’s supernatural discernment or else chose not to avail himself of it when conducting interviews. Either way, because it was allegedly miracle-free, Shammai’s modus operandi need not be marginalized. Above all it should be noted how these texts give pride of place to the Bekhorot 30b prescript that, according to Rashi, actuated Shammai and molded his giyyoor policy.

[Shammai] shooed him away because it is taught in a baraitha ‘A person who comes to accept the things pertaining to haberuth except for one thing and similarly a ger who comes to be converted and accepts upon himself the words [or things] of Torah except for one word [or thing] he is not accepted’ (Rashi at Shab. 31 a s. v. hosi’o binzifah). [90]
Hillel, Rashi goes on to inform us, was also aware of the Bekhorot 30b baraitha but, unlike Shammai, chose to interpret it less rigidly (Rashi ibid.).[91] The editors of the Talmud were not content to simply record the stories reflecting Shammai and Hillel’s contrasting approaches to wayward petitioners - and then sit on the fence. Rather did they see fit to add a postscript vindicating Hillel’s approach and by more than implication decrying Shammai’s. “In the course of time the three proselytes [rebuffed by Shammai but later received by Hillel] met. They said ‘Shammai’s punctiliousness[92] sought to drive us from the world; Hillel’s meekness[93] brought us close under the wings of the Shekhinah” (Shab. ibid.).[94]

[1] “The rabbis speak of ‘The proselyte who comes to convert' even though at the time of coming the person is actually a gentile. The reason for this usage is that it would be offensive to refer to a person who has since converted by the epithet ‘gentile’” (Ritva to Ket. 11a).

[2] Against the Galilaeans translated by Wilmer F. C. Wright, Loeb Classical Library, The Works of the Emperor Julian vol. 3 pp. 341-343.

[3] JPS Commentary to Dt, excursus 7 p.435.

[4] See Meg. 9b; Y. Meg. 1: 8 [71d]; Mekhilta Bo 14 (p. 51); Tanhuma Ex. (Shemot 22); Sofrim 1:8; Sifre Dt 148.

[5] Buber edition Dt p. 2; Midrash Tanhuma Hamfo’ar vol. 2, Jerusalem 5754 p. 250; cf. Testament of Levi 14:4.

[6] The same aggadic understanding of Gen 12:5 is presupposed by the Talmud. “It was taught in the school of Elijah ‘The world has 6,000 years [of which] 2,000 are void, 2,000 Torah and 2,000 the days of the messiah’... When did the 2,000 of Torah begin? ... from ‘the souls they made in Haran’” (A. Z. 9a).

[7] See A. Z. 64b.

[8] See Rashi to Dt 29:10 and his source in Tanhuma. Also Shab. 146a; Yeb. 79a.

[9] Conversion rituals are, of course, quite another matter.

[10] The original idea of covenantal community being the antithesis of ethnic solidarity, it is understandable that where genealogy prevails covenant survives merely as a form, eviscerated of its definitional status. As Mendenhall notes (of an age long before the rabbinic) “...the basis of solidarity was no longer the covenant, but the myth of descent from a common ancestor” (The Tenth Generation pp.16-17). The rabbis made no attempt to revitalize the covenantal idea, but instead invested biblical references to covenant with the force of circumcision, the only berith in their experience. See Shaye J. D. Cohen’s “Your Covenant that You Have Sealed in our Flesh: Women, Covenant and Circumcision” in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism, Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume (Leiden 2007, pp. 29-42).

[11] This Elijah aggadah climaxes in Pirqe R. Eliezer chapter 29.

[12] Ned. 32a; cf. M. Ned. 3:11; Shab. 137b.

[13] At any rate, a male proselyte’s. The female proselyte’s ritual was to be tevilah (=immersion) - adduced from Ex 19:10 that mandates ablutions preparatory to the Sinaitic covenant. Since the rabbis saw every conversion as a continuation of Sinai, they modelled conversion rites on Sinai. Accordingly: “Ribbi (R. Judah the Patriarch fl. c. 220) says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for the men], immersion [for all] ... So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a). Of course, this still leaves a discrepancy between the single rite for one gender and two for the other. Which leads to the hoary question: Why would a rite of passage be chosen that pertains exclusively to men? This conundrum has piqued writers from as far back as Philo (see Philo Supplement 1, Questions and Answers on Genesis, translated from the ancient Armenian version of the original Greek by Ralph Marcus, London 1953 pp. 241-242). To situate Philo among other ancients who considered circumcision’s gender implications, see “Why Aren’t Women Circumcised?” by Shaye D. J. Cohen (in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean, Maria Wyke ed., Oxford 1998 pp.136-154).

[14] Rashi adds: “[They were wrong to] turn her away from entering under the wings of the Shekhinah; they should have converted her”.

[15] Tosafot juxtapose the Timna‘ aggadah to qasheem for the express purpose of mitigating the qasheem stricture (to be encountered anon) and cutting it down to size.

[16] Although the Keri is mi-ma‘arkhot pelishteem (= the Philistine ranks), the derash exploits the Ketib: mi-ma‘arot pelishteem.

[17] This example was brought to my attention by Rabbi Benjamin Z. Schmeltz, z.l.

[18] Dt 21:10-14; Qid. 21b et al.

[19] To which category accepting gereem belongs as demonstrated by - among others - R. Shim‘on ben Semah Duran (d. 1444). “... accepting gereem is a misvah that devolves upon the religious courts to receive and not to turn them away. It is clearly implied by the statement in tractate Yebamot (47b) ‘[once his wholehearted commitment has been ascertained the male convert] shall be circumcised immediately because we have a rule that a misvah may not be postponed without good reason’. The same rule is invoked by the Talmud with regard to levirate marriage. In the event that the oldest surviving brother is abroad but a younger brother is to hand, although the senior brother normally takes precedence, so as not to postpone the misvah, the junior shall perform the levirate duty. Thus we see that accepting gereem is a misvah on a par [with yibboom] ... Moreover, in tractate Ketuboth it says that when the applicant for gerooth is a minor, the underage ger is immersed [i.e. undergoes the attendant rites of giyyoor] with the consent of the religious court. Why so? Because of the misvah that obligates us to accept gereem” (Sefer Zohar Ha-raqiy‘a, p.37).

[20] The Hebrew is ha-nilvah; most likely a quasi-technical term for conversion (cf. “ve-nilvah ha-ger” at Isa 14:1).

[21] Cf. Neh 13:23-28.

[22] Proselytes are listed in M. Qid. 4:1 among the ten ranks (or rather castes) that removed from Babylon. Presumably this refers to the first wave of returnees under Zerubbabel, although the name of Ezra is associated with the ten castes in the course of the gemara (Qid. 69b). However, Ezra’s mention may be due to the Talmud’s telescoping of the two waves.

[23] Ant. XIX 7:4.

[24] Agrippa I, King of Judaea, Tübingen 1990 pp. 126-127.

[25] The Hebrew original translated ‘genealogical’ is ha-mithyahaseem - hithyahes deriving from the root YHS. All 20 biblical attestations of this word (mostly in the hithpa‘l as here) are confined to the post-Exilic books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It is highly telling that neither the word nor the idea (by any other name) occurs in demonstrably pre-Exilic books (but see Onqelos and other targums to Num 1:18).

[26] Schwartz lists the most egregious examples (op. cit. p. 129 n. 89).

[27] Named in the chain of Torah transmitters as teachers of Hillel and Shammai (Aboth 1: 10-12).

[28] This is a literal rendering of the Aramaic original ‘bene amameen’. However, there is no doubt that bene amameen (sing. mostly bar amameen) denotes gentile[s], and in Targum it is more or less the standard equivalent of biblical bene nekhar or nokhri (e.g. Lev 22:25; Dt 14:21, 29:21 et al.).

[29] Aqabyah is never identified as a priest. Yet the laws he champions at Eduyot 5:6 - leprosy, ritual purity, shearings of the firstborn of the flock and the water ordeal - all belong to the priestly domain. At Neg. 1:4 Aqabyah figures as one of three tannaim who dispute the consensus regarding another aspect of leprosy law. One of the two tannaim is definitely a priest namely R. Hananiah Segan Ha-kohaneem. Is expertise in leprosy law a priestly trait? Be that as it may, in his scorn for Shema‘iah and Avtalyon qua proselytes, Aqabyah showed himself to be a chip off the block of the high priest we met at Yoma 71b. Finally, in Aqabyah’s anthropology man has his beginning neither in the dust as per Gen 2:7, nor in the womb or the bowels of the earth (Ps 139:13-15) nor in a mould (Job 10:10) nor in any biblically located site. Aqabyah’s focus is tippah seruhah (Aboth 3:1). Without putting too fine a point on it, in whose mind but a priest’s (and a laboratory biologist’s) would the thought of human incipiency conjure up tippah (= a droplet)?

[30] Like Karkemeet, Shema‘iah and Avtalyon were not Jews-from-birth. They were proselytes (Ber. 19a, Rashi and Tosafot ibid.; Tosafot Hashalem: Commentary on the Bible, Jacob Gellis edition vol. 8 p.143; Y. Mo‘ed Qatan 2:1; Rambam, introduction to Mishneh Torah and comment on Edu. 1:3; Bertinoro on Edu. 5:6 & Aboth 1:10). However, in the 17th century there was a move to deprive Shema‘iah and Avtalyon of their proselyte status for the sake of harmonizing, as we shall see.

[31] I.e. it is to be understood in its commonly attested sense of a wife who is unfaithful to her husband (Rashi).

[32] Even though she is single (Rashi).

[33] E. g. she had been in an incestuous relationship; alternatively, an Israelite woman who had been married to [or in a relationship with] a Gibeonite or a bastard (Rashi ).

[34] The Mishnah’s parallel reads: “R.Yehudah says even if he [a rank and file priest] has a wife and children he may not marry a woman incapable of child bearing for she is the zonah spoken of in the Torah. But the [other] sages say zonah refers to none but a proselytess, a manumitted female slave and a woman who had been in a forbidden relationship” (Yeb. 6:5).

[35] “A proselytess [is reckoned a zonah] because she was surely married (or was in a relationship) when still a gentile ... and since gentiles do not have qiddusheen, her marriage (or relationship) renders her unfit” (Rashi Yeb. 61b s.v. ella giyyoreth). The idea of presumption is even more clearly articulated by Rashi at Yeb. 60b s.v. kesherah likh-hunnah & Qid. 74b top, s.v. hakhee qa-amar.

[36] Some appeal to the Yerushalmi’s ke-zonah formulation (giyyoret ke-zonah hee esel ha-kehunnah - Y. Qid. 4:1 [65b]) to show that priests’ avoidance of giyyoret spouses was never understood to have scriptural warrant. But we must beware of forced harmonizations, especially as the convert definition in Yebamot nestles amidst a list of alternatives (as we have seen) that all appear to be serious attempts at defining zonah of Lev 21.

[37] Nor, as far we can tell, did the amoraim who held that Torah forbids a zonah not merely to priests but to all Israel (Yeb. 56b). To be sure, under the relaxation deduced from Num 5:13 the only zonah lay Israelites must avoid is a zonah by choice (whereas for priests even a coerced zonah is unlawful). In any case, the entire discussion presupposes that zonah of Lev 21: 7 (see Rashi Yeb. ibid. s. v. ba‘lah loqeh) denotes a woman involved in some degree of infidelity and totally precludes the zonah=proselytess definition.

[38] Obviously two traditions are being conflated. According to the first R. Shim‘on’s source was Num 31:18, while here it is given as Ezek 44:22.

[39] See Rashi ibid.

[40] Cf. zo haita bikhlal shimmoor attributed to R. Ele‘azar b. Zadok (Hor. 13a).

[41] Quoted in Tosafot San. 82a s.v. ve-iddakh and A. Z. 36b s.v. mi-shoom.

[42] King Agrippa, pp. 127-128.

[43] This statement appears to conflict with Ribbi. “Ribbi says ‘...your ancestors’ entry into the covenant was [solemnized] with circumcision [for men], immersion and [a] blood [sacrifice offered] for acceptance. So too shall they [future proselytes] enter the covenant in the same manner’” (Ker. 9a; see n. 13 above). Cf. Rashi San. 82a “It was prior to Sinai that Moses had married Jethro’s daughter, all at that time having the status of Noahides. When the Torah was given they all, she [Jethro’s daughter] as well as proselytes of the mixed multitude included, entered into full misvah-hood”.

[44] One cannot help sense the irony: “Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed and she bore him Aaron and Moses” (Ex 6:20). At least according to some tannaim, such incest was forbidden even to Noahides (San.58b but see Rambam, Melakhim 9:5).

[45] Significantly, the Bavli rejects the Yerushalmi’s derivation. Firstly, it informs us that Numbers 11’s ‘let them stand there with you’ teaches that Moses presided in person over the 70 elders bringing their total to 71. R. Yehudah disputes Moses’ participation in his court’s proceedings - which leads him to the conclusion that a Sanhedrin’s quorum is exactly 70 - not 71 (San. 16b-17a). Secondly, at San. 36b (in a discussion cognate, though not identical, with Horayot) Num 11:16 is declared inadequate authority for disbarring gereem and other ‘genealogically impaired’ Jews from the Sanhedrin. Instead, the Bavli proposes Ex 18:22’s ‘let them bear with you’. (Again, how ironic that these words are spoken by Jethro, a man who served for the rabbis as the paradigmatic ger-sedeq!)

[46] In the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, Rambam identifies as a ger R. Aqiba’s father Joseph.

[47] R. Aqiba headed the Bene Beraq beth din (San. 32b). For R. Aqiba’s calendrical activity see Ber. 63a; M. Yeb. 16:7; for the prophets’: Y. San. 1:3 [19a] et al.

[48] The prophet Obadiah was a ger according to the Talmud (San. 39b).

[49] Yithra (also Yether) is portrayed as a ger who formed an important link in the transmission-chain of Oral Torah and played a major role in establishing halakhah (Yerushalmi Yeb. 8:3 [9c]).

[50] Bene Bathyra appear to have shunned Shema‘iah and Avtalyon. When Hillel arrives on the scene, he upbraids the old Bathyra guard for spiting their own faces in failing to take advantage of the two sages. As for the ‘sloth’ to which the Bavli (but not the Yerushalmi) attributes Bathyra’s ‘underutilization’ of Shema‘iah and Avtalyon, it is in all likelihood a euphemism for something far more deliberate (Pes. 66a).

[51] Literally ‘a profaned person’. Dealing with ordinary priests, Lev 21:7 says: “a woman who is a zonah and profaned they shall not marry and a woman divorced from her husband they shall not marry ... ”. Further on, at Lev 21:14 it says of the high priest: “A widow and a divorcee and a profaned zonah none of these shall he marry ...”. Even though the phrase ‘a zonah and profaned’ of verse 7 cannot be mistaken for anything but hendiadys (not to mention adjectival ‘profaned’ of verse 14) nevertheless, rabbinic midrash coaxed out of these adjectives an additional category of unfit wife that they called halalah. A halal was a son born from the disapproved union between a priest and a halalah.

[52] At Sifre Numbers 78 we meet tannaim in apparent agreement with R. Eliezer b. Ya‘akov and R. Yose. “What was the reward of Yonadav’s kin [who were Kenite converts]? ... [they were assured that] their progeny would continue to stand before Hashem. R. Yehoshua (var. lect. R. Yonathan) expostulated ‘[How could they stand before Hashem which connotes ministering within the sacred precincts] - surely gereem do not enter the hekhal [= the temple adytum] for no lay Israelite enters the hekhal! Rather did they sit on the Sanhedrin and deliver Torah rulings. According to an alternative opinion, their daughters married priests and consequently grandsons of theirs offered sacrifices upon the altar.”

[53] At least from the Sanhedrin, including the lesser Sanhedrin of 23 (Rashi Qid. 76b s. v. kol mesimot). Rambam, on the other hand, stretches Rava’s disbarment of gereem and applies it even to courts of three that try monetary cases. Rava thus appears at odds with all those talmudic statements that explicitly qualify a ger for monetary cases (San. 36b; Nid. 49b et al.). Evidently Rambam did not relish the idea of his Rava (as distinct from Rashi’s Rava) in disagreement with an array of sources. So he set about to diffuse the situation by positing that the ger qualified for monetary cases refers only to the ger who has a Jewish mother (Yad, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 11:11).

[54] The difficulty comprehending Rava’s derash (also cited in the name of ‘a master’ at Yeb. 45b and by R. Yoseph at Qid. 76b) is only amplified when we consult Sifre. There (Sifre Dt. 157) the phrase ‘your brethren’ of Dt 17:15 is said to exclude gentiles - not gereem; and then only from kingship, not judgeship. Even B.Q (88a) that does elicit a disqualification of gereem from Dt 17:15, it is still the crown alone that is denied a ger, not the bench. The same is true of the ger’s disqualification acknowledged in tractate B.B. (3b, end). Moreover, if the purpose of Rava’s derash is to disbar gereem, would it not create a glut of such derashot? As we have seen, Yerushalmi derives the ger’s disbarment from Num 11:16 and Bavli from Ex 18:22. Harmonizations that manage to improvise discrete uses for each derashah, cannot disguise their strain. If all that were not enough, the leap of faith Rava invites us to make seems beyond our capabilities, insofar as his derash (Yeb. 102a cited above) would have us extrapolate from monarchy to judicature. Yet in the Torah’s legislation, king and judge are distinct all round, including the lexis denoting their respective appointings. The king’s is designated SUM ‘AL, a term never uttered by Moses apropos judges. To be sure, at Ex 18:21 Jethro counsels Moses “ve-samta ‘alehem”. But significantly (in the midrashic world crucially so), verse 23 that reports the actualization of Jethro’s plan, substitutes va-yitten ... ‘al (from the root NTN) for Jethro’s SUM ‘AL. Even in Dt 1:13,15 Moses refers to his appointment of judges by the verbal phrases va-’asimem be- and va-etten ‘alekhem - as if studiously avoiding SUM ‘AL.

[55] Hebrew: ‘qasheen’ - plural of qashe whose primary meaning is hard. As long as sappahat remains an unknown quantity (does it cause itching? soreness? unsightliness? all of these? or some other disagreeable sensation?) we have no choice but to render it by non-committal ‘hard’.

[56] In Hebrew: ve-nispehu - hence sappahat.

[57] Ex. Rab. 19:4 cited in The Sages (Heb.) Jerusalem 1978 p. 491. It is also worth noting that Rashi in his commentary to Isa 14:1 chose to side with R. Berakhyah inasmuch as he classifies ve-nispehu with sephaheni (1Sam 2:36) and me-histapeah (1Sam 26:19) while altogether omitting sappahat.

[58] Wherein the hardship inheres is a matter of debate. Rashi and Tosafot between them come up with no fewer than seven proposals (See Tos. Yeb 47b s.v.qasheem; Qid. 70b s.v. qasheem). Some modern scholars have speculated that the ‘hardship’ R. Helbo feared was not from the gereem themselves but from the Roman authorities who, from the Antonines on, all but outlawed conversion to Judaism. Representative of this understanding is the following comment of Alfredo Mordechai Rabello: “We cannot exclude the possibility that many of these discussions took place in reaction to the Roman legislation regarding circumcision and proselytism" (“The Attitude of Rome towards Conversions to Judaism" part XIV in The Jews in the Roman Empire: Legal Problems from Herod to Justinian, Aldershot, Hampshire 2000, p.43).

[59] Also Ber. 57b.

[60] Recognizing the tension between these Messianic visions, the Talmud (A. Z. 3b) attempts to harmonize by positing two types of conversion. The type that will cease is conversion effected by bate din. However, so-called gereem gerureem i.e. converts who adopt Judaism outside the official channels (see Rashi A. Z. 24a s.v. gerureem; and cf. the case of the convert - albeit, not dubbed garoor - who converted ‘among the gentiles’ [Shab. 68a-b]) will flourish in the future just as they did in the days of David and Solomon (when Jesse preached and Yithra responded Y. Yeb. 8:3 [9c] and when bate din were allegedly being unreceptive but 150,000 converted nonetheless Yeb. 79a). In a different context, the Talmud limits the Davidic-Messianic-age ban on beth din sponsored giyyoor. Even in good times, such as the Davidic and Messianic, it is only gereem whose motives for conversion are suspect that are turned away by the beth din. Pharaoh’s daughter, for example, would have been accepted, since someone of her station is unlikely to be lured by Israel’s material prosperity (see Yeb. 76a-b). Finally, it should be noted that neither ger garoor nor giyyoreth gerurah is attested; it is invariably in the plural gereem gerureem and refers to group conversions. Is it conceivable that for such groups a special giyyoor process had once obtained?

[61] For fuller versions of this aggadah see Ex. Rab. 42:6; Lev. Rab. 27:8.

[62] The word asafsoof is a hapax legomenon occurring at Num 11:4. Tannaim disputed its meaning. “The asafsoof in their midst were gereem gathered out of many places (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on b. Menasia). R. Shim‘on b. Menasia says they were the elders of whom it is written [Num 11:16] ‘gather for me (esfa lee) seventy elders’ (Sifre Zuta ascribes this view to R. Shim‘on).” (Sifre Num. 86 Horovitz ed. 1917 pp. 86 & 268). Rambam obviously opts for Sifre’s anonymous definition (= R. Shim‘on b. Menasia’s of Sifre Zuta) and furthermore, lumps the mixed multitude together with the asafsoof - as does Rashi at Num 11:4. However, at Ps 78:31 Rashi defines asafsoof as “the elders of whom it is written ‘gather for me’”.

[63] An allusion to Num 14:22 “Ten times they have tested me and not listened to my voice” and to Aboth 5:4.

[64] Josephus Ant. XIII 9:1.

[65] San. 36b, Nid. 49b et al; see n. 29 supra.

[66] See n. 54 supra.

[67] Kuzari 1:95, 115.

[68] See Shab. 146a, Yeb. 103b, A.Z. 22b.

[69] Hor. ibid.

[70] Lending to the indigent is an obligation (see Mekh. to Ex 22:24 and its reliance on Dt 15:8). It was this same conviction of the duty to lend and the sinfulness of withholding loans from the needy that prompted Hillel to institute that other famous ‘reform’ - perozbol. “Hillel the elder saw that [from fear of forfeiting their loans to shemittah] the people were holding back from lending and thereby transgressing that which is written in the Torah [Dt 15:9] ‘Beware lest your heart wickedly whisper to you ‘the seventh year, the year of release is approaching’ and you then begrudge your needy brother and lend him not’ etc. So Hillel rose up and instituted perozbol” Git.36a).

[71] San. 6b end (and Rashi ibid.), B.B. 131a, Nid. 20b.

[72] As confirmed by R. Joseph Karo. “Regarding the man who came to Hillel and said ‘convert me so that I may aspire to the high-priesthood’, Tosafot explain that Hillel, like Ribbi in the case recorded in Hatekhelet [Men. 44a], was confident he [the convert] would eventually come round to doing it for the sake of Heaven. From here we learn that it is all up to the beth din’s discernment (de-hakkol lefee re’ot ‘ene beth din)” (Beth Yosef, Yore De‘ah 268 near end).

[73] A devotion so touchingly epitomized at Edu. 1:3.

[74] For the Shammaite position on divorce see M. Git. 9:10.

[75] The precise makeup of the 18 remains hazy, and varies from list to list even within sources (i.e. Tosefta, Bavli, Yerushalmi). Common to all lists, however, is the disproportionate number of separatist measures. See “Les Dix-huites mesures” by Solomon Zeitlin, REJ 68 (1914) pp. 22-36; Kovets Shneur Zalman Zeitlin [Heb.] Bitzaron 25:3 NY 1964 esp. p.6.

[76] See Shab. 17a-b; Y. Shab. 1:4 [3c].

[77] See M. Ber. 1:3; Erub. 13b; Yeb. 14a et al.

[78] M. Ber. 1:3.

[79] M. Bez. 2:6.

[80] E.g. Jacob Katz’s Masoret u-Mashber [Heb.] 1958; Tradition and Crisis 1993 and elsewhere in his oeuvre; Emanuel Etkes’s introduction to Ha-hadash Asur min Ha-torah by Moshe Samet (Heb.) Jerusalem 2005.

[81] Manifestos rather than halakhic directives - which they do not purport to be (whatever influence they may arguably have exerted on certain halakhic decisors).

[82] Vol. 1, Ungvar 1864. “Lev ha-‘Ivri. .. which appeared in two parts in 1864 and 1868, became an instant bestseller, quickly running through five editions. And it achieved considerable fame not only in Hungary but throughout central and eastern Europe. A few years later the Russian maskil Eliezer Sevi Zweifel could write from far-off Zhitomir, ‘I have never seen any book published in our time which has been greeted by the Jewish public with such great honor and tremendous jubilation as the book Lev ha-‘Ivri’.” Michael K. Silber “The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, Jack Wertheimer ed. NY 1999 p.38.

[83] In this our author contradicts the Talmud’s asseveration that Noahaism has no future in the Messianic age when ‘all will worship Him in one accord’ (A.Z. 24a, Rashi s.v. shekhem ehad).

[84] Lev ha-Ivri, from Kithbe R. Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, Jerusalem 1989 vol. 2 pp. 291-292.

[85] And accordingly his leniency cannot serve as precedent for those not divinely briefed. So what does our author propose in the absence of supernal input? Presumably, the uninitiated must willy nilly convert all lest genuine applicants be lost. For surely it is preferable to take on board a rotten apple, nay a hundred rotten apples, than risk shutting out a single righteous soul. Or is it?

[86] The noun ma‘aseh denotes ‘an event’, ‘a tale’ or ‘a precedent’. The Talmud ubiquitously invokes tales from the lives of its heroes for establishing halakhic precedent. R. Schlesinger seems to be suggesting that such use of precedent is proscribed at B. B. 130b.

[87] Le-ayyem which is Schlesinger’s term, not his source’s.

[88] One that would presumably have to neutralize Rambam’s ruling: “A ger who was not checked out or not apprised of the misvot and their penalties, but underwent circumcision and/or immersion in the presence of three lay judges, such a person is a ger”.

[89] When we open our gemara at Bekh. 30b we search in vain for Schlesinger’s quote. Instead we find “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a single nicety of the Scribes’ Words”. This reading is corroborated by numerous witnesses. However, Rashi’s gemara may have approximated Mekhilta of R. Shim‘on b. Yohai “A ger who takes upon himself” etc. (see Mekh. of RaSBY to Ex 12:49; Rashi Suk. 28a s.v. diqduqe sofreem; but cf. Rashi Shab. 31a “A ger who comes to convert”; also next note). T. Demai 2:5 in standard printed editions has: “A ger that takes upon himself all the words of the Torah except for one thing he shall not be accepted. R. Yose son of R. Yehudah says even a small detail of the Scribes’ niceties” (for T. variants see Lieberman’s Tosephta Ki-fshuta Zera‘im Jerusalem 1992, vol. 1 p. 212). Common to all variants, then, is the attribution of the view - that rejection of diqduqe sofreem impedes giyyoor - to a solitary tanna, namely R. Yose son of R. Yehudah. Schlesinger allows for the impression that R. Yose’s stringency belongs to the stam (= the anonymous plurality).

[90] Thus according to Rashi, (who reads: “A ger who comes to convert” at Bekh. 30b) it was Shammai’s blind obedience to a literal understanding of that baraitha that locked him into his all-or-nothing position. On the other hand, those who read “A non-Jew that comes to receive words of Torah” would not necessarily connect the Bekh. 30b passage with gerooth. As noted above (f. n. 1), the stereotypical formula for referring to the seeker after conversion is ‘a ger who comes’ not a ‘non-Jew’. Hence, unless one has Rashi’s variant, one is going to be extremely circumspect about applying a ‘non-Jew’ or ‘gentile’ text to a ger. Commentators have suggested that this may be why Rambam codifies the all-or-nothing dictum of Bekh. 30b only in respect of ger toshav (Issure Bi’ah 14:8) but not in respect of a ger sedeq. Tur and Shulhan Arukh, that omit ger toshav laws, also omit all reference to Bekh. 30b. Incidentally, it is quite curious that a self-declared devotee of Shulhan Arukh such as our author should brandish a text Shulhan Arukh evidently considered extraneous to gerooth.

[91] If not for Rashi, one might have surmized that Hillel disagreed with the ger proviso of Bekh. 30b or considered it analogous to its companion provisos that deal with the priest, haber etc. Haberuth - whose central praxis was treating quotidian meals as if they were consecrated - owed nothing to Torah, written or oral. Of non-sacrificial meals Sifre has this to say: “‘The clean [person] shall eat it together with the unclean’ [Dt 12:22] Scripture is telling you that both eat of the same dish.” As for priests being catechized, this too has no support elsewhere. The oath that was administered to the high priest on the eve of Kippoor (M. Yom. 1:5) assured conformity to right practice. However, as far as commitment was concerned, the Sadducean priests, even while desisting from acting upon their errors, persisted in them as the gemara apprises us (Yom. 19b). Moreover, even priests that had worshipped at idolatrous shrines, once they repented of their apostacy were not denied their sacred emoluments (M. Men. 13:10). In short, it is far from self-evident that the Bekh. 30b baraitha represents the concensus.

[92] Or: ‘Shammai the stickler’.

[93] Or: ‘Hillel the meek’.

[94] Another version has one of Shammai’s rejects confiding to Hillel after the latter had converted him: ‘If you Hillel were like Shammai I would never have entered the congregation of Israel’ (Aboth de R. Nathan A, 15).

This striking finding, which was championed by the Christian right, fascinated the writers of this article. We were well aware of the religious literature promoting taharat haMishpahah as a way of renewing sexual interest.[v] Our basic question became: “How do women who are faithful to the tradition of taharat haMishpahah experience intimate marital life?” On the one hand, we speculated that based on the Laumann et al. study’s findings, married observant Jewish women might be even more sexually satisfied than married women in the general population. On the other hand, our extensive clinical experience made us keenly aware of sexual difficulty in many observant marriages. We considered the possibility that the lack of available information and discussion about sexuality in the observant Jewish community might contribute to reduced marital sexual satisfaction than in the Laumann et al. married sample. As scientists and clinicians we were well aware of the limitations of anecdotal vignettes and of impressions from our personal experiences. Thus, we set out to investigate the sexual experience of observant Jewish women from a sophisticated, methodologically rigorous research perspective.

 Our team constructed a survey, similar to that used by Laumann et al., that included questions specific to observant Jewish practice. These items would allow us to determine whether, and to what extent, education about and adherence to the laws of taharat haMishpahah are associated with sexual satisfaction for women. Using many of the same questions as Laumann et al. allowed us to compare aspects of sexual behavior and dysfunction in observant women with that of the general population.  Although Laumann et al. looked at the experiences of both men and women, we focused our efforts on observant women only. Certainly a comparable study of men would add a great deal to the understanding of observant marriages.

Because our objective in this article is to highlight certain issues for the observant community, we will not give a comprehensive presentation of all of our findings. Rather, we focus on areas that might be particularly relevant to the general community, rabbis, mental health professionals, medical personnel, and educators. This last group, educators, includes school teachers of all levels as well as those serving in the unique institution of hattan and kallah teachers, that is, men and women who instruct soon-to-be grooms and brides in the laws of taharat haMishpahah. An emerging new group of religious advisors/educators is that of the yoatsot halakha, women who are highly learned in taharat haMishpahah as well as well versed in gynecology and marital dynamics. All of these religious, medical, and lay people have potential involvement in the intimate lives of observant Jewish couples. Increased knowledge and sensitivity on the part of rabbis, health workers, and educators is likely to enhance intimacy and strengthen attitudes toward observance, thereby improving marriages in the observant community.

III. STUDY DESIGN

            The study by Laumann et al. obtained data based on face-to-face interviews. Since observant women generally value modesty and privacy, our project was designed as a written questionnaire that was completed anonymously and mailed back to us. We tried to replicate as closely as possible the Laumann et al. scales of marital satisfaction, emotional and sexual happiness, and sexual function and dysfunction for both women and their husbands. Many of the questions asked for the same information—basic demographics, physical and mental health, sexual education, sexual history, and current sexual practices. Women were included in our study if they were currently married, pre-menopausal, and regularly used the mikvah as prescribed by religious law.

            Mindful that the regular observance of mikvah might span across the denominational spectrum of observant religious life, we asked women to rate their religious affiliation and gave them choices of “Modern Orthodox,” “Yeshiva/Agudah,” or “Hassidic.” The latter two categories describe a level of Orthodoxy that is sometimes referred to as “ultra-Orthodox.” This subdivision reflects a debate within the Orthodox Jewish community. Unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, who actively participate in the general culture, Hareidi Jews, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, embrace a theologically conservative outlook that advocates substantial separation from secular culture. (Hareidi literally means “one who trembles before God.”)[vi] We also gave women choices to denote their religious/cultural affiliation as “Sephardic” or “Ashkenazic.”

No assumptions were made about women’s sexual past or present lives. We asked detailed questions about early sexual life, including auto-eroticism and premarital activity. Knowing about the impact of sexual abuse on later sexual life,[vii] we included questions regarding history of molestation as well as current sexual abuse.  At the same time, we added new questions that addressed the unique experience of women who observe taharat haMishpahah. These questions related to respondents’ subjective perceptions about going to the mikvah and adhering to laws of family purity. We also inquired about pre- or post-marital sexual education, such as whether they attended a kallah class and if so, whether useful information about sexual relations was provided. Women were asked how they dealt with questions they may have had concerning the permissibility of specific sexual activities, and to whom they turned when sexual problems arose in their marriages.

Certain questions were deliberately omitted so as to not offend potential study participants. These referred to same-sex activity, abortion, infidelity, and substance abuse. In retrospect, this stance may have been too conservative, as some women did respond on the open-ended questions that they had struggled with these issues.

            Participation in our study was voluntary. Women received no financial or other material reward. Our goal was to sample a cross-section of observant women based on religious affiliation and socio-demographic information. As the chief entry criterion was regular use of the mikvah, the most obvious, impartial venue for data collection would have been mikvaot. Although several rabbis overseeing individual mikvaot were consulted prior to the implementation of the study, none granted explicit permission to distribute questionnaires at any community mikvah. Instead we recruited women via other sampling methods, such as relying on medical professionals whose practices included large numbers of observant Jewish women (e.g., obstetrician/gynecologists, nurses, midwives, and pediatricians) to distribute the surveys. We also spoke at broad-based Jewish women’s organizations where we asked audiences to fill out the survey. In addition, we posted the questionnaire, which had only an English version, on the Internet and directed it to large listservs of observant communities in Israel. To determine the representative nature of the sample, demographic results from respondents of our study were compared to those obtained in the 2000 census sponsored by the United Jewish Communities.[viii]

IV. OUR FINDINGS

1. Demographics

We analyzed 380 returned questionnaires. Our average respondent was 36 years old. More than three-quarters of our respondents were born in the United States, and nearly half were daughters of two American-born parents. Almost two thirds of women and their husbands were brought up in an observant home. The remaining third were ba‘alot teshuva, meaning that they grew up in non-observant homes and chose to become observant on their own, usually around age 20 or 21. Among women who were ba’alot teshuva, only 6 percent of them had become observant after marriage. With respect to affiliation, 55 percent of women identified themselves as Modern Orthodox, 35 percent as Yeshiva/Agudah and 10 percent as Hassidic. Women who responded to the survey were typically well educated; many had graduate-level degrees. Most women held jobs outside the home and had not been married before. Our typical respondent had married at age 23 and had four children.

B.        Sexual Education/History

Respondents reported receiving sexual education from a variety of sources. Most commonly, they learned about sex from friends, written material, and media (movies and television) followed by family members, kallah classes or high school classes, and experimentation. Less than 10 percent cited health professionals as being a source of sex education. It should be mentioned that although Jewish women turned to printed materials for information about sex, the material they read was written by secular or non-Jewish writers and purchased at mass-market bookstores. Until recently, there have been very few works available that specifically discuss sexual matters for observant Jewish consumers.[ix] Only one book dealing with sexuality from the Jewish perspective provides explicit information as to the basics of sexual anatomy or physiology.[x] Bookstores catering to religious clientele do not typically carry such books for fear of violating propriety and alienating their customer base. How do women obtain these materials? Our respondents indicated that they had to make special requests for these books or go to a mass-market bookstore in a different community. One woman wrote of her reaction to the book most commonly cited by respondents to our survey, John Gray’s Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, “Why did I have to learn about sex from an ex-priest?”

Before they were married, two-thirds of participants knew the details involved in sexual intercourse, and a similar number had discussed sexual feelings with their husband. Less than a quarter of respondents reported no physical or sexual contact prior to marrying their current spouse. They did not hold hands, hug, kiss, pet, or engage in any more intimate sexual behavior. This also means that despite the emphasis on premarital chastity, over 75 percent of women who participated in our survey had some degree of intimate contact with their current spouse. There were differences with respect to premarital sexual behavior between those raised religious and those who became observant before marriage. Nearly one-third of women raised observant reported abstaining from any premarital physical contact with their husbands compared with 7 percent of women who became observant on their own. This suggests that while almost all women who become observant do so before marriage, they are more likely to have been involved in physical and sexual relationships with men before marriage than women raised observant. We did not ask women to indicate whether their premarital relationships were with their husbands or other partners.

 Almost all respondents studied laws of niddah with an outside (kallah) teacher before marriage. However, most women did not feel the kallah classes were helpful in preparing them for married sexual life and their wedding night in particular. The prevailing emphasis of kallah classes seemed to be ensuring that women not commit halakhic errors. Few teachers apparently covered other topics such as the permissibility of various sexual acts, and more importantly, how to prepare to engage in sexual acts that culminate in intercourse. Although half of the kallah teachers indicated their availability for follow-up discussion after the wedding, they were rarely consulted.

A handful of women praised their kallah teacher for providing instruction beyond halakhic issues. For example, one woman wrote

 My kallah teacher covered halakhot (legal rulings), sex positions, and shalom bayit (family harmony). Everything was explained clearly until I felt very comfortable. Barukh HaShem (Thank God), I have a beautiful marriage. I strongly believe that a kallah teacher has a big responsibility to convey physical and emotional matters in a clear and concise manner.

 Women who felt well prepared by their kallah class wrote statements such as, “I knew as much as I could, the rest had to be from experience.”

However, more than a third of respondents were disappointed on their wedding night and only 15 percent stated that their wedding night was better than expected. Almost half of the respondants, stated that they could have been better prepared for married sexual life. Despite the fact that almost 90 percent of the women in our sample studied with a kallah teacher prior to marriage, only 50 percent of them learned about sexual matters from this source. In light of this discrepancy, it was not surprising that many women wrote in suggestions of topics they wished had been discussed with their kallah teachers prior to marriage.

            We present excerpts from the suggestions made by women that they felt would improve preparation for sexual life in marriage. In general, there were three types of responses to our open-ended question: “What should your kallah teacher have covered?” The most common response was about basic sexual education. Women wished they had learned more about “women’s body parts, women’s sensitivities, orgasm, different positions,” “what a man’s body looks like, what to expect” and “how to actually consummate the marriage.” Many women voiced shock at their first sexual intercourse. They wished they had known practical information, such as how awkward the position of sex would feel, how to be satisfied or achieve climax, that sex might be painful the first time, that it would be messy, and so forth. The awkwardness of sudden transition from celibate single life to fully sexual marital experience was echoed by many respondents who wrote in that it was hard to “turn off” their notions of being a “good girl.” As one woman, herself a kallah teacher, wrote, “The difficulty we have in communicating needs verbally I feel is a result of the ’modesty‘ and inhibitions we were shown as examples.” Another woman elaborated extensively on this point:

Orthodox attitudes that affected me negatively are not inherently negative— but they have potential to cause problems depending on the person. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the Orthodox community feels like the laws of taharat haMishpahah and the restrictions on premarital sex or touching are a foolproof system that makes sex more wonderful for everyone. The extreme privacy within the Orthodox community, while promoted as modest, beautiful, and virtuous, also causes/supports feelings of shame regarding sex. The laws of tseni’ut (modesty) on a more subconscious level, supports (not necessarily causes) shameful feelings about one’s body. The constant praise of how wonderful and holy sex is because it’s saved for after marriage and only at certain times of the month sets up unrealistic expectations and avoids entirely the physical aspect of sex. Again… tseni’ut and negiah (no touching before marriage) are promoted as being beneficial for women because otherwise men would only look at you sexually. This view makes men out to be uncontrollable purely sexual beings to whom women are powerless. Then you get married and you are supposed to trust that your husband wants to have sex with you because he truly loves you. It’s hard to change that pattern of thought. For 20 years one is told to do things so men don’t look at you sexually, and then poof! One day you’re supposed to feel totally comfortable letting go completely and you’re suddenly supposed to be a sexual being[YR1]  too[MF2] !

I’m not sure these things are unique to religious Judaism —probably other religions as well. And the attitudes might be more reflection of Orthodox society and not the Torah.

Many women also wished the kallah teacher would have educated them more on the relationship between sex and Jewish life. They suggested the following topics be covered: “The place of sex and pleasure in Torah life;” “sex and emotion…shalom bayit (family harmony) topics;” “[Jewish views on] a woman’s right to pleasure;” “that sex is not only permissible, but essential to your and your husband’s happiness to have a full, exciting sexual life.” Some commented on the impact of religious upbringing on sexual lives, and suggested these topics were important to discuss in the context of premarital education: “Growing up religious, you are taught to feel that girls should not be forward… it’s OK to be more forward and guide my husband to please me. Giving me an orgasm is not a ‘favor’ to me, rather it is my right as a married woman.”

Our respondents raised many issues that had caused them concern and discomfort: “What if you and your husband are too embarrassed to ask the rabbi a question?” “What if your sex life isn’t a beautiful thing? What if it doesn’t enhance your marriage?” Others indicated “I didn’t realize it was so common for a couple to be unable to consummate the marriage right away;” and some wished they had learned “What should you do if sex does not work like the ’textbook‘ case?” Others wondered, “What constitutes abusive behavior and what is not ‘normal’ behavior?” To summarize, in the concise statement of one woman, “I wish someone told me point blank everything instead of assuming I knew it.”

C.        Attitudes about Mikvah

Two-thirds of our respondents indicated that the experience of ritual immersion in a mikvah was religiously enhancing. These women were asked to elaborate on how this experience was enhancing. The following quotations are illustrative. One woman wrote, “I love going. I always pray in the mikvah and feel very pure after. Spiritually, I feel renewed, closer to God and to my husband.” Another commented, “I feel a rebirth. The mikvah is especially helpful to lift me out of depression I feel about my infertility. It always fills me with hope.” Another respondent stated “I feel that going to the mikvah introduced holiness into our marriage… also, it is simply the halakha that has been done by Jewish women for generations.”  Related to this, one woman wrote: “I feel mystically connected to something very primitive and deep.” Comments such as: “The mikvah experience makes sex spiritual and not animal-like” were made by several respondents.

Almost a quarter of respondents indicated that going to the mikvah could be an unpleasant experience. These women described finding the preparation and process of going tedious and annoying. Concerns about modesty dictate that women keep timing of mikvah use private and that visits to the ritual bath be made only after nightfall. Some of our respondents reported disliking having to make excuses to their children for their absence from the home. Some  felt critical of mikvah facilities and personnel. The majority of negative comments relating to the mikvah's physical facilities came from women living in Israel. The following quotations are a sample of negative feelings: “I don’t feel comfortable naked in front of anyone;” “I don’t like all the superstitions that are attached to mikvah;” “I try not to think about how unhygienic the water is after who knows how many women have been in before me.” More extreme responses are exemplified by the following respondents who wrote, “I hate it,” “(I) Find it degrading,” “I hate being examined like a cow,” “Mikvah is such a turn-off that I come back irritated, annoyed, angry and am mean to my husband, subconsciously, of course,” and finally, “I feel it is almost abusive.”

            With respect to whether sexual or emotional life is enhanced by the observance of taharat haMishpahah, we noted that more than three-quarters of our sample believed that their sexual life is improved by following these laws. The following quotations represent women’s experiences. “When you know you only have two weeks each month, you tend to make more of an effort;” and “I really feel that sex would have become too routine and boring without the rest period that the mikvah provides.” Also representative was the following remark: “It certainly helps. Even though our sexual relations are less than satisfying on the whole, having a break because of niddah does help the sexual relations become a little bit more satisfying; it’s ‘fresher.’”

            One of the interesting observations was the contrast between the high percentage of women who believed taharat haMishpahah enhanced their sex lives with the much smaller segment who felt that their emotional life with their husband was enhanced by taharat haMishpahah.  In fact some women who claim sexual benefits of believed that the niddah period impacted negatively on their emotional lives. One woman stated:

I believe that following the laws of niddah and the mikvah does enhance my sexual life. While I love my husband, after some time sex does get boring. The laws of niddah force a break and renewal. Right after going to the mikvah any physical contact is exciting and invigorating. My problem with the whole process is how my husband and I interact during the time of niddah. It seems like we take a complete emotional break from each other, as well as a physical break. I can’t understand why my husband can’t show me his emotions and feelings about me without sex.

This sentiment was expressed repeatedly: “My husband feels he has to become numb and he withdraws from me;” “My husband and I both have a huge problem with the suddenness of the switch between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ and the accompanying feeling on the mikvah night that we ‘have to’ because the clock has started ticking again. The pressure kind of kills the desire and it ends up feeling very non-spontaneous;” “We fight more when I am in niddah. I feel rejected by not passing objects. It is rude—like I am untouchable. Even though I understand the reason, I still feel rejected.” “I am a very touchy, feely person and suffer terribly not being able to snuggle with my husband. Being a nursing mother now, I do miss the initial excitement of coming home from mikvah, but I would not give up my status of taharah (non-niddah) for that.” “We learned how to have sex properly when I was pregnant [and therefore had nine months of non-niddah time together]. We never found there was enough time to learn and experiment in between niddah sessions.”

            A representative quotation from the much smaller sample of women who wrote that niddah did enhance their emotional life is illustrative: “Sometimes, for example, if a crisis situation arises during niddah, you’re able to resolve it without touching; it brings you emotionally closer.”

Survey questions were designed to assess the number of women who report feeling relief upon becoming a niddah, as well as how many postpone immersion.  Almost two-thirds of our respondents reported that they sometimes felt relief at being in niddah (about a third of these respondents reported feeling relieved nearly every month).  More than a quarter of our respondents reported postponing going to the mikvah, almost all for emotional reasons. Only a tiny fraction reported postponing mikvah as a form of birth control (trying to miss ovulation).

D.        Asking for Rabbinical Counsel

 Traditional Jewish practice encourages people to seek rabbinic advice when faced with challenging questions. As all aspects of life, from the mundane to the lofty, are imbued with religious significance, observant Jews regularly pose questions to rabbis. Queries concerning  pillars of observant life, kashruth, Shabbat, and taharat haMishpahah are routine. Our data, however, revealed a significant skew regarding questions posed to rabbinic counsel—namely, that women in our study were less likely to inquire about matters relating to sexuality.  This is illustrated by the fact that over 90 percent of women indicated that they have asked a rabbi questions about kashruth or about laws pertaining to the Sabbath. Only 76 percent, however, have asked about an aspect of niddah, and most of these questions were directed to technical concerns about menstrual staining. Just over one-third of women had ever asked a question pertaining to permissibility of a particular sexual practice. Mindful that our respondents are highly adherent to the laws of family purity, we assumed that they would naturally have questions about the religious permissibility of various sexual activities in marriage. We knew from their comments about their kallah (bridal preparation) classes that frank issues such as sexual desires and practices were rarely discussed by those teachers. We wondered, therefore, how couples align their sexual desires and their religious sensibilities.

Fully half of all women answering our survey have wondered whether performing certain sexual acts, during the course of their observant, married life, might constitute a violation of Jewish law. Oral sex was the activity of most concern followed by the use of fantasy during relations. Of this 50 percent who acknowledged halakhic concerns, only a small portion (12 percent) asked a rabbi for guidance. Of the remaining 88 percent who did not seek religious consultation, almost half refrained from the religiously questionable sex, while the rest enacted their desire without permission.

A related area is the use of contraception. Observant Jews take the biblical commandment “be fruitful and multiply” seriously and generally give birth to and raise families larger than those of their secular peers. We wondered how observant women access family planning. Our findings revealed that although nearly 90 percent of our sample reported using birth control at some time in their marriage, only half of these women consulted a rabbi about that decision. Once again, our data suggest that many religiously committed Jews do not bring questions about their sexual or reproductive lives to the scrutiny of their rabbis with the same frequency that they bring questions about equally serious but less bodily intimate matters.

Respondents to our survey were strictly compliant with the laws of family purity. Ba‘alot teshuva (women who became observant on their own) were as rigorous in their observance as women raised observant. Women from both backgrounds who were virgins at marriage were more likely to ask a rabbi questions about niddah laws, about sexual life not directly related to laws of niddah, and were also less likely to postpone going to mikvah. This was true regardless of religious affiliation.

E.         Physical and Emotional Health

Although the vast majority of participants in our survey described their health as good, almost half reported that their physical health interfered with sex at least some of the time. Treatment for medical conditions affecting sexual function, such as chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, and venereal disease were extremely rare, although vaginitis was reported by a quarter of respondents.

Almost a third of respondents reported that infertility had been an issue in their marriages. A quarter reported they had trouble conceiving, but they also reported that they eventually had children. Only 4 percent of the women indicated that they had no children as a result of problems conceiving.

Emotional health seems to have more impact on sexual dysfunction than physical health. The vast majority of respondents indicated experiencing interference with sex due to emotional issues. When asked about whether they had ever been treated by a mental health professional, about half of the sample reported having been in some kind of psychotherapy. The problems they brought to these treatments included marital problems, depression, and anxiety. We were intrigued by the high utilization of mental health services by our respondents. Some critics of this study allege that the large number of women accessing mental health treatment indicates a sample bias toward more distressed women. An alternative interpretation would be that women who allow themselves professional mental health services are more comfortable with themselves and thus willing to participate in a study about intimate life experience.

F.         Sexual Abuse

More complete analyses of our data are also presented elsewhere,[xi] but for the purpose of this discussion it is essential to point out that this is the first anonymous survey of married observant Jewish women in which direct and detailed questions were asked about sexual abuse and where objective data was collected. One quarter of our sample answered “yes” to the question: “When you were a child or teenager, did anyone ever touch you sexually in a way that made you uncomfortable (molest you)?” These figures are comparable to those reported by Laumann et al. in their survey of married American women and are consistent with estimates of sexual abuse in the general population.

Two divergent points, which we discuss in greater depth in the above referenced paper, deserve mention here. On the one hand, women who became observant reported significantly more childhood sexual abuse than those raised religious. On the other hand, more ultra-Orthodox Jewish women reported abuse than their Modern Orthodox peers.[xii] We conjecture that women who experience sexual abuse in their younger years may be motivated to seek out a more structured and sexually restricted adult life. As has been established in previous studies, history of sexual abuse is associated with higher rates of mental health treatment in adult life.

Regarding current abuse, domestic violence was reported by 5 percent of our respondents. Two-and-a-half percent alleged that they had been raped by their husbands.

G.        Sexual Life

            Women were asked to respond to the same set of questions about sexual frequency and satisfaction as appeared in the study of sexual practices in the United States published by Laumann et al. The pattern of sexual frequency among the sample was different from that of monogamous, married women in the Laumann et al. study. In that study, half of the women reported having intercourse one to two times per week, as compared to 40 percent of our sample. Thirty-five percent of the married observant women in our study reported sexual intercourse three to six times per week as compared to half that number (17 percent) of the Laumann married women. We surmise that this is due to observant couples concentrating their physical intimacy into the two weeks available when a woman would not be in niddah. At the same time, a greater number of women reported sexual intercourse once a month or less.

            Observant women in our study had significantly different experiences with respect to orgasm as compared to the Laumann et al. married, monogamous sample. High frequency of orgasm was much lower in our sample, and reports of never experiencing an orgasm during sex were higher (9 percent as compared to 1 percent). Regarding auto-eroticism almost two-thirds of participants in our study reported doing so at frequencies ranging from several times per week to every few months during the past year.

Like Laumann et al., we inquired about various components regarding satisfaction with marital sex. When participants in our survey rated their physical satisfaction, 75 percent of them rated feeling very satisfied. When asked about emotional satisfaction from sex, generally understood as sense of closeness with their husband, 70 percent rated feeling very satisfied. One question on the survey asked how sex made women feel. Feeling loved and wanted ranked highest, followed by feeling excited, doing wifely duty, and being taken care of. Fewer women endorsed feeling more “negative” feelings such as anxiety, sadness, fear, and guilt.

Communication about sex proved to be an important feature in satisfying marital relations. Women with more satisfying sexual lives described better communication and vice versa. Of women who enjoyed orgasm, over three-quarters said that their husband knew how to bring them to satisfaction and that they could tell their husband what gives them pleasure. On the other side of the communication spectrum, women who have problems with sexual life also have difficulty talking directly to their husbands about this.

H.        Sexual Problems

            We asked respondents to our study to rate their experience with six specific areas of sexual dysfunction identified by Laumann et al.: 1) frequent lack of interest in sex, 2) lack of ability to climax, 3) pain during intercourse, 4) not finding sex pleasurable, 5) anxiety about their performance and 6) trouble lubricating during sex. One-third of women in our study indicated experiencing the first difficulty (frequent lack of interest in sex) followed by smaller numbers with the other five categories. Nearly half of our sample cited such difficulties as causing them to avoid sex altogether. It should be noted that the rates of sexual difficulties in our sample were significantly greater than that reported by Laumann et al.

            We also queried women about sexual difficulties experienced by their husbands. According to their wives, a third of husbands experienced premature ejaculation, over 25 percent had difficulty maintaining an erection, and a similar percentage lacked interest in sex. Fewer women reported husbands being anxious about their performance, having difficulty with climax, and not finding sex pleasurable. Some of husbands avoided sex because of these problems.

             Couples experiencing sexual dysfunction had trouble talking about this. Despite the rather high frequency of both male and female dysfunction, as mentioned earlier, few women had talked to their husbands about sexual problems. Additionally, few women sought outside guidance in relation to their sexual problems. Less than 10 percent of the women had asked a rabbi or observant teacher for information, and less than 4 percent asked a kallah teacher for help.

IV.       ASSOCIATIONS AND PREDICTORS

We used sophisticated statistical procedures to analyze the enormous data gleaned from the questionnaires. One goal of this study was to understand more fully the variety of factors that are associated with sexual practice, sexual satisfaction, sexual dysfunction, and the relationship between these variables and religious observances. We will not present here all the associations we discovered but only those that strike us as particularly significant or surprising. We remind our readers that associations do not necessarily imply causation.

A.        Background Information

            Physical satisfaction was found to be associated with higher income, the husband providing the financial support, and more modern religious affiliation. In other words, lower-income women and women who affiliated as either Agudah or Hassidic reported significantly less physical satisfaction than did Modern Orthodox women in dual-income families.

Emotional satisfaction was associated with similar demographic variables, and also with age group. Sex was more frequent in younger respondents, and also in respondents who were younger when they got married. Younger women reported higher emotional satisfaction compared to older women. Women who provided sole financial support were less satisfied than women who had other support. Emotional satisfaction was lowest for Hassidic women. Older age and not completing college were associated with painful sex and avoidance of sex. Women who were raised observant were twice as likely to have difficulty achieving climax than women who reported themselves as ba’alot teshuva; however they were less likely to report painful sex and less likely to avoid sex.

B.        Mikvah and Niddah

            Greater physical satisfaction was significantly more likely in women who demonstrated less conflict about niddah and mikvah. These women never postponed mikvah and also did not report feeling relieved when they became a niddah. A different pattern was observed with respect to the influence of postponing mikvah and emotional satisfaction. Women who never postponed the mikvah for any reason showed significantly lower emotional satisfaction than women who did. But women who were often relieved to be a niddah were also less emotionally satisfied. This was also true for those who did not feel that niddah enhanced their sex lives as well as for women who felt that they could have been better prepared for marital life. Interestingly, adherence to niddah was associated with better emotional (but not physical) satisfaction.

C.        Sexual Education and History

            In general, physical and emotional satisfaction and frequency of sex were not related to sexual education and history. Women who were virgins at marriage reported greater frequency of orgasms and less difficulty achieving orgasm during marital sex as compared to those women who were not virgins when they married. Conversely, women who had experimented with sex short of intercourse premaritally (i.e., they were technically virgins) reported greater physical satisfaction, greater frequency of orgasm, and less difficulty achieving orgasm than virgins who had minimal (holding hands) or no sexual experience at the time they married.

D.        Husbands’ Sexual Dysfunction

            Although physical satisfaction and frequency of orgasm were not significantly related to husbands’ sexual dysfunction, frequency of sex was. Difficulties such as lack of interest, premature ejaculation, performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, and avoiding sex were associated with less frequent sex. Husbands’ problems achieving orgasm were associated with less emotional satisfaction in the relationship. Furthermore, husbands’ sexual dysfunction correlated with reports of sexual dysfunction by the wife. Greater lack of interest and lack of pleasure as well as anxiety about and avoidance of sex were more often reported by women when similar sexual difficulties were reported for the husband.

E.         Communication Patterns

            Communication patterns about how sex was initiated were significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as to sexual frequency. A significant predictor of good sex was whether both husband and wife expressed interest in initiating relations. A woman’s participation in initiation of sex, independently or mutually, was associated with greater physical and emotional satisfaction, regardless of how she communicated her interest, such as by physical gesture or in words. Sexual difficulty, particularly lack of interest and lack of pleasure, was associated with less involvement in initiation of sex by the wife and more frequent initiation by the husband. Avoiding sex because of sexual problems was similarly related to initiation patterns.

F.         Sexual Abuse and Mental Health

            Women who reported a history of sexual abuse, regardless of when the abuse took place, were less emotionally satisfied. Type of abuse or perpetrator was not significantly related to any of the other variables we examined related to sexual satisfaction. Sexual abuse history was related to current sexual difficulties. Women who reported a history of sexual abuse were more likely to report no interest or pleasure in sex, anxiety about sex, and consequent avoidance of sex. When the perpetrator was a relative, women reported less interest in sex.

            Mental health was significantly related to physical and emotional satisfaction as well as frequency of sex. Women with a history of depression, but not anxiety, reported lower physical and emotional satisfaction as well as less interest in and lower frequency of sex.

G.        Religious Background

            We were also interested in examining the impact of religious background (i.e., being raised observant vs. being a ba’alat teshuva) on predictors of characteristics of sexual satisfaction. These analyses revealed significant differences between women who were raised in observant homes and those who became observant later in life.  For those women who were raised observant, lower physical satisfaction was associated with feelings they could have been better prepared for sex before marriage, frequently postponing going to mikvah, low emotional satisfaction, not learning about sex by experimentation, not feeling that niddah enhanced emotional life. None of these relationships was observed in women who became observant later in life. It is worthwhile to note that despite having significantly more past sexual abuse than their peers who were raised observant, ba’alot teshuva experienced greater overall sexual satisfaction in marriage.

V.        DISCUSSION

            The research goal of this pioneer study was to better understand how married Jewish women who adhere to taharat haMishpahah experience sexual life. Our project included designing a suitable questionnaire, distributing that questionnaire as broadly as possible, and then analyzing the data obtained. We intended our findings to be helpful for the observant lay community as well as the broad spectrum of rabbinic, educational, and health professionals who serve religious communities. Our findings demonstrate something we intuitively know, that sexual and emotional intimacy are complex and nuanced experiences. We hope that subsequent research carries our beginning explorations further.

      As our questionnaire was modeled on the Laumann et al. study, we report the overall comparison that women who participated in our study reported significantly less physical and emotional satisfaction as compared to married  women from the Laumann et al. study. Our respondents also reported greater sexual dysfunction on many of the comparable variables. We speculate that lack of education about sexuality in the observant community might account for these findings. Discussion about sex rarely occurs in homes and schools and is absent even in many kallah classes. Lack of communication skills between husbands and wives regarding sexual life is also a likely contributor to physical and emotional dissatisfaction among observant women.

A number of factors contribute to the reticence regarding sex in observant Jewish culture. Traditional religious communities are reluctant to openly discuss or develop educational curricula for schools regarding sexuality. Reverence for modesty as a value, coupled with dismay regarding the hypersexualized aspects of contemporary secular society, leads to caution. Although there are several limitations of the current study, including the representativeness of the sample, the findings underscore the importance of education about sex within the context of marital relationships. This might occur in the context of standardization of the curriculum of teachers responsible for the preparation of brides and grooms in the area of taharat haMishpahah. Mikvah attendants are another group deserving in-service education. As the actual gatekeepers to immersion, women who work in the mikvah are in a privileged position to observe obvious distress and to direct women to appropriate resources.

One domain in which observant women and secular American women did not differ was in the prevalence of sexual abuse. It is imperative to not minimize the prevalence of such experiences within the observant community in light of their impact on both mental-health-related issues and married life.

Another important conclusion concerns the relatively few differences that could be attributed to adult religious affiliation. Though this may not be very evident in everyday observant life, the data suggest that Modern Orthodox, Yeshiva/Agudah and Hassidic women were far more similar to each other than not when it comes to sexual life. We conjecture that traditional attitudes expressed during girls’ formative years about modesty and gender role exert powerful influence across observant denominations.

We were impressed with the contrast in marital sexual life between women born religious and those who chose to become religious. As compared to their ba’alot teshuva peers, those raised observant experience more sexual distress. We noted a puzzling contradiction between the higher rates of sexual abuse among ba’alot teshuva and their greater sexual satisfaction once observant and married. We also noted that these women, once married, observe laws of family purity as strictly as their religious from birth peers. However, in their younger pre-religious years, ba’alot teshuva enaged in more premarital sexual experimentation. In addition, they were sexually expressive with their husbands even before marriage. We hypothesize that ba’alot teshuva import early, more positive attitudes toward sexuality into their adult marital lives. Greater awareness of sexual feelings and confidence may even offset such trauma as sexual abuse.

We respect that traditional Jewish life advocates premarital chastity and values modesty throughout all of life. We do not recommend that observant Jews advocate premarital sexual experimentation. Our work, however, highlights the need to encourage healthy sexual attitudes and communication skills in the observant Jewish community. This is a broad educational goal to be shared by parents and institutions such as schools and camps. Whatever their differences, lay and religious leaders across the denominations would serve their communities well by focusing on abuse awareness, prevention, and treatment, as well as positive attitudes toward human sexuality.

Finally, it may be important that observant Jewish women who have serious religious questions about sexual matters currently do not turn to religious personnel (rabbis or kallah teachers) for advice or counsel in this critical area of religious life. At the time of this writing, the advent of yoatsot halakha was too recent to have significantly impacted our respondents. Certainly this cadre of religious teachers/advisors  in taharat haMishpahah  are uniquely placed to serve observant women in the area of marital sexual life. Just as we advise implementing relationship and sexuality education in established school systems and establishing standards for those who prepare brides and grooms, rabbis would benefit from receiving training in sexual and emotional issues. Those who are in a position to counsel and educate couples both before and after marriage should carefully consider the significance of these observations.

Campus Fellows dinner meeting at the home of Rabbi and Mrs. Marc Angel, December 24, 2014

Stern/YU: God Save me from Your Opinion-Dec 25, 2014

What makes one a Jew? Being born to a Jewish mother? Converting to Judaism? Not really. It is living by the spiritual order of Judaism that makes one a Jew; living through the Jews of the past and with the Jews of the present and future. We are Jews when we choose to be so; when we have discovered Jewishness on our own, through our search for the sacred; when we fight the never-ending spiritual struggle to find God, realize that the world needs a moral conscience, and carry that exalted burden so as to save the world and provide it with a mission.

One becomes a bit Jewish when one realizes that there cannot be nature without spirit and there is no neutrality in matters of moral conscience. But all this is not enough. We have a long way to go before we grow into full-fledged Jews. We must recognize the noble in the commonplace; endow the world with majestic beauty; acknowledge that mankind has not been the same since God overwhelmed us at Sinai; and accept that mankind without Sinai is not viable.

To create in ourselves Jewish vibrations we need to see the world sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of eternity). We must be able to step out of the box of our small lives and hold the cosmic view, while at the same time not losing the ground under our feet but dealing with our trivial day-to-day endeavors and sanctifying them. Not by escaping them through denial or declaring them of no importance, but by actually engaging them and using them as great opportunities to grow. As one painstakingly discovers this, one slowly becomes a Jew.

Some of us have to struggle to attain this; others seem to be born with it. They possess a mysterious Jewish soul that nobody can identify, but everyone recognizes it is there. It has something to do with destiny, certain feelings that no one can verbalize. What is at work is the internalization of the covenant between God, Abraham and, later, Sinai. It is in one’s blood even when one is not religious. It murmurs from the waves beyond the shore of our souls and overtakes our very being, expanding our Jewishness wherever we go.

Most Jews “have it,” but so do some non-Jews. They know they have it. It is thoroughly authentic. They are touched by it as every part of one’s body is touched by water when swimming, its molecules penetrating every fiber of one’s being. Nothing can deny it.

These are the authentic Jews, but not all of them belong to the people of Israel. Some are gentiles with gentile parents; others are children of mixed marriages. If they should wish to join the Jewish people they would have to convert in accordance with Halacha, although they have been “soul Jews” since birth.

But why are they not already full-fledged Jews, without a requirement to convert? All the ingredients are present! Why the need for the biological component of a Jewish mother, or the physical act of immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath)?

The reason must be that Halacha is not just about religious authenticity and quality of the soul. It is also about the down-to-earth reality of life. It asks a most important question: How shall we recognize who is Jewish and who is not? Can we read someone’s soul? How can one know for sure whether one is really Jewish? Can one read one’s own soul and perceive it? How do we know that our believed authenticity is genuine?

The world is a complex mixture of the ideal and the practical, where genuineness can easily and unknowingly be confused with pretentiousness. To live one’s life means to live in a manner that the physical constitution and the inner spirit of man interact, but also clash. There is total pandemonium when only the ideal reigns while the realistic and the workable are ignored.

Tension, even contradiction, between the ideal and the workable is the great challenge to Halacha. It therefore needs to make tradeoffs: How much authenticity and how much down-to-earth realism? How much should it function according to the dream and the spirit, and how much in deference to the needs of our physical world?

As much as Halacha would like to grant full dominion to the ideal, it must compromise by deferring to indispensable rules that allow the world to function. Just as it must come to terms with authenticity versus conformity (see Thoughts to Ponder 275), so it must deal with authentic Jewishness and the necessity to set external and even biological parameters for defining Jewish identity. And just as in the case of authenticity and conformity, here too, there will be victims and unpleasant consequences.

Some “soul Jews” will pay the price and be identified as non-Jews, despite the fact that “ideal” Halacha would have liked to include them. However unfortunate, Halacha must sometimes compromise the “Jewish soul” quality of an individual who because of these rules cannot be recognized as Jewish. Were we not to apply these imperatives, chaos would reign.

But there is more to it than that. There needs to be a nation of Israel, a physical entity able to carry the message of Judaism to the world. All members of this nation must have a common historical experience that has affected its spiritual and emotional makeup. There need to be root experiences, as Emil Fackenheim calls them, such as the exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea and the revelation at Sinai. The impact of these events crafted this people into a most unusual nation ready to take on the world and transform it. For Jews to send their message to the world they need to have a historical experience – as a family and later on as a nation – in which people inherit a commitment to a specific way of living even when some of its members object to it.

The fact that Judaism allows outsiders to join, though they were not part of this experience, is not only a wondrous thing but is also based on the fact that not all souls need these root experiences to become Jewish. They have other qualities that are as powerful and transforming, and that allow them to convert as long as they are absorbed into a strong core group whose very identity is embedded in these root experiences.

In terms of a pure and uncompromised religious ideal, this means that some Jews should not be Jews and some non-Jews should be Jews. Authenticity, after all, cannot be inherited; it can only be nurtured. Ideally, only those who consciously take on the Jewish mission, and live accordingly, should be considered Jews. If not for the need for a Jewish people, it would have been better to have a Jewish faith community where people can come and go depending on their willingness to commit to the Jewish religious way and its mission – just as other religions conduct themselves.

So, the demands of Halacha create victims when some “soul Jews” are left out of the fold, as is the case with children of mixed marriages who have non-Jewish mothers, or children of Jewish grandparents but non-Jewish parents. Similarly, with gentiles who have Jewish souls but no Jewish forefathers at all. All of these are casualties.

This is the price to be paid for the tension between the ideal and the need for compliance; for the paradox between the spirit and the law. That Halacha even allows any non-Jew to become Jewish through proper conversion is a most powerful expression of its humanity. In fact, it is a miracle.

There are probably billions of people who are full-fledged “soul Jews” but don’t know it, and very likely never will. Perhaps it is these Jews whom God had in mind when He blessed Avraham and told him that he would be the father of all nations and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore.

We have all heard the famous story of Esav returning from the field and seeing his twin brother, Jacob, sitting with a delicious bowl of soup in front of him. Esav decides that he needs to eat the soup and he is willing to go so far as to sell his birthright for it.
Later on in the story when Esav runs in from the field to receive the blessing from his father; upon realizing that he no longer had this option (as the blessing went to Jacob), he exclaims that this is the second time he has been tricked by Jacob (referring to selling the birthright as the first time). Obviously Esav is still bitter about the entire episode with him selling the birthright. This begs a very basic question: why would Esav sell his birthright for a simple bowl of soup? At first one might say that Esav himself gives us an answer when he states that he is “dying” of hunger but this seems to be the same type of exaggeration we are used to using on a daily basis. I think that the answer here is much deeper and has a connection to why we have come to known Esav as the typical Rasha.

The Talmud speaks about a concept called a “davar shelo bah leolam” or something that doesn’t exist yet. For many things in business some sort of “kinyan” or transaction needs to take place. The Talmud decides that one cannot do business with something that does not yet exist. For example one cannot marry a girl (something that needs a transaction to take place) with next year’s crops which have yet to grow. It seems that when something doesn’t exist yet, even though both people know that it will come, it isn’t considered like is something of value. We can relate this Halacha to human psychology in what is known as the need for instant gratification. People want to see results and benefits immediately or else they will try something else. This seemed to be Esav’s problem; although he may have known that the bechor was technically worth more than a bowl of soup, he wanted the instant gratification. When one is overcome by his desire for instant gratification he is at risk to throw away things worth much more in value. It is no coincidence that our Rabbis state that desire is able to remove a man from this world. This need for instant gratification is such a bad character trait that one who is overcome with it would be denoted by Chazal as the protype of the Rasha.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Jacob. Already from a young age he is described as a simple man, but this story with the soup is really the first time we see him in action. Just as Esav was ready to through away the Bechor for some soup, Jacob was willing to give his soup away. He probably went hungry that night but he had more important things to worry about; he had a vision.

When Jacob has to run away from his parent’s house he finds himself in the house of Lavan. He sees that his daughter, Rachel, is an amazing women and he sets out to marry her. He works 7 years straight just to marry her and in the end he is tricked! The 7 years here isn’t random, the 7 years represents an entire cycle of time or agricultural cycle (as we see with Shmitah). Jacob is able to work the entire first set of 7 years and it seemed very short in his eyes because of the passion and his ability to see the goal at the end of the road. Even after getting tricked he is able to pick himself back up and work another 7 years for his goal. Jacob internalized the fact that to acquire something of value one has to work hard and it doesn’t come instantly.

As current college students, it pains us to see how quickly Jews are becoming assimilated and distant from the Torah. People think that the Torah is an outdated book that holds little value in today’s practical world. We wish to show that Torah is a dynamic and interactive guidebook that provides us with the tools to build this world within the context of Hashem’s word and desires. We strive to show that Torah, in all its depth and beauty, is not something outdated and irrelevant, but clearly pertinent and timeless. Throughout or time here at UCLA, we have learned that being a Jew not only means that we must make these Torah lessons relevant to ourselves, but to wear our Jewish persona ‘on our sleeves’ and make sure to present ourselves as the advocates and representatives of God and his mission statement. We realize that being part of the secular world and studying history, recognizing other nations’ scientific contributions, and reading about other philosophies, does not detract from our mission—rather it augments the understanding that we should be involved in this world in order to make Torah relevant to any and every Jew whom may have a different approach in living his/her life. Thus, our goal is to work one day and one student at a time to try to fix this phenomenon. No one event and no one single conversation will be able to save the current situation in the Jewish community, it is the constant accumulation of such events and conversations that will ultimately help the Jewish future. With events such as a biweekly Mishmar, challah baking and learning, and just being there to talk to people about anything that is on their mind, we hope to change the Jewish people one student on one college campus at a time.

History was made on Sunday, November 30, when for the first time in the annals of the state, official recognition was given to Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran.

The event, hosted by President Reuven Rivlin at his official residence, was the continuum of legislation that was passed by the Knesset in June of this year designating November 30 as the national day of commemoration of the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran. The date was significant in that it commemorates the day after the anniversary of the November 29, 1947 United Nations resolution on the partition of Palestine, which led to an immediate flare up of anti-Zionist action and policy among Arab states, resulting in the killing, persecution, humiliation, oppression and expulsion of Jews, the sequestration of Jewish property and a war against the nascent State of Israel.

In 1948 close to a million Jews lived in Arab lands. Some were massacred in pogroms. Most fled or were expelled between 1948 and 1967. In 1948 there were 260,000 Jews in Morocco. Today there are less than 3,000. In the same time frame, the Jewish population of Algeria declined from 135,000 to zero, in Tunisia from 90,000 to a thousand, in Libya from 40,000 to zero, in Egypt from 75,000 to less than one hundred, in Iraq from 125,000 to zero, in Yemen from 45,000 to approximately 200, in Syria from 27,000 to 100, and in Lebanon from 10,000 in the 1950s to less than 100.

Although various attempts were made over the years by leaders of these communities in Israel and academics stemming from these communities to secure the same kind of recognition for the suffering of Jews in Arab lands as is accorded to the Jews of Europe, nothing of major substance was done until the bill proposed by MKs Shimon Ohayon of Yisrael Beiteinu and Nissim Zeev of Shas was placed on the national agenda.

The intention behind the bill said Ohayon on Sunday night, was to ensure that the stories of what happened to Jews in and from Arab lands and Iran should be part of the school curriculum, because most Israeli children are entirely ignorant of these chapters in the diverse aspects of Jewish heritage. Just as they learn about the history and fate of the Jews of Europe, they should also learn the history of the Jews of the region, he said. He placed great significance on national recognition, saying that this would lead to international acknowledgement so that Jews who left everything they owned behind, could be compensated. There were no words to describe his excitement that this day had come said Ohayon, but he was simultaneously pained that the Tel Aviv Cinematheque had chosen at this time to show films of the Arab Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, while overlooking documentaries and feature films about the suffering of Jews from Arab lands and Iran. He related the story of a woman who had told him that her son, a university student, knows all about Nakba, but not about the travails endured by his grandfather before he came to Israel.

Zeev, the Jerusalem born son of Iraqi parents concurred with Ohayon and emphasized how important it was for the world to know about the tragedy that befell so many hundreds of thousands of people. Of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran, 650,000 came to Israel, he said, and the rest went mostly to Europe and America.

But before they became refugees, they and their forebears made great contributions to Jewish culture and to the cultures and economies of their host countries, and these must be acknowledged, he said

Meir Kahlon, chairman of the joint Associations of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran, noted that the world has long been talking about Arab refugees, but has ignored Jewish refugees from Arab lands. He also reminded those present that the Holocaust was not solely a European tragedy, but had spread to this part of the world. His mother had been killed in the Holocaust in Libya when he was only five months old.

Rivlin, who is a seventh generation Jerusalemite, does not know what it means to be expelled from one’s homeland, said Kahlon. Like Ohayon and Zeev, he questioned the lacuna in the Israeli curricula. As refugees, the Jews from Arab lands and Iran understand the plight of Palestinian refugees and will not allow their problems to be swept under the carpet said Kahlon, adding that the Palestinians must understand that this land also belongs to the Jews who yearned for it during centuries of exile. In this context, he quoted from Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept as we remembered Zion…”

He recommended that the compensation initiative for both sides proposed by former US President Bill Clinton be adopted and that a fund be set up to compensate and rehabilitate all the Palestinians living in refugee camps and all the Jews and their heirs who had been displaced from Arab lands and Iran. “We don’t seek war with anyone. We hold out our hand in peace,” he said.

Moderator Yossi Alfi, who is known for his marathon story telling festivals in which personalities from every immigrant group in Israel have the opportunity to share their stories with live audiences, radio listeners and television viewers, declared: “We are all excited today. It is indeed a holiday for us and others celebrating elsewhere. This day in Jerusalem is an important date in the story of the exodus of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran.”

Alfi, born in Basra Iraq, came to Israel in 1949 as a 3 year old refugee without his parents. Now, at age 69, he said he still feels the weight of what was left behind.

November 30 signifies not only the expulsion he said, but also the right to reparations. “It is also a day of love for Israel and for Zionism.”

Despite all that happened to them, these Jews who were expelled did not allow themselves to become dispirited, he said. “They did not forget where they came from, but they knew where they were going. Hardships not withstanding, they were able to maintain the heritage of a glorious past.”

Admitting that Jews from Arab lands and Iran had been subjected to a great injustice, and whose story had been pushed to the sidelines of the Zionist narrative, Rivlin commented that the designation of November 30 as a national day came too late and on too small a scale to impact on public consciousness, but declared that it was nevertheless important to correct this injustice “which should not be underestimated.”

The healing process, he said, begins with acknowledging the mistakes that were made, and for this reason he was proud as president of the state to host the inaugural November 30 commemoration. When his own ancestors came to the country from Lithuania in 1809, there were already immigrants from Yemen living here as well as Spanish families with ancient traditions. After the creation of the state when the refugees began arriving, their suffering was not taken into account and they were sent far away from the corridors of power to peripheral communities such as Dimona, Afikim, Beit She'an and Hatzor Haglilit where they developed cities out of nothing to be protective buffer zones for Israel’s borders, said Rivlin. It took a long time before these immigrants could give voice to their frustrations. Rivlin cited a list of writers and entertainment artists who paved the way for others to make their stories and their feelings known.

The Israeli government recently moved to decentralize the conversion system by allowing local courts to convert individuals on their own.

Ironically, as Israel moves away from centralization, here in America the Rabbinical Council of America is enthusiastically embracing it. The modern Orthodox rabbinical organization recently reaffirmed its commitment to its centralized conversion system, which it calls GPS (Geirus Policies and Standards). Under the system, the RCA accredits only those conversions conducted under RCA’s batei din, or rabbinical courts, using the GPS process.

Since its inception in 2008, we have opposed this centralized approach. We still do today. Here’s why.

Dangers of centralization: When one rabbi or court controls the conversions of an entire region, the potential for danger is magnified because inappropriate conduct can implicate the entire system. Investing power in a select few invites the question: Who oversees the overseers? And if the court or rabbi is corrupt or abusive, a prospective convert has no alternative but to submit and comply. A decentralized system that gives local rabbis the right to convene and serve on the beit din allows for choice.

Overly strict standards: The centralized beit din system almost invariably relies on the most stringent opinions of halachah, or Jewish law. As a result, the mainstream halachic tradition, which is far more inclusive and compassionate, is ignored. This overly strict approach to conversion causes unnecessary suffering on the part of would-be converts.

Emotional distress: Conversions require that rabbis have a deep understanding of the condition of the particular convert. While clear guidelines are required for conversion, within those parameters halachah provides latitude for individual rabbis to decide who is worthy of conversion. But unlike local rabbis, the centralized rabbinic authority has far less sensibility to the convert’s particular situation. Rather than face a rabbi who knows them, the converts must appear before a tribunal. While GPS supporters maintain that local rabbis can be “sponsors” who advocate for their candidates, some of these rabbinic sponsors have told us that they and the converts they represent were often distraught by the rigid, inflexible and often callous approach of the centralized beit din and felt that the convert’s particular circumstances were ignored.

Fewer converts: A centralized system, which by definition limits the number of rabbis who sit on conversion courts, can deal with only so many converts, and too many converts are being forced to wait for too long. Only 1,200 people have been converted through the GPS since its creation 6 1/2 years ago – on average fewer than 200 converts per year. With most of the conversions taking place in New York, the system yields fewer than 100 converts annually in the rest of the United States. Certainly every convert who comes forward must undergo a significant process, but we must be more welcoming. These dismally low numbers simply don’t reflect this value.

“Out of town” cities suffer: Large cities in America like Baltimore, Denver, Houston, San Francisco and St. Louis have no local GPS court, so potential converts in these cities must travel to a GPS beit din elsewhere. Prospective converts in Denver, for example, must fly to Chicago, where the nearest beit din is located. Bearing in mind that the convert must meet with the beit din even before the actual conversion takes place, this process is frustrating, onerous and uninviting. With relatively few GPS courts across the country, significant backlog and scheduling problems arise. This results in many converts feeling disrespected and unwelcome.

Undermining the local rabbi: The centralized system sends the message that local rabbis are not to be trusted, weakening their position as spiritual leaders within the community. The mission of rabbis is to spread Torah to their communities and help shape the Jewish world. The centralized system undermines their mission and effectiveness.

Slippery slope of centralization: If local rabbis cannot be trusted to do conversions in their own communities, one wonders what the next step will be. Will only select rabbis be able to perform weddings?

Questioning earlier conversions: Despite repeated RCA assurances that pre-GPS conversions would not be revisited, the facts on the ground are otherwise. Institutions that turn to the RCA for guidance regarding past conversions are advised to obtain a retroactive certification from the GPS. Thus, post-GPS guidelines are imposed on conversions done pre-GPS. Just recently, a young man converted by a prominent RCA rabbi 25 years ago told us that he was questioned about his level of observance and then required to immerse again in the mikvah, or ritual bath, for purposes of conversion before being accepted to a graduate-level yeshiva. The policy of reevaluating conversions leaves open the possibility that GPS rabbis of today will have their conversions questioned tomorrow.

Now that Israel is finally doing something to address the harmful influence of centralization of rabbinic authority, we in America should be celebrating our tradition of decentralized and locally empowered rabbinical leadership. The welfare of converts, our communal health and our religious vitality depend on it.

(Rabbi Avi Weiss is senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Rabbi Marc Angel is the director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. They are the co-founders of a new modern Orthodox rabbinical organization called the International Rabbinic Fellowship, or IRF.)

Songs, Stories and Scholars:
A New Look at Sephardic Culture,
An Extraordinary One-Day Seminar

Hillel at the University of Washington
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, 10am-2pm

The program was attended by about forty people. They were University of Washington undergraduates and grad students, community members, members of the Ladineros and of Sephardic synagogues in Seward Park. Beverages and burekas were set out before 10, a gracious lunch buffet at noon. Hillel Director Rabbi Oren Hayon mc’d, opening with thanks and a description of the important work of the event’s sponsor, the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and the planning of the program by its director, Rabbi Marc Angel. Rabbi Hayon introduced the “teacher” at the start of each session, Session 1 at 10:30, “Tales of the Spanish Jews,” Dr. Jane Mushabac; and Session 2 at 1pm, “Sephardic Community Then and Now,” Dr. Devin Naar. The audience was highly attentive to the two presentations, and in the Q & A’s after each, asked many questions that led to meaningful discussions.

Dr. Mushabac spoke of the appeal of ports and seacoasts for Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the U.S. Calling up places like Marmara, Tekirdag, Rhodes, Canakkale, New York and Seattle was part of her introduction to a reading of her 2005 short story, “Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti.” She explained how she came to write a story in Ladino; described the Ottoman Empire’s deterioration by the early 1900s and the poverty of many Jews like her fictional character at that time; and defined the Turkish word “Pasha.” At the audience’s request, she read an excerpt of the story in her original Ladino, then performed the whole story in English. Afterward, she read her novella’s brief first episode, “Canakkale, 1911”—published in the Institute’s journal Conversations—about a Turkish Jewish character very different from the one in “Pasha.” The audience needed the full half hour afterwards for questions and reactions. They discussed Turkish Jewish machismo, women’s mix of subservience and boldness, the word pasha in all its ramifications, the draw of assimilation and falling away from religion, Jewish mores (a married Jewish woman in 1917 Harlem having an abortion), and idealized vs. realistic portraits of Jews. The audience was clearly moved by the reading. Several people opened by saying how powerful the story was, how they wanted to read more of the author’s work. A recent email said, “You touched my soul.” Dr. Naar said he found the story’s ending very powerful.

After lunch, Dr. Naar began his lecture with a discussion of what the audience felt “community” meant. Ten people offered their ideas such as common interests, traditions, a feeling of belonging and trust. Then he launched into a historical portrait of “community” in the 19th century Ottoman Empire, for instance in Salonika, and the sharp contrast between it and our communities today in the U.S. In Salonika, the “community” was a quasi-governmental entity sponsored by the Empire; every Jew was required to be a member, pay taxes to it, and follow regulations, at the same time enjoying a vast range of Jewish communal religious, cultural, and health and welfare organizations under its rubric. In the U.S. today, on the other hand, the only indication of being part of Jewish community is the entirely voluntary affiliation with a synagogue, which means, for instance, that in the year 2000 Seattle had 2700 self-identifying Sephardic households, but only 600 of them were affiliated with synagogues and thus, according to the American definition, part of the Jewish community. Dr. Naar’s detailed description of the Salonika Jewish community and the provocative contrast between then and now led to ponderings on what this difference means for the Jewish future and the maintenance of Sephardic and other Jewish traditions.

October 19’s exemplary program underscores the immense value of the Institute sponsoring events of this kind. The seminar provided rich intellectual, social, and emotional interactions that brought people of different Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds together. It made the hosting Jewish organization a hub for discussion of the values that all great religions share; and for Jewish participants it generated a profound feeling of connection to Jewish experience and continuity. Balancing the provocative tension of fiction with a focused historical analysis made for an unusually effective seminar.

At the end of the program, Rabbi Hayon gave each attendee a gift from the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, a copy of the journal Conversations, the Autumn 2014/5775 Issue 20, on Bridges Not Walls.

This week, we are commemorating the horrific murder 50 years ago of three civil rights workers, two Jewish and one African American, in Mississippi.

When I began reading up about the freedom riders, groups of mainly white young men and women from the north who spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi working for civil rights, voting registration etc., and especially Andrew Goodman and Michael Shwerner, two amongst many Jews who were part of this summer, I had a hope.

I hoped that as I read about their background, and their murder at the hand of local police and officials, I would discover that they were motivated by their Judaism. Even if they were not themselves observant, I hoped that it would nonetheless emerge in their biographies that it was Jewish values – Hebrew school, a grandparent, a rabbi who had inspired them.

But I was wrong. The opposite was the case – they weren’t at all Jewishly observant, had the most marginal Jewish education, did not credit or probably were not even aware of Jewish ethical teachings that led them to ultimately give their lives for the cause of civil rights.

But then I read something that shocked me. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner may not have been Bible literate, religious people; but there murderers were.

One of the few people ever properly prosecuted for the events, one of the ring leaders, Edgar Ray Killen, was a part time Baptist minister. And almost all of those involved would have been church going, religion school educated.

How could that be?

If you look at Parashat Noah, there is something remarkable. Both the case for civil rights anti-segregation, and the case for slavery and discrimination, can be supported by verses in this week’s Torah reading.

After Noah’s episode of drunken shame, the Torah tells us that he cursed Canaan, condemning him to slavery. This became known among some interpreters as the curse of Ham – Ham was held to be the progenitor of the African race, who were black because of their sin. This was surely not a Jewish interpretation, but many clergymen and Bible-read individuals used this verse to justify the enslavement, deprivation, and sub-human status of Africans.

Yet, the same Torah portion also forbids bloodshed, murder; it teaches that all people are created in the image of God, and all human life, regardless of race or belief, is sacred.

So given that the Bible can bolster both human rights and slavery, how do we know who is right? Does the Bible, religion have no voice in morality, if it can be used to support polar opposite positions?

We know – know for certainty, that Goodman and Shwerner and Chaney were right – that segregation, the horror of the way black people were treated is against morality, is an evil that God must detest. We know this and we are right.

And one of the ways we know this is precisely because the freedom riders gave up their lives, did terribly dangerous things for a just cause, and were murdered. In their life, and in their death, we see how correct they were. The story of their lives helps shape our understanding of what values we should hold.

The generation of the flood was condemned because of hamas, violent robbery and crime that destroyed society and was purely evil. There was no Bible, no prophecy then – how were the people supposed to know that hamas was wrong, that they deserved to be destroyed?
The answer is that they should have known! Human beings are meant to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong; and moral blindness is not a defense.

And here I think is why the freedom marchers story is so relevant for us.

The Bible can be read in all sorts of ways. It can be read in a way that is contrary to its meaning, contrary to morality. But heroic deeds, people who live values, live moral lives help us see the difference between right and wrong.

What is important about Michael Shwerner and Andrew Goodman is not that they were motivated by, influenced by Jewish values - what is important about them is that they have helped shape Jewish values. They showed us more clearly, at great cost, what it is that God wants from us.
As we know the worst sin that a Jew can commit is a hilul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. The best we can aspire to is to be a kidush Hashem, to sanctify God’s name by righteous deeds.

In the words of the rabbis, a hilul Hashem is something that causes people to say: what a terrible person, how shameful for his parents and teachers who taught him Torah. And a kidush Hashem is when people will say: what a wonderful person – how happy are his parents and teachers who taught him Torah.

And the freedom riders were a kidush Hashem. Because even if their parents did not teach them Torah, they showed the possibility of morality. Where before there was segregation, slavery, hatred, passivity – now – there is morality, solidarity, the image of God. Thanks to these men, goodness, morality, heroism, is an option, the power of good has been strengthened.

In a world of such immorality, of such evil, as we see all over the planet, the way we ultimately spread Godliness is not through learning but living, by demonstrating the possibility of good – there is no more compelling lesson than a lesson of a life lived properly,

I started my research hoping to discover that Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were students of Judaism. I discovered that they were something far more important – they were teachers of Judaism.