Giyyur 004

18:
In the previous shiur we saw quite clearly that the sages, even from the halakhic point of view, considered conversions that were prompted by less than perfect altruism to be nevertheless valid conversions. But, before we leave this part of our discussions we must remove an impression that may have inadvertently been created. While the sages had to face many conversions for ulterior motives – probably most of them were like that – they also recognised a substantial body of conversions that certainly were altruistic. It is this phenomenon that we must now address and exemplify.

19:
Towards the end of the first century BCE a great change was coming over the western world, as it was then. For the Greeks and the Romans and for those other peoples who had adopted the Graeco-Roman way of life the old Olympian religion was beginning to lose its hold. Intelligent people began to question a universe ruled by Zeus/Jupiter, Aphrodite/Venus, Hera/Juno and so on. The stories told about these gods were gradually losing credibility – certainly for the intelligentsia – and many were seeking a philosophy that could make better sense of the world in which they lived. Judaism was most certainly one of the options that were considered by such people. For the men there was a stumbling block that was as great a deterrant as the philosophy of Judaism was an attraction. That stumbling block was circumcision, because Graeco-Roman mores set great store by the perfection of the human body and looked upon circumcision as a desecration of human perfection. Thus it was that while many men did eventually become converts many more reached a kind of halfway house: they would frequent the synagogues and observe some of the commandments while remaining non-Jews from the halakhic point of view. (Paul of Tarsus, perhaps the greatest propagandist the Jewish people ever produced, went to preach in the synagogues of the Aegean not because he hoped tro persuade the Jews, but because he knew he would find a willing audience among the "God-fearers" at the back of the synagogues.)

20:
The women of the Graeco-Roman intelligentsia, of course, had no such problem and many of them converted to Judaism. The Roman satiricist (and antisemite) Juvenal who lived during the first half of the 2nd century CE once noted (no doubt with acerbic exaggeration) that "every tenth matrona in Rome is a Jewess." During the reign of the Emperor Nero (mid 1st century CE) the great philosopher Seneca remarked concerning the Jews that "the vanquished have imposed their rules upon the victors" – so pervasive were the Jews and Judaism in Roman life. Nero's wife, Poppaea Sabena showed considerable interest in Judaism and was certainly an influential Judeophile. Fulvia, a well-known atristocratic lady (matrona) converted; the consul Flavius Clemens and his wife Domitilla converted – and these are just a couple out of hundreds, maybe thousands, of converts. Their names fortunately have reached us while the majority, of course, have not.

21:
Perhaps the most famous example of a Roman convert during this time was the nephew of the emperor Hadrian – that same Hadrian who had crushed the Bar-Kokhba revolt with cruel efficiency and outlawed the practice of Judaism in Eretz-Israel, thus bringing about the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva. The story as told in midrashim may not be accurate from the historical point of view, because the sages were not interested in passing on historical facts. But the story certainly illustrates and exemplifies the workings of the mind of the would-be convert. The story is to be found in Exodus Rabbah 30:9.

If you would like to read the Hebrew text of this midrash please click here.

22:
Another midrash [Tanĥuma, Exodus, Mishpatim 3] tells the story in a different way:

If you would like to read the Hebrew text of this midrash please click here.

23:
Of course, there are elements within these stories – and there are others – that cry out to us that they are not historical. The mind boggles at the portrait of the emeror Hadrian telling his nephew which shares to buy. Furthermore, later well-meaning tradition does not bolster our confidence when it tries to identify the Achilles who was Hadrian's nephew with Onkelos, the eponymous creator of the classic translation of the bible into Aramaic – apparently solely on the basis of a remotely like-sounding name. Nevertheless, the accounts of "Achilles the Convert" are far too persistent a rumour not to have a kernal of historical truth.

24:
The Bar-Kokhba revolt and its terrible aftermath may be counted among the worst of times that the Jewish people have suffered in its long history. The population was almost decimated and the enormous number of prisoners of war swelled the Jewish slave population of Rome inordinately. During the Hadrianic persecution that followed the débacle many leaders perished. We are told that it it were not for the clandestine ordination of five young students Torah would have been forgotten in Israel. Worse, the country was further depopulated by mass emigration because it was impossible to eke out a living in the devastation that was Eretz-Israel. Surely, anyone who converts to Judaism in such circumstances is doing so for altruistic reasons.

25:
Thus we see that the sages knew intimately every possible kind of convert: there were those whose attachment to Judaism and the Jewish people was altruistic and motivated by deep inner conviction; and there were those whose embrace of the people of Israel and their Torah was motivated by a self-serving impulse that was as ulterior as they come. Yet, as we saw in a previous shiur, once these converts had undergone the halakhic process of conversion, regardless of their inner motivation, the sages were adamant that "they are all converts". In our next shiur we shall, God willing, turn our attention to the "halakhic process" of conversion as set down by the sages.

To be continued.