What We Talk About When We Talk About Conversion

In retrospect, Shavuot would have been a far more sensible time to deliver a sermon on the subject of conversion. “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16) These words spoken by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi are not just the slogan of today’s festival, but the anthem for all such righteous converts. Just as the Jewish people entered the covenant with God at Mount Sinai, so too Ruth joined our people, and through today, all men and women seeking to bind their destiny to the destiny of the Jewish people turn to the Shavuot hero Ruth as the paradigm for their journey. If there is a time begging for a Rabbi to talk about conversion, Shavuot is the obvious choice.

As you may recall, I chose otherwise. On a quiet Shabbat in February of last year, I floated a trial balloon regarding our approach to conversion. What if, I suggested, we modify the present policy –whereby a would-be Jew enters a year-long course of study and practice which culminates in conversion – to a model in which a person converts first and then learns what being a Jew is all about? Citing the Talmudic precedent of Hillel and the imperfect analogy of joining a gym, I advocated that such an approach serves to lower the barriers of entry faced by prospective Jews. I suggested then, and affirm today, that it is a policy that is muscular in both its stringencies and leniencies. It affirms, without apologies, the value of marrying a Jew and creating a Jewish home, but does so in a way that welcomes the would-be Jew instantly and warmly. I said then, and affirm today, that I am in the business of creating Jewish homes. Like many congregational rabbis, I am approached regularly by interfaith couples on the cusp of settling down; many of them, incidentally, are children of our congregation. Understanding, as I do, the role of a rabbi to be an agent for the creation of Jewish homes, I see that such a policy change would be a step in the right direction towards easing the process of joining our people. The intent was explicit and clear, the legal arguments surmountable, the Orthodox don’t accept our conversions anyway, and the potential boon to our people – immeasurable.

Nearly a year and a half later, I can share that whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal may be, the most interesting part has been the reaction it received. An idea that was, in all honesty, prompted by the day-to-day life of a congregational rabbi struck a nerve well beyond the walls of this synagogue. Since delivering the sermon, I have been asked to present the idea in communal settings, academic contexts, outreach think tanks, and conference plenaries. From an editorial in The Jewish Week the week following the sermon, through an editorial in this week’s Forward, the idea continues to be discussed. I have received public and private feedback ranging from the most scathing to the most supportive – with many telling me that my proposal does not go far or fast enough. All this, mind you, without a single policy change: one talk that has led to a whole lot of talk.

So why the stir? Why the fuss? Why did the idea strike a nerve? My first answer has to do with what was, from a publicity standpoint, fortuitous timing. Last year’s publication of the Pew study of American Jewry and UJA-Federation’s study of New York Jewry provided the hard analysis to back up what we all know to be the anecdotal narrative of our community and our own families. The fluid social boundaries, the slackening of affiliation, the rising rates of late-marriage, non-marriage and intermarriage, the decline in fertility rates – all impacting our present and future numbers. A new approach to conversion is a rather elegant response to a fairly straightforward math problem. If, as the Pew Study indicates, about seventy percent of non-Orthodox Jews are likely to marry non-Jews; and if, as the Pew Study indicates, less than two percent of American Jews are Jews by Choice; and if studies indicate there is an exponentially greater chance of raising Jewish children when both parents identify as Jewish; and if you think having more Jews in the world is a good thing; then why wouldn’t you adopt such policy on conversion? As the Forward editorial reports, “… in 1950 there was one Mormon for every 10 Jews. Now there are more Mormons in the world than Jews …” The divergent demographic narratives have nothing to do with the merits of one faith over the other, but rather the willingness of Mormons and reticence of Jews to deploy mechanisms welcoming converts. Barring excluding ourselves from secular culture, universities and otherwise, my children and yours will, in all likelihood, sit in freshman English next to a cute non-Jewish boy or girl with whom there exists a statistical chance that they will fall in love. So while I have no policy recommendations to lessen the likelihood of that occurrence, what I can suggest is a communal posture aimed at making their potential future home a Jewish one.

But the second, and frankly, far more substantive reason I believe the sermon caused a fuss was because when Jews talk about conversion, we are actually talking about something different and deeper:  we are talking about the Jewish condition and the condition of Judaism. Conversion is a window into our souls, who we are and our self-perception. We tell ourselves we are talking about mundane procedural steps by which a gentile can convert to Judaism, but it is really not about that person. It is about me, it is about you, it is about all of us.

Let me explain.

As I have thrown myself into the legal and historical literature regarding conversion, I have become more and more intrigued by the diversity of views embedded in Jewish sources regarding the would-be Jew. A few examples. Tractate Gerim in the Babylonian Talmud begins famously: “Cherished are the converts. For everywhere Scripture speaks of them in the same terms as it does Israel.” (4:3) Elsewhere, however, Tosafot in Tractate Kiddushin (70b) claims, “Converts are problematic,” literally like a scab. Further back, in biblical texts, there is the story of Dinah, a rather gruesome narrative reflecting deep suspicion of the non-Israelite seeking to join the tribe. On the other hand, the flowing poetry of Isaiah 56 describes a God who embraces all those who attach themselves to the Lord. The book of Ruth, as mentioned, represents a posture of acceptance; King David himself is a descendant of Ruth. And yet, as my teacher Dr. Ziony Zevit has suggested, the dating of the book of Ruth to the Persian exile may be a counterbalance to the book of Ezra, who commanded all the returning exiles to divorce their foreign wives. And let’s not forget Hillel and Shammai: Shammai who beat the prospective convert away with a stick, and Hillel who received him with a full embrace.

Each of these texts, and there are many others, represents a different attitude towards conversion. Most emerge out of different contexts, but some, like Hillel and Shammai, reflect varied attitudes in the same context. The interesting question is why they thought what they did. Why would someone reject a convert? It could be, perhaps, because there existed a tribal or racial conception of identity – that Jewishness is not merely a religious faith into which one can convert. It could be because in certain slices of Jewish history, Jews were understandably wary of ulterior motives – the emergence of a fifth column from within the ranks – or because of a visceral fear or hatred of “the goyim.” Or it could be, as my teacher Dr. David Kraemer recently taught, that Jews feared that the would-be convert would be more scrupulous and exacting in their observance than a born Jew, making the Jewish community self-conscious over any actual or perceived lapses in practice.

It could be a lot of things, and ultimately we do not and may never know what prompted each thinker’s opinion. Maybe it has to do with their understanding of Jewish identity, maybe it has to do with Jewish/non-Jewish relations in a particular context, maybe it has to do with how strong or weak the minority Jewish culture perceived themselves to be vis-à-vis the majority non-Jewish culture at a particular moment. I don’t know. What I do know is that if conversion is an act of crossing the boundary into the Jewish community, then it necessarily calls on us to define where that boundary is, how it is constituted and how it can be transcended, if it at all. Conversion forces us to differentiate between “us” and “them.” To put it another way, if we allow ourselves to ask how one of “them” can become one of “us,” then at some point we need to ask what exactly is “us.” And that, my friends, in this day and age, is an altogether raw and prickly question.

We are not living in the time of the Bible, the Talmud or Tosafot but in twenty-first-century America, an era of profound generational transition. There are those in this room who were raised, understandably so, with a deep suspicion of the other. After all, it was not so long ago that “the goyim” were trying to exclude us, harm us, or – in the case of the Shoah – kill us. But today, the children and grandchildren of those very people are growing up in an America where being Jewish is neither a stigma, nor necessarily even a point of difference worthy of shaping marital choices. The hovering presence of an eastern European grandparent differentiating “us” from “them” is increasingly distant, and more of “us” than not have one of “them” in our very families – what Robert Putnam calls the “Aunt Susan Effect” – a beautiful, loving non-Jewish aunt, uncle or in-law who is part of our Jewish family.

And so we squirm. In identifying the Aunt Susans, the “Jews of no religion” and all the other new categories of contemporary Jewish identity, we are slowly and uncomfortably waking up to the fact that we no longer live in the world of our fathers. Somewhere in our minds, we retain a regnant sense that we should resist the convert, refuse them three times, demand they be better Jews than we are, and erect barriers preventing them from entering our ranks. And even when they do convert, some still ask, “are they really Jewish?” I get it. In fact, not only do I get it, but I was raised on these assumptions and trained to think accordingly. But it makes no sense. It makes no sense to tell a kid who was born and bar-mitzvahed in a Reform synagogue in Scarsdale, who grew up thinking and feeling he is Jewish, that – because his mother was not Jewish – he must enter a formal conversion program. It makes no sense to throw a roadblock in front of a couple who has taken the time and energy to make an appointment with me to ask how I can facilitate their creating their Jewish home. It makes no sense to try to suss out some nefarious ulterior motive of a prospective convert as if we are living in the Middle Ages. I didn’t choose to live as a Jew in this time and place, but I do and so do you. If this is the window we have been granted to strengthen our people, then our policies and postures need to reflect that. Attitudes to conversion, like everything in life, are contextually bound. We must be eyes-wide-open to our present context, and more importantly, capable of formulating policies to address present needs and aspirations.

What we need to do, is to do what makes sense for now – not for some long past yesteryear, but for today and tomorrow. Please God, it should be a quiet summer. I intend to spend some of that summer in the library doing research. I will look at the conversion issue from all sides: historical, halachic, sociological, and pastoral. I want to talk to people who have converted to Judaism and to people who are on their way to doing so, along with colleagues and stakeholders who have something to contribute to the conversation. And then I am going to write, to outline a position and make a recommendation this fall. Not a trial balloon, not a talk, but a policy. First for our congregation, and then for anyone else interested in listening. As with everything we do, the driving question will be “what is best for the Jewish future?” Will it make our people stronger, more numerous and more engaged? Will we, by virtue of the policy decisions we adopt, emerge with a brighter Jewish future? I look forward to the work ahead. I look forward to our discussions and most of all, I look forward to our congregation taking a leadership role in this conversation.