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

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

On Conversion

By Harav Aharon Lichtenstein
Translated by Dr. Michael Berger

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

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

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

GERUT AS SPIRITUAL REBIRTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

4. I Melakhim 18:21.

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

6. Bereshit 21:27.

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

8. Tehillim 119:19.

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

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

11. Tehillim 63:2.

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

13. Yevamot 22a.

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