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Brandon Marlon
One of the People

Jewish History: The Proselytes (Part 1/4: Ancient)

“The Caravan of Abraham”, by James Tissot (c. 1900). Wikimedia Commons.
“The Caravan of Abraham”, by James Tissot (c. 1900). Wikimedia Commons.

From the Abrahamic precedent comes the Judaic belief that origins are nondeterminative of destiny.

That said, Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, and admission thereto has historically been discouraged and prohibitive. Nevertheless, in every epoch and in numerous places—despite the grossly asymmetrical power dynamics that prevailed between Jews and either Christians or Muslims—there have been at least a few notable individuals among the gentile nations who have sought to embrace the Jewish faith and to share the destiny of the Jewish people. Typical motives for undertaking this momentous transformation have included: disenchantment with polytheism; sincere belief in ethical monotheism and the Judaic tenets; marriage to a Jew (Hebrew/Israelite); residence in the Land of Israel and identification with its dominant Jewish majority; an allegiance to and a sympathy with Jewry born of long and/or intimate interaction; and a deep-seated sense of Judaism’s originality and superiority to alternative traditions, many of which derive largely or partly from Judaism.

There have also been less common reasons for proselytism. During the Persian era, after the triumph of Mordekhai and Esther, many gentiles converted to Judaism (mityahadim) in order to join the winning team, as it were, and for fear of the newly prevalent Jewish influence within the empire (Esther 8:17). Thereafter, in the same period, Ezra the Scribe’s policy of exclusion from the Judahite community of those of foreign origin resulted from their non-conversion and their retention of pagan practices. During the Hasmonean era (167–63 BCE), the Hasmonean ruler and high priest Yohanan Hyrkanos subdued Idumea, whose inhabitants he forced to convert to Judaism, the first instance of forcible conversion in Jewish history; likewise, his son King Judah Aristoboulos I of Judea later waged war on Iturea and incorporated part of it into his kingdom, and had its inhabitants forcibly circumcised and converted to Judaism. During the Roman era, the priestly historian Joseph ben Matityahu (Flavius Josephus) wrote eloquently of the great zeal for Judaism prevalent among Greeks and other gentiles throughout the empire: “our laws have been such as have always inspired admiration and imitation into all other men…the multitude of humankind itself has had a great inclination for a long time to follow our religious observances” (Against Apion 2.40).

In Biblical Hebrew, geir initially denoted a stranger or a foreigner, but in its post-exilic usage the word underwent a semantic shift and came to mean a convert to Judaism. A significant distinction was made between a resident foreigner (geir toshav) who was under Jewish civil jurisdiction, i.e., a stranger (deemed a quasi-convert) entitled to legal claims upon the generosity and protection of his or her Jewish neighbors and obliged to adhere to the seven Noahide laws, and a full convert known as a righteous proselyte (geir hatzeddek/geir habrit) who if male had undergone circumcision (milah) and who was accepted into the divine covenant. A classic example of a resident foreigner is the Aramean general Na’aman, who had accepted only certain of the Torah’s commandments (mitzvot), whereas the classic case of a righteous proselyte is the Moabitess loyalist Ruth, who cleaved to her bereft mother-in-law Naomi and refused to forsake her, despite all the difficulties that choice entailed for a widowed foreigner who forsook her home to dwell amid a strange land. All righteous proselytes (geirei hatzeddek), in a sense, embark upon an Abrahamic journey—a journey of spiritual discovery.

Per the Sages, conversion required (male) circumcision, immersion (tvilah) in a ritual bath (mikveh), and offering a sacrifice in the Temple—a burnt offering of cattle or of two pigeons; after the destruction of the Temples, proselytes were obliged to set aside a small coin in lieu of the sacrificial offering, so that in case the Temple were rebuilt they could promptly purchase the obligatory oblation. The majority of Talmudic sages stipulated that a proselyte is deemed Jewish only once all the necessary steps have been accomplished, and thus was the Judaic law (halakhah) concerning converts codified.

Following the Hadrianic persecutions (135–138 CE), conversion candidates had to be examined and approved by a rabbinical court (beit din) comprising three members and were apprised of the religious obligations and worldly disadvantages to which they would be subject, as well as of the rewards of the faithful that they might receive. Successful candidates were circumcised and immersed, with rabbinical court members as witnesses, during the daytime and on days other than the Sabbath or festivals. Proselytes began their Jewish lives with a tabula rasa. If the convert reverted to his erstwhile lifeway, he was deemed a rebellious Israelite, not a heathen, and his marriage with a Jewess remained valid. The conversion of a pregnant woman included her unborn child. Minors could be converted with their parents, or even alone, but were permitted to recant when they reached their majority.

Female proselytes were not allowed to marry Jewish priests (unless the proselyte was converted in early childhood); daughters of proselytes could marry a priest only when one of her parents was Jewish by birth. The descendants of Ammon, Moab, Egypt, and Edom formed an exception: Ammonite and Moabite males were excluded forever, though no restriction existed against marriage with an Ammonitess or a Moabitess. Descendants of Egyptians and Edomites of either sex were proscribed in the first and second generations; the third enjoyed full connubial rights. Proselytes were not permitted to hold public office (this proscription did not apply to converts with one parent of Jewish origin).

Throughout time and space, proselytes have always been exceptional, not representative. Even a common proselyte, therefore, is by definition uncommon and therefore more interesting to others than the average individual, thus the most prominent proselytes in Jewish history are all the more so. What follows, then, is a survey of historically significant proselytes to Judaism, dating from the ancient to the modern eras:

The Ancient Era

Abraham (Avraham) The first Hebrew and patriarch, originally from the city of Ur-Kasdim (commonly believed to be Ur of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, but perhaps its colony Urfa in northern Mesopotamia), was the son of an idol merchant, Terah, and the father of the Jewish people. While still known as Abram, he accepted the divine call to leave Harran and journey to Canaan, establishing the covenant between God and the Hebrews. In Canaan, the onetime urbanite turned migrant settled down again, purchasing property and establishing himself, his wife Sarai (later Sarah), his kinfolk, and his flocks. Abraham was the first to introduce monotheism to the world, a revolutionary notion in an epoch rife with pagan polytheism. At Harran, Shekhem, Beit El (Luz), Be’ersheva, and Mamre (Hebron), God repeatedly promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation and to grant them Canaan as their inheritance. Abraham pled with God on behalf of Sodom, and in one of his 10 trials he bound for sacrifice his beloved son Isaac at God’s instruction. He had two concubines, Hagar and Keturah (some of the Sages identified the latter with the former). Abraham died at 175, and was buried beside Sarah in the Cave of Makhpeilah in Hebron. Over the millennia, Jewish tradition has depicted Abraham as both a prophet who received divine revelation and as a natural philosopher who through observation and ratiocination induced a supranatural understanding of Creation and concluded that there must be one true supreme being; but it is only as a prophet, not as a philosopher, that he achieved spiritual greatness. The father of the faithful is simultaneously the progenitor of proselytes (among whom males are given the patronymic Abraham).

Osnat (Asenath), daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On (Heliopolis), was married off by the contemporary Hyksos pharaoh of ancient Egypt—probably Apepi (r. c. 1570–1530 BCE​) or Khamudi (r. c. 1530–1520 BCE)—to Joseph and bore him two sons, Menasheh and Ephraim, during the seven years of plenty. Osnat’s name denotes belonging to the Egyptian goddess Neith, but rabbinical tradition identified her as the daughter of Joseph’s sister Dinah and the Hivite Shekhem (who had raped Dinah), and posits that as the offspring of an illicit union she was given up for adoption and raised in Egypt in an aristocratic household. Another tradition maintains that she was a highborn ethnic Egyptian who converted to the Hebraic faith in order to marry Joseph; this tradition portrays her as a devout female proselyte who raised her children according to the tenets of the Hebraic faith. The Israelite leader Joshua, from the tribe of Ephraim, would number among her descendants. Her conversion is depicted in the pseudepigraphical Jewish romance Joseph and Aseneth, originally composed probably in Hellenistic or Roman Egypt (c. 100 BCE–100 CE) in Greek and extant in Greek, Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian, and Latin versions. Osnat is deemed a prototype of the proselyte. 

“Jethro and Moses”, by James Tissot (c. 1900). Wikimedia Commons.

Yitro (Jethro), pagan priest of the Keinite clan in Midian, welcomed Moses into his midst after the Israelite fugitive from Egypt rescued Yitro’s seven shepherdess daughters from local shepherds, who tried to drive them from a well, then drew water and watered their flocks for them. A grateful Yitro offered his daughter Tziporah as a wife to Moses, who married and had two sons (Gershom and Eliezer) with her. When Moses sought to return to Egypt, he received his father-in-law’s blessing to do so. Yitro is believed to have possessed seven names (Yitro, Yetter, Reuel, Hovav, Hever, Keini, and Putiel). During the period of the Exodus from Egypt (c. 1313–1273 BCE), Yitro brought Tziporah and her sons to Moses at Mount Sinai after the Israelites had defeated the Amalekites at the Battle of Rephidim (c. 1313 BCE). Upon learning of the divine miracles wrought on behalf of the Israelites, Yitro acknowledged the supremacy of the God of Israel (“Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods”) and offered oblations in His honor. He counseled Moses to lighten his onerous burden as leader of the people by appointing judges as deputies and implementing a judicial system. His descendants dwelt in the Land of Israel. Rabbinical tradition credits Yitro with pronouncing the first blessing upon the divine for all the wonders performed for the Israelites in the wilderness, and Yitro has a weekly Torah reading named in his honor.

Yitro daughter’s Tziporah, having been defended by Moses at the local well during their initial encounter, returned the favor when she accompanied him upon his return to Egypt: when Moses was in mortal danger at an inn along their journey, she discerned that this was because their son Eliezer’s circumcision (milah) had been postponed, and with a sharp flint severed the child’s foreskin then flung it at Moses’ feet, calling him “a bridegroom of blood”. She and their sons apparently returned to Midian for a time before her father Yitro brought them back to Moses in the wilderness during the period of the Exodus from Egypt (c. 1313–1273 BCE). Her name denotes a bird. She is likely identical to the “Kushite” wife of Moses mentioned later in the biblical episode wherein Miriam and Aaron spoke against their brother Moses.

“The Harlot of Jericho and the Two Spies”, by James Tissot (c. 1900). Wikimedia Commons.

When Joshua dispatched from Shitim (in Transjordan) a pair of scouts—identified in the midrash as Pinhas and Khaleiv—on a reconnaissance mission to Jericho (in Cisjordan), they arrived at the inn of Rahav the harlot (or hostess/innkeeper) within the fortifications of the city walls. Apprised of the progress of the Israelites in the wilderness, Rahav agreed to shelter the scouts and hid them on the roof of her inn under flax stalks. When the king of Jericho ordered her to surrender the scouts, she defied and misled the monarch by claiming she did not know whence the men had originated or whereto they have gone, but that they had absconded when the city gate closed at nightfall and should be pursued at once. Once the coast was clear, she confided to the scouts that she was certain of the Israelites’ imminent conquest of Canaan, “for the Lord your God He is God in heaven above and on the earth below”,  and obtained from the scouts their solemn pledge to spare her and her kin. The scouts spent the night there in safety and the next morning she lowered them down by a rope—a cord of crimson thread—through the window and implored them to hide in the mountains for three days before returning to the Israelite camp. The scouts instructed her to distinguish her inn thenceforth by displaying in her window the very crimson rope by which they had escaped. She and her entire family were spared subsequently when the Israelite conquest of Jericho was under way; after the doomed city was destroyed, she and her kin were evacuated from the ruins and incorporated into the Israelite camp. Rahav is said to have converted to the Israelite faith before marrying Joshua himself, and to have become the ancestress of priests, of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and of the prophetess Huldah. She is deemed to have numbered among the most beautiful women who ever lived, and despite her background was acclaimed as a paragon of virtue. 

“A Woman as Ruth”, by Francesco Hayez (1835). Wikimedia Commons.

Ruth the Moabitess married Mahlon the Judahite, who with his family had sojourned in Moab when famine afflicted Judah. After a decade of marriage Mahlon died, leaving the childless widow Ruth in a predicament: the famine in Judah had subsided, and her mother-in-law Naomi was determined to repatriate. For Ruth, this presented a moment of truth: she decided that her family was her people. Despite Naomi’s remonstrations, Ruth clung to her mother-in-law and her adopted faith and pledged, in what is doubtless one of the most moving passages not only in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) but anywhere in world literature, “Do not entreat me to leave you, to return from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. So may the Lord do to me and so may He continue, if anything but death separate me and you.” From Ruth’s experience with Naomi was derived the Judaic practice to reject prospective converts thrice but not more. Thus Ruth accompanied Naomi to Bethlehem in Judah, where they arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest. Naomi had inherited her late husband Elimelekh’s estate, but nevertheless the women were now in a state of abject poverty. Naomi agreed to send Ruth to glean among the ears of grain after the reapers in a field that just happened to belong to Bo’az, a wealthy landowner and close kinsman of Elimelekh. The kindly Bo’az showed favor to Ruth, who uncovered then lay down at his feet one night as he slept upon a threshing floor after winnowing barley; this symbolic act of submission and fealty was accompanied by a verbal appeal for marriage. Bo’az readily consented to marry Ruth and soon redeemed Naomi’s estate, thereby securing the women’s well-being. Bo’az and Ruth had a son, Obed (Oveid), through whom Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David. Ruth is the festal scroll read annually on the Shavuot festival. To this day, Ruth remains the preeminent exemplar of fidelity and devotion throughout both Scripture and world literature.

Perhaps an Edomite proselyte, the vatic Obadiah (Ovadyah) prophesied Edom’s end in his eponymous book, the shortest biblical work. He envisioned the rebuilding of Israel’s ruins and Israel’s possession of Mount Seir in Edom and the fields of Ephraim and Samaria. The tribe of Benjamin, he averred, would extend northeast to Gilad, and saviors on Mount Zion would judge Esau’s domains. His writing was influenced by Jeremiah. The central theme in Ovadyah, probably composed sometime between 586 and 460 BCE, is faith in divine fidelity to Israel.

About the Author
Brandon Marlon is an award-winning Canadian-Israeli author whose writing has appeared in 300+ publications in 33 countries. He is the author of two poetry volumes, Inspirations of Israel: Poetry for a Land and People and Judean Dreams, and two historical reference works, Essentials of Jewish History: Jewish Leadership Across 4,000 Years and its companion volume Essentials of the Land of Israel: A Geographical History.
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