Alice Shalvi
Testimonies from a Multifaith Hearing on Conversion, Lariano (Italy), May 12-16, 2006
“Conversion” implies change, trans-formation, voluntary or involuntary, from one state to another. I wish to relate two types of conversion – to Judaism and away from it.
Conversion to Judaism
Judaism is not – nor, on the whole, has it ever been – a deliberately proselytizing religion. Those who wish to convert to Judaism must express a sincere desire to join the Jewish people, since in Judaism peoplehood and religion coincide, are co-extensive.
There are two outstanding examples of such choice. The first is Abraham, who obeyed God’s command to leave his homeland and birthplace for an unknown destination and accepted the principle of monotheism, thus becoming the father of a new nation. The other is Ruth the Moabite, who expressed her choice in her beautiful, loving words to her mother-in-law Naomi, who urges her to remain with her own people: “Whither thou goest, I will go; wheresoever thou dwellest, I shall dwell. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” One should note the progression from the personal relationship, to the concept of territory/place, thence to peoplehood/nation, and finally to the acme, as it were, of faith. Significantly, it is from this “convert by choice,” that the House of David is descended – the House from which the Messiah, too, will emerge. Traditionally, when people convert to Judaism they are considered as becoming “new” people, taking a new name – Avraham, in the case of a man, Ruth in the case of a woman (cf. the Christian concept of “born again.”).
So important is it that the proselyte really wishes to become a Jew that the rabbis of the Talmudic period at first actually took pains to dissuade them, by referring to the fact that “the people of Israel are wretched, driven about, exiled, and in constant suffering.” Only if the prospective convert expresses full awareness of this fact and of a willingness to convert in spite of it, is he/she informed of all the precepts of Judaism and the chastisements for transgressing them. (Yevamot 47a). Today, too, many rabbis request that the candidate for conversion wait at least a year before making a final decision. Then begins a process of learning what is required of a Jew by way of religious observance – a process which may take several years, leading to an oral examination before a “board” of three rabbis. Study is, in fact, an essential part of the conversion process, as it is, indeed, of Jewish practice in general. This means studying not only the religious laws and practices incumbent on Jews, but also a knowledge and awareness of Jewish history and traditions. The practices expected of a convert, even by the most lenient standards, are observance of the Sabbath and the holy days of the Jewish calendar (and, especially, of the High Holidays, the Days of Awe, which include the fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) and observance of the dietary laws of kashrut.
So far as observance of the mitzvoth or commandments is concerned, there are two schools of thought. One is that a person must demonstrate such observance prior to conversion, thus making it quite clear that he/she is really sincere in observance of what is a fairly complex way of life, relating to Sabbath observance, dietary laws and so on. The other is that, since one cannot expect a non-Jew to observe the commandments incumbent on a Jew, conversion should precede insistence on such observance. Currently, one of the disputes in Israel regarding observance of the mitzvoth is between the Orthodox rabbinical establishment, which is the ultimate arbiter on conversion, and which demands evidence of observance even before the act of conversion and a firm undertaking to continue such observance (e.g. by sending one’s children to a religious school), and those who take a more lenient approach, namely that one should not demand of a person that they be observant Jews so long as they are not actually Jews.
The act of conversion itself involves circumcision and immersion in a mikve or ritual bath, for men; and immersion only for women. The immersion takes place in the presence of a beit din (or court) of three rabbis.
Given the degree of persecution of which Jews have been the victims, which even today finds expression in anti-Semitic attacks on individuals and institutions, it is indeed hard to understand why anyone should choose to become a Jew. There appear to be three main reasons:
Religious conviction, i.e. an act of faith stemming from a conscious conviction of the truth of monotheistic Judaism; this, for example, was what happened in the case of a Christian student of theology, a young German woman, who in the course of her studies reached the conclusion that Judaism was the true faith and thereupon not only converted but studied to become a rabbi. She is currently practicing this profession in Berlin, where she heads a Conservative congregation and Lehrhaus.
In this category one might also include the concept of intra-religious “conversion,” as in the case of a secular/non-believing/non-observant Jew who decides to “convert” to Orthodox or other, non-Orthodox, Jewish practice.
Desire to marry a Jew and be officially recognized as one. This is particularly true in the case of non-Jewish women, since Judaism is automatically conferred on anyone born to a Jewish mother. In Israel today no Jew may marry a non-Jew, according to Orthodox Jewish law, which has sole jurisdiction over matters of personal status, such as marriage, divorce and legitimacy. Nor are such marriages encouraged in the Diaspora, where the non-Jewish partner is expected to convert.
It should also be noted that, according to the Israeli Law of Return, only Jews automatically acquire Israeli citizenship upon immigrating to Israel. From this springs the desire to convert of those non-Jews who wish to become Israeli citizens and to bestow that citizenship on their offspring.
A further phenomenon, which I find particularly fascinating, is the number of Germans for whom conversion on grounds of conscience appears to be a gesture of reparation. Perhaps there is no better way of identifying with victims of persecution than by becoming one of them.
Conversion from Judaism
Conversion from Judaism, most often to Christianity of one or another kind, although in Israel we also find an albeit infrequent phenomenon of Jewish women who marry Muslims and convert to Islam.
There is, on the whole, a certain revulsion against conversion away from Judaism, an abhorrence, a sense of distress at what many Jews perceive as a kind of betrayal not only of our religion but also of our peoplehood and our history. We have, after all, in the past suffered bitterly from persecution on grounds of our religion. Jews have been martyred for studying Torah, as the great Rabbi Akiva was; we have our martyrs of 1096 and the forced conversions, the tortures and the burnings at the stake, of the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal and even South America, as late as the 18th century. Indeed, we think with pride and amazement of those conversos who continued clandestinely to practice religious rites such as candle-lighting on the Sabbath, or eating unleavened bread at Passover, thus risking discovery and death. Hence the negative, even unforgiving attitude to converts from Judaism.
Yet it is precisely this history of persecution which has led some Jews to convert to Christianity and to attempt thus to dissociate themselves from the Jewish people. However, in Jewish law, a Jew remains a Jew, “even if he has sinned.” It is hard, even impossible, to escape one’s national Jewish identity.
There are, of course, certain grounds for conversion from Judaism. One, as in conversion to Judaism, is a change of faith, of theology, of belief, of what many Christians refer to as “seeing the light.” One thinks of someone like Edith Stein, for example.
Historical and personal circumstances may also lead to conversion, as was the case with numerous Jewish children who were given shelter and refuge in Christian institutions, convents and monasteries during World War II and were brought up as Christians, or even baptized, by their rescuers. Many of them were never aware that they were in fact Jewish by birth, they did not consciously become Christians, and for some of them the discovery of their Jewish origins led to profound trauma. Some of them returned to Judaism; others, who had led profoundly Christian lives, in some cases even becoming monks or priests, remain in a kind of psychological – though not necessarily religious – Limbo. I think of the case of a Polish priest who discovered only comparatively recently that his “real” mother was not the woman who raised him in a Catholic household, but a Jew who was murdered in Auschwitz. He now keeps in his home, side by side, photographs of both mothers and, on the same shelf, both a cross and a Magen David. One prays that he has found peace of mind and heart.
Other historical circumstances brought about conversion on grounds of what one might call convenience. Until the European Enlightenment of the late 18th century, Jews were outsiders, denied civil rights, barred from equal educational and professional opportunities or admitted by virtue of numerus clausus, restricted as to place of residence, whether in the ghetto or the Pale of Settlement. The only way out of this condition of social ostracism was via conversion. Even if they did not themselves convert, many parents had their children baptized, so that they, at least, might have access to the privileges of education and an entrée into society. Amazing as it may seem, this is what happened even in the family of the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, whose son Abraham not only baptized his children, including the musicians Felix and Fanny, but ultimately himself converted to Christianity.
At a time before civil marriage was instituted, numerous Jews – especially women – converted to Christianity in order to be eligible for marriage by the Church. This was the case in many of the marriages between well-educated and socially eligible Jewish women and non-Jewish men of rank, some of whom are numbered among the great saloniéres of the 19th century. Not all of those who converted for reasons of convenience actually became believers in Christianity, nor were they particularly punctilious regarding, for example, prayer, even if they regularly attended church. In fact, in the eyes of many of their non-Jewish compatriots they continued to be perceived as Jews. Perhaps the greatest tragedy that overtook the converts away from Judaism and their descendents was the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany in September 1935. In defining Jews and distinguishing between them and Germans the Nazis went back as far as an individual’s grandparents. Even if only one of these was a Jew, and even if, halakhically speaking (i.e. in terms of Jewish law), that individual was not a Jew, because he/she was not born to a Jewish mother, in the racist eyes of the Führer and his followers, they were ultimately doomed to extermination.
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Dr. Alice Shalvi is the Founder and Honorary President of the Israel Women’s Network and was its chairperson from its founding in 1984 until 2007.
Born in Germany in 1926, she received her B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature at Cambridge University. She then went on to study social studies at the London School of Economics. In 1949 she was appointed a professor of English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.