Will Your God Really Be My God?
NETTER, PERRY
WILL YOUR GOD REALLY BE MY GOD? "Whitherthou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy God..." If Ruth lived today and knew how difficult it was getting accepted as a convert, she...
...She has to constantly prove that she is an authentic Jew...
...We do not, or cannot, or will not imitate God in our relationship to converts because we do not take our theology seriously...
...Ironically, it does not matter whether her conversion was supervised by Reform, Conservative or Orthodox rabbis...
...Those seeking spiritual fulfillment sometimes search in foreign climates for religious truth...
...We who are born Jewish can learn from converts...
...Certainly not...
...There is a long history of distrust...
...Four years later, just before graduation, the father receives a phone call...
...But nobody tells her that everyone wants her to be Jewish, but not "too Jewish...
...In short, we question the very sanity of those who knowingly and willfully put themselves in mortal danger...
...Everybody knows that Jewish education is the domain of Sunday School children, and that serious adults can never find time in their overloaded schedules to further their own Jewish education...
...you believe in democracy, I don't...
...No one has to be Jewish, so why convert...
...we, who are determined not to stick out...
...Jewish professionals have long anguished over the procedures for training and integrating proselytes into the Jewish community...
...they could just as easily have chosen something else...
...We hold, according to Rabbi Joshua, that "The righteous of all the nations have a share in the world to come" (Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13...
...He does not have to do anything to be Jewish...
...NOBODY TOLD HER THAT EVERYONE WANTS HER TO BE JEWISH, BUT NOT "TOO JEWISH...
...Where are you...
...The fact that converts have chosen Judaism is not held in great esteem...
...They say: "Yes, of course, but we mean someone who is really Jewish...
...Is she Jewish...
...Am I, as a rabbi, opening the door of a room to which there is no entry...
...We did not invent the ambivalence we feel toward converts...
...Groucho Marx once said he would never join a country club that would have him as a member...
...We live in a time of absolute relativism, where one belief has no greater claim to truth than another belief...
...Well, not yet," says the son, "but she's converting...
...So why are many of the students in synagogue adult education classes converts...
...Once a shiksa, always a shiksa...
...PERRY NETTER T^m he appeal of joke telling, | Sigmund Freud argued, is the liberating pleasure produced by the lifting of inhibitions or by exposing suppressed aggression...
...Dad, I'm bringing home a girl for you to meet: we're getting married...
...Traditional sources offer few concrete guidelines...
...I cannot count the times parents have expressed anxiety over the fact that their child is dating a non-Jew...
...She always has to demonstrate, even if only to herself, that she can do more than those born Jewish, that she knows more than those born Jewish know, that she feels more Jewish than they feel...
...They tan teach us how to look at the gift of Judaism through new, more appreciative' eyes...
...As the one who represents the organized Jewish community to the prospective convert, I am tormented by questions for which I have no answers...
...Converts make us uncomfortable, primarily because they accept what most Jews consciously reject...
...People laugh because the vox populi rings loud and clear: once a shiksa, always a shiksa...
...This figure seems to be holding despite the fact that the number of non-Jewish men in their late 20s and early 30s who are marrying Jewish women is rising...
...They can teach us what it means to make an ultimate commitment, to structure our reality according to what we believe and not on what is merely comfortable, expedient or convenient...
...how can converts be...
...God heard the Jewish heart beating within Ruth and accepted her...
...We, who are self-conscious about Jewish particularity, cannot understand the hunger of those who crave to be particularly Jewish...
...the father asks...
...This is part of the baggage we carry as an outgrowth of galut history...
...They say: "Rabbi, we just pray that our son marries a Jewish girl...
...She needs to establish her Jewish bona fides...
...An example of this can be found in a popular joke which has been circulating within Jewish circles for the past several years: A man sends his son to college with only one request: "Don't bring home a shiksa...
...In that age bracket, the number of Jewish women who intermarry is roughly equal to the number of men...
...we, who are embarrassed by Jewish distinctiveness and exclusiveness, distrust those who thirst to be distinctively Jewish...
...They come to me with the wonder of children and the seriousness of adults, demanding excellence and prepared for sacrifice...
...I'm not coming...
...When a person walks into my office with questions about becoming Jewish, I am confronted with a terrible dilemma...
...According to sociologist Egon Mayer, approximately 86 percent of converts to Judaism are women...
...Most Jews discourage their children from intermarrying—but not because non-Jews are not good people, and not because of the fear of contamination from non-Jews...
...When the Jewish people loses sight of the redemptive power of mitzvot, it will matter not at all if a convert does a single mitzvah...
...It becomes difficult to take a convert seriously when next year that person could be wearing Rajneesh red, or wearing nothing at all...
...Don't they know...
...Since [Ruth] made up her mind to convert, Scripture equated her to Naomi [by saying "with her"]" (Ruth Rabbah 3:5...
...Indeed, the famous rabbinic dictum, ' 'Let your left hand push away while your right hand draws closer" (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 47a), has been quoted both by those who would impose stringencies as well as by those who would be more lenient in their methods of conversion...
...We apply pressure—sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant—to lead her into studying for conversion...
...Rabbi Jack Riemer has humorously captured modern relativism with the following implied syllogism: "You believe in God, I don't...
...We have accepted the myth that Jews do not proselytize...
...I say: "But what if his girlfriend converts...
...Some may argue that our distrust of converts is a direct consequence of more than 1,500 years of mistreatment and oppression by host governments...
...If we believe that the Jewish way of life is more than just one of the many options for living, would we distrust the motives of those who choose to join us...
...How naive was the biblical Ruth, a Moa-bite convert to Judaism who said to her mother-in-law, "Your people shall be my people . . ." She did not know that most Jews suspect the motives of a convert...
...The teller uses the technique of the joke to mask underlying hostility...
...The prohibition against intermarriage is a matter of Jewish survival...
...According to the prevalent ethos, each of us has the divine right to believe whatever we want...
...And yet, few parts of my work are as frustrating...
...We devalue the choice of a proselyte's beliefs...
...WE CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE HUNGER OF THOSE WHO CRAVE TO BE PARTICULARLY JEWISH...
...It is no secret that the ritual and educational requirements for conversion vary from denomination to denomination and from rabbi to rabbi...
...People find this joke funny because they recognize within it a truth...
...Ingrained in our collective unconscious is the notion that the path of Jewish history leads to Auschwitz...
...Don't they know...
...The conversation seems to follow a script...
...If all Jews marry non-Jews, Judaism will disappear...
...As a rabbi, am I supposed to teach converts what Judaism demands or what Jews do...
...I submit that Jews-by-birth feel much the same way about Jews-by-choice...
...The source of this frustration is the second reason people laugh at the joke...
...Whatever the age of the Jewish audience, this joke is guaranteed to get a laugh...
...It is a foundation of Jewish theology that one does not need to be Jewish to be saved...
...Everybody knows that the dietary laws are only for Orthodox fanatics who live on the fringe of society and at the margins of history, who ignore the fact that modernity has "solved" the problems of trichinosis and hygiene through the miracle of technology...
...We would embrace them with love...
...Don't they know...
...Am I supposed to teach converts what I think they should know or what everybody knows...
...In a democratic society that values pluralism, religious quests often resemble an intellectual and spiritual smorgasbord...
...The son says, "Well, you know, Dad, my wife tells me that today is Shabbat and I'm not supposed to work...
...Until one day when the son gets a call from his father...
...JEWS TRY SO HARD TO BE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE...
...We do not believe that we, who are born Jewish, are protected...
...So why are converts buying new dishes and eating kosher meat...
...So why are converts regularly coming to shut...
...We live in a different age and our reasons for not fully accepting converts differ from theirs...
...If we believe that Torah is God's path to holiness, does it not make sense that non-Jews would want to be Jewish...
...When Rabbi Judah bar Simeon reflected on the verse, "[Naomi] saw how determined [Ruth] was to go with her . . . " (Ruth 1:18), he offered the following comment: "Come and see how beloved proselytes are to God...
...Ruth was equal to Naomi...
...We, who are trying so hard to be like everyone else...
...They will soon leam...
...Three times a day we pray for the time when all people will worship one God—the God of the Jews...
...Much of the renewal of Jewish life has come about through the influx of converts...
...And converts can teach us that just being born Jewish is not enough...
...In his experience, to be Jewish means simply to be born of a Jewish mother...
...on that day shall the Lord be One and Lord's name One" (Zechariah 14:9...
...Our treatment of converts reveals a great deal about the soul of the Jewish people and the age in which we live...
...you believe in cannibalism, I don't...
...Her fiance, a Jew by accident of birth, does not anticipate a change in his religious life...
...The phenomenon of religious experimentation is not uncommon in a restless and rootless society...
...In a rage, the father shouts at his son, "I told you not to marry a shiksa...
...Because Jewishness is transmitted through the mother, we begin a conspiracy to remove from the female convert the stain of shiksa-hood...
...Someone who is really Jewish...
...It is after the conversion— to stretch the "right hand/left hand" metaphor—that push comes to shove...
...Am I offering membership in a country club to which this person cannot really belong...
...What we believe is less important than that we believe...
...The girl converts, they get married, the son joins his father in business and they live happily ever after...
...Not subservient to Naomi, not separated into a distinct category of Jew...
...There is an even deeper metaphysical truth that causes us to distrust the motives of converts: We do not believe that one who chooses to be Jewish is gathered tachat kanfei haShechina, that a convert is provided security under the protecting wings of the Divine Presence...
...One reason so many women convert to Judaism, as compared to men, relates to the principle of matrilineal-ity...
...If Ruth lived today and knew how difficult it was getting accepted as a convert, she might not have done it...
...She, on the other hand, possesses neither that privilege nor that excuse...
...Everybody knows that the ability to daven is a skill reserved only for the bat/bar mitzvah and once that adolescent has finished the "Adon Olam" she or he only has to come to the synagogue three times a year...
...Until we recapture the vision of Jewish history leading to Jerusalem restored, we will distrust the motives of converts...
...It is a truism of the modern Jewish condition: Converts take Judaism more seriously than many who are born Jewish...
...The Talmud records statements by a number of sages who reject converts, the most severe of which is the well-known opinion of Rabbi Helbo: "Proselytes are as troublesome to Israel as a sore" (Babylonian Talmud, Yebamot 47b...
...You know that Saturday is our day to do the books—get down here...
...While our attitude toward converts may be causally connected to centuries of hostility, our motivation today is not the same as that of the talmudic sages...
...Perhaps we should pay closer attention to the words that we passionately sing in our congregations...
...Few parts of my work in the rabbinate present as great a challenge as teaching converts...
...Israel her people...
...When the Jewish people loses its sense of mission, when klal yisrael no longer believes the way to redemption is through Torah, it will matter not at all if a convert studies Torah...
...Three times a day we finish the "Aleinu," quoting the verse from Zechariah, "And the Lord shall be Ruler over all the earth...
...If the approach to training converts is far from monolithic, how much more problematic is the reception of proselytes into the community of Israel...
...CONVERTS TAKE JUDAISM MORE SERIOUSLY THAN MANY BORN JEWS...
...How we treat those who choose to enter the Congregation of Israel, who make our God their God, is the best indication of how far we have to go to see that day when the Lord shall truly be One, and God's people, One...
...Naomi's God was her God...
Vol. 14 • January 1989 • No. 1
