VICTOR SHARPE: WHY HAVE JEWS BEEN SO RELUCTANT TO CONVERT OTHERS?
CONVERTS TO JUDAISM ARE THE STRONGEST ADHERENTS AND FRIENDS OF ISRAEL. WHY THE RELUCTANCE?
Walid Shoebat, an erstwhile Muslim PLO terrorist, saw the error of his ways and subsequently converted to Christianity. He now supports Israel and America and has an excellent website: http://www.shoebat.com/
Mr. Shoebat was asked a question recently on a radio Talk Show. The question was, “… how should a Christian combat Muslim terrorism?” His answer was simple. “Convert them to Christianity.”
That is exactly what Jews should be doing in Israel or anywhere else – convert Muslims and especially the terrorists to Judaism. I have felt for a very long time that it should be an appropriate religious undertaking to bring the Jewish faith to the gentiles just as it is an obligation for Jews to love and cherish, above much else, the blessed converts among us.
If many previous Muslims, terrorists included, can reject their Islamic beliefs and adopt the Christian faith why cannot they also be attracted to the unassailable divine truths inherent within the Jewish faith?
The current belief is that Jewish proselytizing is frowned upon. The rabbis claim that members of all faiths have equal opportunities for redemption. They suggest that non-Jews seeking to be a part of the Jewish people and faith need not pursue such a goal if they can live according to the Noahide laws.
But causing great distress to those new Jews who converted while serving in the IDF, some Orthodox rabbis have claimed that those conversions are not valid. This is a scandal and a stain on the face of some within the rabbinate. Rabbi Druckman, on the other hand, has said that, “Conversion is a one-way road and such IDF conversions are according to Halacha and irrevocable.”
Druckman noted that there are three kinds of converts. “The first type of convert is a person who grew up as a gentile, felt dissatisfied with their religion, and found answers in Judaism. A second type began two hundred years ago, when the gates of the ghettos in Europe opened and Jews gained freedoms. That’s when assimilation and intermarriage began, and as a result non-Jews took to converting.
“The third type of convert is a phenomenon the Jewish people had never encountered previously. I am referring to conversions of FSU immigrants, who came from a place where their religion was brutally repressed, where great efforts were taken to remove any Judaism from their life. As a result, there was intermarriage – not out of a desire for assimilation, but because that was what reality dictated. And now, their offspring are coming home. We must help all of them, and continue with what we consider one of the most important commandments of our generation, and God will help us.”
Similarly, echoing Rabbi Druckman, Sam Ben-Chitrit addressing the World Federation of Moroccan Jewry declared this year’s theme “loving the convert” in support of those joining the Jewish people but also in protest against elements in the world of “extreme Orthodoxy” who do not accept all of the conversions conducted by Israel’s official rabbinic bodies.
Indeed, Orthodox rabbis in particular are enjoined to go out of their way to deliberately discourage aspiring converts. That has become, it seems, the current tradition, but traditions are only the present manifestation of earlier religious revolutions. So, they forget that a much earlier authentic Jewish tradition was to eagerly seek out converts at their time from among the peoples of the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin.
Indeed what I am arguing for is what could be called the fourth kind of convert. Those who are sought out, are educated and informed about the transcendent divine truths within Judaism, and who accept the fundamental belief in the Shema prayer and accordingly are welcomed into the Jewish peoplehood. This fourth type of convert merely returns again to the early tradition so dominant within Judaism some two thousand years ago. To paraphrase the famous Old New Synagogue (Alt Neu Shul) in Prague, they are thus the Old New Convert.
Judaism was the most active proselytizing religion from the Maccabean period (though the Hasmoneans sinned by forcibly converting the Idumeans) through to the time when Rome finally embraced Christianity. Then the Church fathers, using the temporal power of Rome, banned Jewish missionary work upon pain of death. Thus the current tradition among the rabbinate of discouraging such proselytizing emerged and has lasted for well over a thousand years.
Judaism first spread across the Middle East and throughout the Mediterranean region. For instance, the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene in the first century of the Common or Christian era was created in what is now modern Kurdistan.
Many Roman writers told of the missionary activities of the Jews. It is believed that at one time some 20% of the population of the Roman Empire were Jewish, significantly through conversion. Seneca and Juvenal were among Roman writers who even expressed concern at the successful conversion activities of the Jews.
Christianity triumphed in the 4th century and Judaism became defensive in the face of more and more onerous anti-Jewish strictures. However, missionary work continued where there was little or no Christian influence or pressure.
For instance, in what is today’s Yemen, a Jewish Kingdom arose in Himyar. These new Jews fought to preserve their Jewish faith in the face of Islamic depredations from the 7th century onwards, and their descendants arrived en masse to reconstituted Israel in Operation Magic Carpet when, in May, 1949, the Imam of Yemen permitted 45,000 of the 46,000 Jews in his land to emigrate. This attests to the love of Judaism throughout the long centuries by those whose ancestors were converts but who nevertheless prevailed and remained steadfast in the face of persecution and pressure upon them to abandon their faith.
We know of Jewish tribes throughout Arabia and along the North African lateral. Indeed Jewish kings and queens, who all were descendants of early Jewish converts, fought against the ever encroaching tide of Arabs who were invading under their new banner of Islam. Similarly the Black Jews (the Beta Yisrael) in the mountainous Gondar region of Ethiopia have a glorious history of kings and queens leading armies against their oppressors and enemies, be they Christian or Muslim.
The Khazar kingdom is probably the best known example of mass conversion to Judaism. Situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, this enormous Jewish kingdom resisted the pagan and early Christian Russian pressure along its borders for centuries before at last being overwhelmed.
One of my earliest prized possessions was a copy of that wondrous book, The Exiled and the Redeemed, written by the late Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. In Ben-Zvi’s book is priceless information on the many exotic peoples and tribes, from India to south-east Asia and from China to Africa, who clung tenaciously to their Jewish faith.
Most of the Bene Israel from Cochin in India and the Beta Yisrael from Ethiopia have returned to the Jewish ancestral homeland. Many of these peoples – often from early conversion to Judaism – trace their ancestry back through long, long centuries, even millennia, and have kept their Jewish faith intact.
Israel faces a hostile Muslim population, whether within the 1967 borders or within the Jewish biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria (the erroneously named West Bank). If Jews once had a tradition for centuries of converting their neighbors up until Christendom and Islam dominated so much of the world, there is no reason now not to recover and redeem that earlier tradition.
Certainly one way to gradually overcome Muslim terror from among the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, is to do what the Christians have done to an erstwhile Muslim Palestinian terrorist like Walid Shoebat and to many others – convert them to Judaism. And even though the vast majority of Arabs who call themselves Palestinians can trace their ancestry back merely to the illegal Arab immigration into British Mandatory Palestine during the early years of the 20th century from neighboring stagnant areas, nevertheless a tiny minority may have ancestors who had once been Jews forcibly converted to Islam. Bringing them back into the Jewish fold would in itself be a holy mitzvah, would it not?
Just imagine if it had been Israeli and rabbinical policy from the inception of the reborn Jewish state in 1948 to actively bring Judaism to the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, how different the demographic, political, social and religious landscape might now be. There would probably be far, far more Jews and far fewer Muslims within the narrow land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The infamous Two-State Solution would likely never have seen the light of day.
If our ancient rabbis saw no contradiction in their divinely inspired mission to encourage all non-Jews to embrace the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, King of Israel, Creator of the Universe, the One and Only God, invisible and indivisible, then why not now?
At least, we all – especially today’s rabbinate – should think about it as a peaceful way to erode the Arab Muslim presence and hostility.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One & Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state. www.lulu.com & www.amazon.com
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