Jewish History: The Proselytes (Part 4/4: Modern)

The Modern Era
Born in 16th-century Germany, Conrad Victor was raised a Christian, married, and became professor of classical languages at University of Marburg in Hesse (central Germany). He struggled with his native faith and particularly was unable to accept the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. In 1607, he left behind his wife and migrated to the Ottoman Empire, where he settled in Salonika (Thessaloniki, Greece), embraced Judaism, and assumed the Jewish name Moses Prado. Doubtless Moses immersed himself in the study and practice of his newfound faith amid the large Jewish community in Salonika, whose native Romaniot Jews had been bolstered substantially by Sephardic Jews following the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492, and which by that time constituted two-thirds of the city’s population. Moses also composed and dispatched to an old friend in Marburg named Hartmann a series of epistles wherein he justified his conversion to Judaism and accented that its truth was indisputable and acknowledged by both Christians and Muslims. After residing in Salonika for seven years, he solicited the duke of Hesse for permission to repatriate and reunite with his wife, but his request was rejected and he remained in Salonika until his decease.
The only son of Polish magnate Count (Graf) Potocki, among the wealthiest and most influential landowners in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Walentyn Potocki (Valentin/Valentine Pototzki) (c. 1700–1749 CE) was born into a noble family of devout Roman Catholics who occupied high offices in the church hierarchy of Poland, supported the Jesuit order, and possessed vast estates that included the city of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania). At 16, he studied at a Catholic academy in Vilna, where he became close friends with fellow student Zaremba (Zarodny). In Vilna he also consulted a local rabbi, Menahem Mann ben Aryeh Löb of Visun, regarding his religious doubts and questions. Thereafter he and Zaremba continued their studies at a Catholic seminary in Paris, France. There the pair entered the wine shop or tavern of an old Jew poring over a sacred Jewish text, which stimulated their queries; his explications, foreign yet fascinating to them, made such an impression that they prevailed upon him to instruct them in Hebrew. Within half a year they became proficient in the holy tongue and inclined toward becoming proselytes. To that end, they resolved to travel to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a more tolerant milieu wherein a Christian could openly embrace Judaism. Yet Walenty first spent some time at the papal academy in Rome to clarify his new beliefs, and discovered the papal court to be a den of corruption and vice, which helped convince him that he could no longer remain Catholic. From Rome he journeyed to Amsterdam, where he converted to Judaism and assumed the Hebrew name Avraham ben Avraham. Zaremba later converted and assumed the Hebrew name Barukh ben Avraham. From Amsterdam the pair visited the Land of Israel, where Barukh remained with his wife (Rahel bat Sarah) and son when Avraham returned to eastern Europe. Upon being apprised that his parents, the count and countess, had dispatched numerous emissaries to track him down, he returned to Vilna and initially hid in a synagogue, where pious women brought him meals. The preeminent sage of the generation, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (Vilna Gaon/HaGra), soon learned of his identity and whereabouts, and advised him to lie low in the nearby village of Ilye (Ilya, Belarus), where he moved and dedicated himself to his Judaic studies. There a certain Hayyim Yoshkes, a Jewish tailor who sewed uniforms and furs for Polish aristocrats and bureaucrats, overheard some clients of his discussing the fugitive divinity student and suspected that the newcomer in the synagogue might be him. Subsequently, this tailor’s wild and mischievous son, who was among several boys who tended to disturb the men studying Torah in the synagogue, was sharply scolded by Avraham, who may even have grabbed the boy by the ear and pulled him out the door. The enraged tailor informed on Avraham to the bishop of Vilna, and in no time he was arrested and shackled by armed soldiers of the Catholic Church. Despite being tortured, he refused to renounce his Judaism. He was charged with heresy, incarcerated, put on trial, and condemned to death by burning. Supposedly, after the verdict was delivered, the sage Elijah sent Avraham a message offering to preserve him by means of kabbalah; Avraham refused, preferring instead to die for the sanctification of the divine name. Preparations were made for the public burning in the center of Vilna, opposite the town hall. The countess used all her considerable clout to obtain a pardon for her beloved son, but the execution date was advanced by a day so that it would arrive too late. Most gentile residents of Vilna and peasants from the surrounding villages gathered to witness the execution; some of these were keen to participate in the event and brought with them pieces of firewood to heap onto the pyre. As he was led through the streets toward the public square, Avraham began singing the song “Aval anahnu amkha bnei britekha” to a melody (nigun) that was preserved ever since. In his final moments, he recited the blessing “Barukh m’kadeish et shimkha b’rabbim” and the “Shema” prayer; under the watchful gaze of assembled church dignitaries and government officials, he was engulfed by the flames and burnt at the stake on the second day of the Shavuot festival (May 23/24, 1749). Although it was unsafe for any Jew to attend the execution, Eliezer Zhiskes (Eliezer Meir Sirki), a beardless Jew disguised as a gentile, mingled among the throng and bribed the guard for permission to gather the martyr’s ashes and the charred remains of two of his fingers, which were placed in an earthenware vessel and inhumed in the old Jewish cemetery in the Shnipishok (Šnipiškės) neighborhood of Vilna, next to which the revered Elijah was subsequently buried. Shortly after Avraham’s martyrdom, and perhaps because of his involvement in the affair, Menahem Mann of Visun was tortured and executed in Vilna at 70 (July 3, 1749). Beside Avraham’s grave grew a strange tree resembling a person, covering the plot as if protecting it; it stood until German soldiers cut down its upper portion during WWI. In 1927, an iron tomb structure (ohel) was erected over the grave and Jews came to pray there. Following the Soviets’ destruction of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery in 1949–1950, a new Jewish cemetery was constructed and Elijah was reinterred in a new tomb structure, wherein Avraham’s ashes were apparently reinterred alongside the sage’s grave, with an inscribed stone memorial to him mounted upon the structure’s wall. Thus far, it must be noted, no incontrovertible evidence for the Potocki case has been discovered, although it is generally believed to have occurred. Some modern, secular, gentile academics and journalists believe the case was invented (by someone, and for reasons, and at a time, unknown) or else premised upon the personage Raphael Sentimany (Rafał Sentimani), a Croatian Catholic immigrant who converted to Judaism at 12, assumed the Jewish name Abraham Isacowicz, and for his apostasy was burnt at the stake in Vilna in 1753. And yet, the Potocki case was mentioned in a contemporaneous account (VaYakkam Eidut B’Ya’akov, 1755) by the prominent sage Jacob Emden (Yabetz)—notorious for his critical attitude in textual matters—and the execution of Menahem Mann of Visun was noted in a contemporaneous account (Ammudei Beit Yehudah, 1766) by Jewish physician and author Judah Hurwitz. In addition, it has been observed that the Potocki family coat of arms, which contains a number of leaves, is conspicuously missing one leaf, construed by some as a sign of the family’s lost son. Thus the most famous proselyte in modern Jewish history is also the most disputed…and his historicity remains unsettled.

A native of London, England, Lord George Gordon (1751–1793 CE) was the third and youngest son of the third duke of Gordon (Cosmo George Gordon). After his father’s decease, he was raised on the family’s Scottish estates. He studied at Eton College then joined the Royal Navy and became a midshipman. From 1766–1769, he was stationed in the American colonies, which he came to appreciate and respect. In 1769, while traveling in the West Indies, he was appalled by the sight of enslaved Africans in Jamaica, and bothered to rebuke the governor of Jamaica on this account. In 1772, he attained the rank of lieutenant, but when he was subsequently deprived of a command by First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu (the fourth Earl of Sandwich), he shifted his focus to politics. In 1774, he conducted a successful political campaign as a representative of Inverness (Scotland) but ultimately was elected to parliament as a representative of the pocket borough of Ludgershall (England). For five years he kept a relatively low profile in government, but was outspoken in his condemnation of England’s war against America and supported American independence. In 1779, he became president of the United Protestant League, which opposed pro-Catholic measures, and in this capacity he inveighed against “popery”. In 1780, he put forward a bill to repeal the Papists Act (1778) that had partly alleviated repressive anti-Catholic restrictions; in what was meant to be a massive yet peaceful demonstration, he led a crowd of some 60,000 protesters that marched in procession to the Houses of Parliament to present a petition against the Act, and many of his followers stormed the lobby of the House of Commons and defied all attempts to expel them. That evening began six days of rioting and looting, eventuating in almost 500 casualties—including more than 200 people killed as 15,000 troops struggled to restore order—and tremendous property damage. As an alleged instigator he was arrested, charged with high treason, jailed in the Tower of London for six months, then finally put on trial in 1781; his defense attorneys (his cousin Thomas Erskine and Lloyd Kenyon) argued that he had never intended violence and had attempted to quell it, and after half an hour of deliberation a jury acquitted him. In 1785, he wrote to Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and reproached him for his anti-Semitic laws, citing them as the cause of his various troubles. In 1786, he was excommunicated from the Church of England by the archbishop of Canterbury for refusing to bear witness in an ecclesiastical suit, and also published a pamphlet criticizing the cruel British penal system. He developed an affinity for Judaism, desired to convert, and to that end approached David Tevele Schiff, chief rabbi of Great Britain, who rebuffed the prospective proselyte because of the risk his conversion would pose to the vulnerable Jewish community. In 1787, Gordon was convicted of libel against Queen Marie Antoinette of France, the French ambassador to England, and the King’s Court and Judges, but fled temporarily to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he stayed in the house of a local Jew, Moses Opdenberg. That same year, while dwelling in Birmingham (England), he underwent circumcision, converted to Judaism, and assumed the Jewish name Yisrael bar Avraham Gordon. Thereafter he grew a long beard and dressed in typically Jewish garb. In 1788, he was sentenced to five years’ incarceration in Newgate Prison in his hometown and fined 500 pounds. His durance, however, was a comfortable confinement in a large, private cell: he stringently adhered to the Judaic precepts, ate kosher meat and drank kosher wine, blessed braided bread loaves (hallot) on the Sabbath, wore a prayer shawl (tallit) and donned phylacteries (tfilin), affixed to his cell a mezuzah, convened a prayer quorum (minyan) with 10 Polish Jews (fellow inmates) every Sabbath, during which the Ten Statements (Decalogue) were hung on his wall to transform his cell into a small synagogue (shtiebel), and observed the Jewish festivals and fast days. He even hosted dinners and dances: his guests included dukes; Italian barbers; ladies of fashion; Jewish shopkeepers; soldiers; members of parliament; Polish noblemen; American merchants; rabbis; and, on one occasion, even His Royal Majesty (King George III of Great Britain and Ireland). While in prison he also composed and dispatched numerous epistles—including to the American founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and Gouverneur Morris—and comforted other prisoners by means of conversation or by playing one of the seven musical instruments he had mastered. Strangely enough, his time as an inmate is deemed the happiest period of his life. In 1793, during a court appearance, he refused to take off his hat; when the judge ordered it forcibly removed, he covered his head with a night cap and bound it with a handkerchief so as to give reverence to God. Later that year, he contracted typhoid fever and died in prison; he was interred in his family’s burial plot, not in the Jewish cemetery. He and the infamous “Gordon Riots” (“No Popery Riots”) were limned in novelist Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge. He is remembered today as an eccentric Scottish nobleman and fervent Protestant who found his fulfillment only as a devout Jew.
A native of Philadelphia, Warder Cresson (1798–1860 CE) was born into a Quaker family of Huguenot descent. In 1815, he became a farming apprentice. In 1819, he moved with his family to neighboring Bensalem, where he attended the Byberry Meetinghouse. He earned his livelihood as a farmer in neighboring Gwynedd and became wealthy. In 1821, he married Elizabeth Townsend, with whom he had six children. Despite his material success, he became spiritually restless. In 1830, after breaking with the Quakers, he published a pamphlet, Babylon the Great Is Falling! The Morning Star, or Light from on High, wherein he deplored the waywardness of his times, and exhorted his former coreligionists to lead better lives. By the 1840s, he had become successively a Shaker, a Mormon, a Millerite, and a Campbellite, and had earned a reputation as an eccentric religious enthusiast and a serial convert. He subsequently befriended a rabbi, Isaac Leeser, and grew enamored of Judaism. Through Leeser’s introduction he became profoundly influenced by the writings of American-Jewish diplomat and newspaper editor Mordecai Manuel Noah, who believed that Jewry would soon repatriate to the Land of Israel. In 1844, upon the recommendation of Philadelphia congressman Edward Joy Morris, he was appointed the first U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, though the appointment was rescinded shortly thereafter (after he had already set sail via London, England to Jaffa) by Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, who had been informed in an urgent dispatch from former treasury secretary Samuel D. Ingham that his appointee was mentally imbalanced. Nevertheless, Cresson—who in London had published three religious tracts, The Two Witnesses, Moses and Elijah; The Good Olive-Tree, Israel; and Jerusalem, the Center and Joy of the Whole Earth—discounted the revocation and proceeded as planned in Jerusalem, where he associated with the Sephardic community, befriended future Sephardic chief rabbi (Rishon L’Tzion) Ya’akov Sha’ul Elyashar, and greeted visiting dignitaries. In 1844, he hosted British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who lacked imagination and failed to appreciate his Zionist vision. He also contributed frequently to Leeser’s periodical, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, wherein he criticized the tactics of the London Society for the Conversion of the Jews. Only in 1846 did he officially “resign” his diplomatic post, though he stayed on in Jerusalem another two years. In 1848, he converted to Judaism, underwent circumcision, and assumed the Jewish name Michael Boaz Israel ben Abraham. His conversion occasioned a fascinating halakhic debate about whether a proselyte who has undergone circumcision but not ritual immersion is required, or even permitted, to observe the Sabbath: since at the time Cresson was nearly 50 years old, and therefore his healing was gradual, the Jerusalem rabbis mandated that he delay the last step of the conversion process—immersion in a ritual bath (mikveh)—until he had recovered from the procedure. The eminent sage Jacob Ettlinger suggested that once circumcision is performed the proselyte is no longer deemed a gentile, though it is ritual immersion that actually confers Jewish status; between these stages, however, the proselyte is effectively in limbo, so there is no issue concerning Sabbath observance (and it is perhaps even obligatory). Reasoning from biblical precedents, Ettlinger ruled that one is already deemed a Jew to some degree even prior to ritual immersion and that following circumcision a proselyte must keep all Sabbath laws. That same year, Cresson returned to his hometown to arrange his affairs, and was dismayed to discover that his wife—who seemingly thought her husband had lost his mind during a midlife crisis—had converted to Episcopalianism, taken sole possession of their property, and sold off the family farm as well as his personal effects. In 1849, although he had granted his family half his property, his wife and his son Jacob applied to a court to have him declared a lunatic incapable of managing his own affairs; a sheriff’s jury comprising six members rendered a guilty verdict, but apparently he was never incarcerated and he appealed the decision in 1850. In 1851, his new trial—wherein almost 100 witnesses testified, including the late Mordecai Manuel Noah, who prior to his decease had composed an epistle attesting to Cresson’s mental soundness—took place over six days and garnered much attention and comment; this time the jury, comprising 12 Christian men, found him to be sane and the acquitted defendant was discharged. The case achieved significance for establishing the principle that religious beliefs are not determinative of an individual’s sanity; the American media extolled his exoneration as a vindication of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Unites States Constitution. During these turbulent years, he found some solace by regularly attending the Sephardic orthodox synagogue Congregation Mikveh Israel, whose pulpit Leeser occupied, and by participating in the local Jewish community. That same year, he published a polemical work/spiritual autobiography, The Key of David: David the True Messiah, or the Anointed of the God of Jacob, which predicted the impending revival of the Jewish ancestral homeland and the ingathering of the exiles, despite inconceivable trials and terrors, as well as the tract The Great Restoration and Consolidation of Israel…, wherein he advocated Jewish unity and the formation of an international association to promote recognition of the Jewish people by American and European governments and to facilitate Jewish repatriation to the Land of Israel. He and his wife mutually desired to part ways and were divorced. In 1852, he departed Philadelphia for the last time and arrived in London, where in 1853 he lectured on the subject of Jewish relief and agricultural settlement. That same year, he immigrated to the Land of Israel, where he resettled in Jerusalem and remarried a Sephardic Jewess, Rahel Moledano/Moleano, with whom he had two children (in addition to her two young daughters from a previous marriage), Abigail Ruth and David Ben-Zion (both of whom tragically died young within three years of their father). In Jerusalem he lived a pious life, dressed as a native Sephardic Jew, and gained prominence as a respected member of the Jewish community. He devoted his attentions to the agrarian regeneration of the Holy Land, and to alleviating the plight of the Jews of Jerusalem, whose indigence made them susceptible to the pecuniary incentives of Christian missionaries. That same year, he declared his intention to found an agricultural colony in Emmek R’phaim (originally just southwest of Jerusalem but today within the city). From 1853–1856, he solicited support in the pages of The Occident for his proposed projects; regrettably, despite his high hopes, the funds he sought never materialized. In 1856, he hosted American novelist Herman Melville, who (like Thackeray before him) lacked imagination and failed to appreciate his Zionist vision. He died in Jerusalem and was buried on the Mount of Olives; at his funeral he was paid homage as if a revered sage, and Jewish businesses in Jerusalem shut down for the day in his honor. In 2013, following excavations, his gravesite—lost to history for five generations due to his lack of descendants to tend to it—was discovered in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. He is remembered today as a religious zealot, a righteous proselyte (geir hatzeddek/geir habrit), a prophetic visionary, and a proto-Zionist.
A native of Kyoto, Japan, Setsuzō Kotsuji (1899–1973 CE) descended from a priestly Shinto dynasty associated with the local Kamo Shrine and dating back to its dedication in 678 CE. As a youth he was profoundly influenced by Bushido, the samurai chivalric code, and simultaneously began his lifelong quest for spiritual fulfillment. After stumbling upon a Japanese-American missionary group’s translation of the Bible while browsing in a dusty secondhand bookstore, he became inspired by the patriarch Abraham’s divine calling and initially converted to Christianity. From 1916–1923, he studied at American Presbyterian College in neighboring Tokyo, where he learned and excelled at several languages (English, Latin, German, and Greek). Thereafter he married Mineko Iwané, a Christian woman from neighboring Sapporo, and served as a Christian minister for several years in neighboring Gifu. In 1927, he migrated to America, where he arrived in San Francisco and studied first at Auburn Theological Seminary in Auburn (New York) then at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley (California), where he wrote his Semitics thesis “The Origin and Evolution of the Semitic Alphabets” (later published in Tokyo) and graduated with his doctorate in 1931. That same year, already feeling more Jewish than Christian, he returned to Tokyo, where he became professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at the theological seminary of Aoyama Gakuin University, a position in which he served for two years. In 1934, he established the Institute of Biblical Research in Tokyo, and published his first book in Japanese on Hebrew language and grammar in 1937. In 1939, he moved to Dairen (Dalian, China) in the region of Manchuria, where the collective Jewish community numbered some 300,000 members, and became an expert on Jewish affairs for the Southern Manchuria Railway, whose president Yosuke Matsuoka became Japan’s foreign minister late in 1940. During WWII, Setsuzō exerted himself in aiding numerous Ashkenazic Jews from eastern Europe who found refuge in the Far East and who, because they had heard of his recent role in Manchuria, desperately sought his intervention on their behalf with the Japanese government. Impelled to action and resorting to his contacts, he implored Japanese foreign ministry officials to extend the Jews’ 10-day transit visas and ingratiated himself to local police authorities to elicit their cooperation in meeting the Jews’ communal needs. In 1941, the Mir academy transferred from Mir (Belarus) to Kobe (Japan), where Setsuzō befriended the sage Moses Shatzkes (Lomzher Rav), with whom he facilitated the flight of thousands of Jewish war refugees first to Kobe then to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China. In 1943, he published a Japanese work, Yudaya-jin no Sugata (The True Character of the Jewish Nation), meant to familiarize his countrymen with the Jewish people and to counter anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. In 1945, he narrowly avoided assassination by the military police (Kenpei-tai) while living in Kamakura (Japan). From 1947–1950, circumstances compelled him to work in an import-export firm, and later he worked briefly as an advisor to the U.S. Navy in Tokyo, yet throughout the postwar era his Hebraic and biblical studies remained his deepest concern. In 1959, at 60, he journeyed to Jerusalem, converted to Judaism, underwent circumcision, and assumed the Hebrew name Abraham ben Abraham. Thenceforth he was known as Abraham Kotsuji. He subsequently conducted lecture tours before Jewish audiences (for three months across Israel then for eight months across America and into Mexico). In 1961, he founded the Institute of Hebrew Culture in Japan to disseminate Judaism in his natal land. He indited an autobiography, From Tokyo to Jerusalem (1962), which became a little-known but highly esteemed religious classic. In 1962–1963, he embarked upon another lecture tour across America. After dwelling for a time in New York City, he repatriated to Japan. He died in Kamakura and was buried in Jerusalem on Har HaMenuhot. He is remembered today as a righteous gentile who became a righteous proselyte (geir hatzeddek/geir habrit), and as a renowned Japanese Hebraist.
A native of London, England, Kenneth Charles Cox (1911–1982 CE) was born into an affluent Anglican family but was orphaned at a young age and raised by elderly guardians. As a young man, he became superintendent of the Sunday school in his local Anglican parish. In his 20s, he adopted Roman Catholicism and determined to enter the priesthood. In 1934, he enrolled in the Catholic College of Campion House, in neighboring Middlesex, where he spent the next four years. Thence he moved to neighboring Birmingham, where he studied philosophy and literature at St. Mary’s College. He next studied at the Pontifical Beda College (normally of Rome, Italy but temporarily evacuated due to WWII to Lancashire, England), where he studied dogmatic theology. In 1943, he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Andrew MacDonald of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, and first became a parish priest in Stirling (Scotland). He served as a Catholic priest for a decade, but began to doubt the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and suffered a spiritual crisis. In 1948, he consulted Israel Brodie, senior Jewish chaplain of the British Army, regarding conversion to Judaism and was apprised of the challenges he would face when applying to the rabbinical court (beit din) of London. In 1953, he embraced Judaism, underwent circumcision, and assumed the Jewish name Abraham Isaac Carmel. He became a teacher of English literature, Latin, and history at the Jewish secondary school Carmel College in Newbury (England), a position in which he served for nine years. He also became a fervent religious Zionist. In 1959, he immigrated to the State of Israel, where he settled in Haifa and became a teacher at the Reali High School. After contracting a rare intestinal disease, he sought medical treatment in America, where he resettled in New York City. Thereafter he was invited to speak at several Jewish organizations, including Hadassah. He soon became a teacher at the modern orthodox high school of the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn, a position in which he served for 22 years. He lived in Manhattan and joined Congregation Ateret Tzvi (Fifth Avenue Synagogue). He indited an autobiography, So Strange My Path (1960). In 1964, he embarked upon a national book tour of synagogues and Jewish Community Centers sponsored by the lecture bureau of the Jewish Welfare Board. In 1966, he celebrated his bar mitzvah on the 13th anniversary of his conversion; his congregational rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, soon to become chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, spoke at a kiddush held in his honor. In 1979, he conducted a lecture tour in America to “convert Jews to Judaism”. Throughout his lifetime, he lectured in some 350 communities across North America and on 50 college campuses. He also composed My Chosen People: A Journey through Spiritual Space, an unpublished manuscript advocating spiritual values embodied in authentic, orthodox Judaism. He died in New York City and was buried in Beit Shemesh; students and colleagues from the institutions wherein he was an instructor attended his funeral. He is remembered today as a passionate pedagogue and one of the few Catholic priests in the modern era to become a righteous proselyte (geir hatzeddek/geir habrit).
A native of Germany, Karl Heinz Schneider (1924–1995 CE) joined the Nazi party and soon became an organizer of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) battalions. In 1942, during WWII, he became a Stuka pilot flying Junker-87 dive bombers in the Luftwaffe on missions supporting Nazi panzer divisions in Europe, and attained the rank of sergeant-major. While strolling the streets of a Nazi-occupied Polish town, he witnessed a sickening incident wherein several Jews were massacred in cold blood by jackbooted Schutzstaffel (SS) storm troopers, including an elderly rabbi clutching sacred scrolls as he was murdered in the courtyard of his synagogue. The atrocity deeply disturbed him and engendered sincere penitence within himself. Thenceforth he feigned illness to shirk combat duty, missed designated targets by instead dropping ordnance on uninhabited forests or into lakes, and tampered with detonators to prevent his munitions from exploding. In the postwar era, he swore to undergo self-imposed penance for 20 years. He remained unmarried, labored as a coal miner in the Ruhr district (Germany), and anonymously donated two-thirds of his monthly wages to organizations supporting Jewish orphans and concentration camp survivors. He taught himself the Hebrew language, purchased a Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) from Israel as well as siddurs to learn Jewish prayers, and under a pseudonym began attending Shabbat services in a synagogue in neighboring Frankfurt. In time he became the managing director of a major German coal mine. In 1965, he resigned from his position, sold his property in West Germany, moved to the State of Israel, and bought a farm near the moshav Bustan HaGalil in western Galilee. When he initially applied for conversion to the rabbinical council in Haifa, he was met with disbelief and suspicion, but once his story was investigated and verified he was permitted to commence the formal conversion process. That same year, he converted to Judaism, underwent circumcision in a Haifa hospital, assumed the Hebrew name Reuel Abraham (“I saw the God of Abraham” in Hebrew), and became an Israeli citizen. He grew a beard, prayed thrice daily, and meticulously observed halakhic precepts. He also sought assistance from the rabbinate in finding a Jewess from the separatist orthodox (hareidi) community willing to marry him. He died and was buried in Berlin, Germany. He is remembered today as the first ex-Nazi to become a Jewish proselyte.

A native of Tzfat, Hamuda Abu al-Anyan/al-Aynin (1926–1948 CE) was born into an affluent family of Muslim Arabs who were well-known nationalists. His mother Fatima was of Jewish descent. As a youth he became fascinated by his Jewish neighbors and their customs, and developed an interest in the collective Jewish community (yishuv) in the Land of Israel and in Zionism—particularly the Brit Trumpeldor (Betar) Zionist youth movement founded by Jewish students and workers in Latvia in 1923. He associated with Betar members in his hometown who met at the Meiri Dairy. Despite family opposition, he transferred from the Arab government school to the local Alliance Israélite Universelle school, where he was the sole Arab enrolled yet was accepted by its Jewish students. He went to Jerusalem, applied to the chief rabbinate for conversion, and was rejected twice; the third time he was accepted, at 16. After his mother’s decease, his relationship with his father Mahmoud deteriorated and he left the family home. He moved to Haifa, where he embraced Judaism, assumed the Hebrew name Avraham ben Avraham, worked as a clerk, and joined the local branch of Betar. Thereafter he became a member of Irgun Tzvai L’Umi (Etzel, the Irgun), adopted the Jewish name Barukh Mizrahi, and participated in anti-British activities such as distributing leaflets and conducting security patrols. He was captured during one of his operations and was held for several months in the Latrun detention camp before being exiled with 55 fellow operatives from the Irgun and Lohamei Heirut Yisrael (Lehi, the Stern Gang) to the African village of Sembel (Asmara, Eritrea). He insisted on taking with him his Jewish prayer shawl (tallit) and phylacteries (tfilin). In 1946, within a month of arriving in Eritrea, he was seriously wounded by Sudanese guards in a shooting incident wherein two detainees (Eliyahu Ezra and Shaul HaGalili) were fatally shot and a dozen others injured by gunfire; a British doctor operated on him for 24 hours and with 20 units of English blood was able to save his life. When Isaac HaLevi Herzog, Ashkenazic chief rabbi of the Land of Israel, soon visited the detainees for three days, Mizrahi asked him to repatriate his body in case of his decease. Mizrahi rehabilitated for two months before rejoining his campmates. He attempted to escape the detention camp repeatedly, to no avail. He was offered his freedom on condition that he return to Islam and Arab nationalism, which offer he rejected. After spending two years in detention camps in Eritrea, Kenya, and Sudan, he was unexpectedly released. He repatriated to the Land of Israel, where he resumed his underground activities with the Irgun and joined Jewish Brigade veterans who established the Margolin outpost near HaSharon Junction. He performed important intelligence gathering activities within the Arab Department of the Irgun. In April 1948, amid Israel’s War of Independence (1947–1949) and just prior to the State of Israel’s establishment, he was dispatched on an intelligence gathering mission in preparation for an operation to bomb the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) headquarters in Ein Gannim (Beit HaGan/Ginat/Jenin); while traveling from Haifa to Jenin, his Arab bus was stopped for routine inspection at a checkpoint near Megiddo, and an Arab policeman identified him by the golden tooth in his mouth. He was arrested along with three uninvolved Arabs he had befriended during the long ride; they were taken to the Arab village of Jaba, northwest of Nablus, and hauled before a military court headed by the ALA, which sentenced them to death as Zionist collaborators. The four were executed near Sa-Nur by soldiers of the Lebanese Turkoman field commander Fawzi al-Qawuqji and buried together in a local cave. Mizrahi was declared missing and his fate remained unknown for a generation. A monument was erected on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in his honor. In 1968, in the wake of the Six-Day War and following an investigative search, the cave’s graves were discovered and Mizrahi’s remains confirmed by his teeth. That same year, a memorial ceremony was held for him near Qabatiya Junction in the Dotan Valley in Samaria. In 1969, his remains were laid to rest with a proper Jewish burial and full military honors within the military section of the Netanyah cemetery; former Irgun commander Menahem Begin and Israel Defense Forces Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren were among the escorts. In 2015, the Samaria Regional Council adopted the duty to commemorate his memory and began organizing annual pilgrimages to his grave on his death anniversary (yahrtzeit). He is remembered today as a paragon of persistence and determination and a unique hero who fell fighting for Israel.

A native of Foxford, Ireland, Mike Flanagan (1926–2014 CE) studied mechanics at a technical boarding school and trained as a tank mechanic. In 1942, although underage, he enlisted in the British Army and joined its 47th Dragoon Guards Regiment. During WWII, his armored division participated in the Allied invasion of Normandy (France) in 1944 then helped liberate some 60,000 survivors of the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen (Germany) in 1945. In the postwar era, he was among the British occupation force in neighboring Berlin, then was deployed with his regiment to India and to Syria before being stationed in the Land of Israel toward the end of the British Mandate (1923–1948). In 1948, he was serving as an army technician among the small British garrison in Haifa that lingered post-Mandate to help evacuate the heavy equipment of the British Army. There he and his friend and fellow sergeant, Scottish tank commander Harry McDonald, encountered at a local café a redheaded Haganah agent named Dov on a secret procurement mission, and agreed to sell him a truckload of jerry cans full of petrol intended for destruction. Both men—mutually dissatisfied while contemplating their prospects back home in Britain’s class-conscious society—were sympathetic to the nascent State of Israel and had been pledged payment (3,000 pounds/liras) for their assistance; thus were they readily persuaded to steal tanks from the retreating British garrison for the Haganah, soon to become the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Accordingly, on the very eve of the British evacuation (June 29), they volunteered to undertake midnight guard duty at their British military base near the Haifa airport and managed to steal from a warehouse two Cromwell tanks, which they drove overnight—after the IDF’s two large transporters supposed to convey them failed to appear—all the way to the old exhibition grounds in Tel Aviv and delivered to the IDF (June 30); the smuggled tanks were then hidden within an orchard in the Borochov neighborhood in Givatayim, and (along with a Sherman tank acquired by bribery and 10 French Hodgekiss tanks) became the crucial nucleus of the IDF’s Armored Corps. Flanagan and McDonald deserted the British Army and instead enlisted in the IDF’s newly formed 82nd tank battalion’s “B” company; during Israel’s War of Independence (1947–1949), their company fought in “Operation Danny” to capture Lod and Ramle and in “Operation Yo’av”, wherein Flanagan was injured by shrapnel from an exploded Egyptian shell that penetrated his tank’s small front window and struck his chest and head during the assault on Iraq al-Manshiya. While on active service, he met and fell in love with Ruth Levy, a soldier in the Plugot Mahatz (Palmah). He decided to settle in Israel, embraced Judaism, assumed the Hebrew name Mikhael Peleg, and married Ruth in a Tel Aviv cafe, with McDonald as his best man (apparently, the religious authorities were late for the wedding, such that an exasperated Flanagan asked McDonald, “Jesus Christ, Mac, where’s the rabbi?”). The new couple moved to Holon for a time; Peleg worked first as a mechanic for the Dan Bus Company, then as a civilian worker for the IDF he managed the tank repair department at the Armored Corps base in Julis. The couple soon joined Kibbutz Sha’ar HaAmakim, where Peleg labored in the garage and, increasingly, in the fields. He and Ruth had a son, Danny, and a daughter, Karin. After gaining farming experience on the kibbutz, he studied agronomy at Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, where he acquired a profound knowledge of plant theory, and subsequently was dispatched by the Prime Minister’s Office as an Israeli agricultural envoy to Africa, where he advised locals regarding growing methods suitable to their region: in Kenya he established a farm to grow roses and in Malawi another to grow tobacco and corn. Additionally, he served as an IDF reservist in the Sinai Campaign (Operation Kadesh) in 1956, in the Six-Day War in 1967, and in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In 1982, his wife died. He soon visited Ireland and Canada, where in Toronto he met Shirley Swartz, widow of his old friend Mo Swartz from “B” company. They soon married and Peleg remained in Canada, where he lived for the remainder of his life. In 1993, he returned to Israel to attend the funeral of his son Danny, who had died prematurely following a heart attack. He died in Toronto and was buried in Sha’ar HaAmakim’s cemetery alongside his first wife and son (at the request of his daughter and with the consent of his second wife). In 2014, he was posthumously honored by the IDF for his critical contribution to its formation and was also awarded the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor for assisting persecuted Jews during WWII and the emergence of the State of Israel. The Cromwell tanks are currently displayed at the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum in Latrun.

A disciple of Uzi Kalchaim and a distant relative (second cousin, twice removed) of Hayyim (Joseph) Sonnenfeld, Karol Efraim Sidon (1942– CE) was born in Prague (Czech Republic) to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. His father Alexander Sidon was murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camp in neighboring Theresienstadt (Terezín) during the Holocaust. He studied dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Film Academy of Music Arts in his hometown. He earned his livelihood as a screenwriter of animated films, as an editor at the journal Literární listy, as a radio dramatist for the Czech public radio broadcaster (Český rozhlas), and as a producer for a Czech puppeteer. In 1977, he was a signatory of Charter 77, the manifesto of a human rights movement cofounded by future Czechoslovakian (and Czech Republic) president Vaclav Havel. In 1978, he converted to Judaism. In 1983, as an anti-communist dissident, he was forced into exile by the communist government and migrated to West Germany, where he enrolled in Judaic studies at University of Heidelberg and earned his master’s degree. Thereafter he studied rabbinics at the Ariel Institute in Jerusalem and received rabbinical ordination (smikhah). In 1990, he returned to Czechoslovakia following the collapse of the communist regime. In 1992, he became chief rabbi of his hometown and of Czechoslovakia, soon renamed the Czech Republic in 1993. During his tenure, he became embroiled in a protracted conflict with a member of Prague Jewry’s lay leadership and the local Habad (Lubavitch) emissary over control of synagogal services in the Old New Synagogue (Altneuschul). In 2014, he stepped down as chief rabbi of Prague due to personal reasons but remains chief rabbi of the Czech Republic. He indited his masterwork, a Czech Torah translation; the novels Sen o mém otci (A Dream of My Father), Sen o mně (A Dream of Myself), Boží osten (God’s Sting), Brány mrazu (Gates of Frost), and Dvě povídky o utopencích (Two Stories of Drowning People); the science fiction novels (under the pseudonym Chaim Cigan) Atschul’s Method and Piano Live; the plays Dvojí zákon (The Dual Law), Latriny (The Latrines), Labyrint (cirkus podle Komenského) (Labyrinth, Circus According to Comenius), Shapira, Zpívej mi na cestu (Sing Me for the Trip), and Maringotka Zuzany Kočové (Caravan of Zuzana Kočová); the screenplays Zběhové a poutníci (Deserters and Pilgrims), Ptáčkové, sirotci a blázni (Birds, Orphans and Fools), Dovidenia v pekle priatelia (See You in Hell, Friends), Otcové a děti (Fathers and Sons), Adam a Gabriel (Adam and Gabriel), and Bohemia Docta aneb Labyrint světa a lusthauz srdce (Bohemia Docta or Labyrinth of the World and Lusthauz of the Heart); the essays “Evangelium podle Josefa Flavia” (“The Gospel according to Flavius Josephus”) and “Návrat Abrahamův” (“The Return of Abraham”); the interview collections Když umřít, tak v Jeruzalémě (If One Must Die, Let It at Least Be in Jerusalem) and Sedm slov (Seven Words); and the children’s book (under his wife Marcela Třebická’s name) Pohádky ze čtyř šuplíčků (Fairy Tales from Four Drawers). He married and divorced thrice. He has a son, Daniel, and two daughters, Magdalena and Kateřina.
A native of Lebanon, Ibrahim Yassin (1962– CE) was born into a non-religious Muslim family from a small Shi’ite village. From his youth he engaged in shepherding and animal husbandry. During the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), his family became affiliated with the South Lebanese Army; over the course of that conflict, he was horrified by the actions of Palestinian Arab terrorist groups and of the Syrian Army. In 1982, during Israel’s “Operation Peace for Galilee”, he sought and received assistance on behalf of his pregnant wife Diba from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who flew her via helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Thereafter he became an informant for IDF military intelligence. In 1985, he was ambuscaded and abducted by Hezbollah terrorists who incarcerated him in an underground bunker for a year, during which time they interrogated him, tortured him, cut him with knives, starved him, and even burned to death his newborn son before his eyes. When his captors became convinced he had become a true believer in their cause, they finally released him; unbeknownst to them, he had privately determined to seek vengeance against them and to engage in espionage for Israel. In 1986, he joined Hezbollah’s inner circle and at one point was part of a terrorist squad that planned to attack an Israeli military base, but snuck away to expose their plans to the IDF. When he proposed serving as a mole for Israel, he was investigated for several months and went through a rigorous system of background checks and personality tests before being accepted. For a decade he passed sensitive information to the IDF via his handlers Tzachi Bareket and Yoav Mordekhai; ultimately, he was able to disrupt many of Hezbollah’s plans, prevent terrorist attacks, and save the lives of scores of Israeli soldiers. In 1997, once some Hezbollah members had grown suspicious of him, he and his family—a wife and five children—fled Lebanon and were smuggled into Israel, where they settled in Tzfat. In 2000, he attended synagogal services on Yom Kippur and decided to become a proselyte. He embarked upon the conversion process, which was supervised by Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Tzfat. In 2001, he embraced Judaism and assumed the Jewish name Avraham Sinai. His entire family also converted (his wife Diba assumed the Jewish name Ziva), and in time he himself received rabbinical ordination (smikhah). He indited the memoir A Martyr from Lebanon: Life in the Shadow of Danger. He now has seven children; four of his sons have served in the IDF, and his son Amos received a presidential citation for distinguished service in the Golani Brigade in 2016. He is the subject of a documentary, The Rabbi from Hezbollah (2019), which was exhibited at numerous Jewish film festivals. Currently he is preoccupied with establishing beehives and raising goats and chickens.
A native of Mbabane, Swaziland (Eswatini), Nkosinathi Gamedze (1963– CE), one of eight siblings, was born into the royal Gamedze clan (one of two native royal clans). His entire family converted from pagan ancestor worship to Christianity. When the occupying British transferred the monarchy to the rival Dlamini clan, Gamedze’s grandfather abdicated as king of Swaziland—a small, landlocked kingdom bordering South Africa and Mozambique—and became a pastor; his father became the nation’s paramount chief, high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and minister of education. The young prince attended private schools first at home then in London, England. In 1986, he earned his bachelor’s degree in modern languages and translations from Oxford University. In 1987, he became an official translator of the German language for the supreme court of South Africa. In 1988, he earned his master’s degree in Italian and German from University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. That same year, while bored during an Italian literature class, he became intrigued upon glimpsing a peer writing backwards in a strange script, which he was informed was Hebrew. His discovery of the Hebrew language stimulated his interest in Jewish texts; he developed a particular love of Moses ben Maimon’s Mishneh Torah, which he carried with him wherever he went and discussed with his Jewish friends in South Africa. After meeting Moshe Sharon, a visiting professor from Israel, he received a full scholarship to study for his doctoral degree in Hebrew language at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and migrated to Israel, where he also took classes in Jewish philosophy (mahshavah) at the Or Sameah academy of Jerusalem. In 1989, after several months of study, he experienced an identity crisis and vacationed to Rome, Italy in an attempt to distance himself from his Judaic destiny (thinking to himself, “Barukh Hashem, I’ve escaped Judaism”), but soon found himself lamenting the suffering of Jews at the hands of Christians, reciting the “Shema” prayer in his hotel room near St. Peter’s Basilica, unable to eat breakfast in the hotel dining room on a day that turned out to be Yom Kippur, and attending synagogal services in the Jewish ghetto. Thus he deliberated no more and resolved to convert (“I had a talk with God, and I said to Him, ‘Well, if that’s what You want—that’s it’”); he returned to Jerusalem and informed his rabbis (though not his parents) of his decision. In 1991, he embraced Judaism, assumed the Hebrew name Natan ben Avraham, and became Natan Gamedze. He continued his Judaic studies at Or Sameah for another four years, during which time he engaged in the collegial study method (havruta) with partners including Canadian-Jewish historian Henry Abramson. From 1995–2000, he studied advanced rabbinics at the Brisk academy of Jerusalem and thereafter received rabbinical ordination (smikhah). While in Jerusalem he met and married the Ashkenazic Jewess, formerly of New York City, Shayna Golda Gordon. The couple moved first to Beitar Ilit, where they lived for the first two years of their marriage and where he learned in a men’s religious college (kollel), then to Tzfat, where he became an instructor at the Shalom Rav academy and at the Sha’arei Binah girls seminary. He subsequently became a lecturer for an international Jewish outreach (kiruv) organization. He and his wife returned to Jerusalem, where they currently reside. Gamedze is fluent in 14 languages—half African, half European—including French, German, Italian, English, Hebrew, Afrikaans, and Zulu. He regards his conversion in terms of “bringing additional glory to God.” He has a son, Menahem David, and a daughter, Shoshanah; both of his children have served in the Israel Defense Forces. He is the subject of a documentary, Compass: The Black Jew from Royal Swaziland (2008), produced and televised by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is known today as the African prince who became a rabbi and as a highly accomplished linguist.

A native of New York City, Ivana Marie (Ivanka) Trump (1981– CE) was born into great wealth as the daughter of American real estate mogul (and later two-time American president) Donald Trump and his first wife, Czech-American model and socialite Ivana Trump. She attended the Chapin School in Manhattan then transferred to the boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford (Connecticut). As an adolescent, she was represented by Elite Model Management and walked the runways for fashion designers such as Thierry Mugler and Versace. In 1997, she graced the cover of Seventeen magazine and cohosted the Miss Teen USA pageant, partly owned by her father, on live television. After a while she found the modeling industry unappealing, and redirected her ambitions toward the family business. She studied at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. for two years, but transferred to and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania in 2004. She then worked as a project manager in the retail development department of the real estate company Forest City Ratner. In 2005, she joined the Trump Organization—her father’s global real estate company whose numerous holdings comprise residential buildings, hotels, casinos, and golf resorts—and soon rose to become an executive vice president overseeing its development and acquisitions, alongside her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, with whom she cofounded the Trump Hotel Collection, a successful luxury hotel management company. From 2006–2015, she appeared as a boardroom judge on her father’s NBC reality television shows The Apprentice and its spinoff Celebrity Apprentice. In 2007, she debuted a fashion brand, the Ivanka Trump Collection, which eventually included diamond and gold jewelry, handbags, shoes, and apparel, sold in her company’s retail stores and in several department stores. In 2009, she embraced Judaism, assumed the Hebrew name Yael, and married real estate developer and entrepreneur Jared Kushner. In 2013, she was involved in a lease deal that permitted the Trump Organization to convert the Old Post Office building in Washington into a mixed-use property featuring a luxury hotel, then supervised the building’s $200 million transformation (the hotel opened in 2016). From 2017–2021, she served during the first Trump Administration as Advisor to the President and became director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship. In 2017, she accompanied her father on his first official visit to Israel as president, and participated in conferences highlighting women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship in Japan then in India. In 2018, she terminated her fashion brand amid controversy related to ethics concerns. That same year, she attended the opening of the U.S. Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. In 2019, she launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, designed to help women succeed in the workplace. In 2020, she received the Friend of Israel Award from the Israeli-American Council, and also organized events at the White House to combat human trafficking and to support its victims. In 2022, she testified before the congressional committee investigating the January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as during an inquiry into the Trump Organization’s business practices, and was named in a lawsuit for financial fraud brought by the attorney general of New York against the Trump Organization (in 2024, the defendants were ordered to disgorge a total of $364 million of ill-gotten gains, among other penalties, though the verdict was appealed). She authored two bestselling books, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life (2009) and Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success (2017). She has been profiled in several fashion magazines, including Vogue, Glamour, Marie Claire, and Elle. Her philanthropic work has included support for Chai Lifeline, United Hatzalah, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and the Women’s Entrepreneur Center at the National Urban League in Baltimore. Since leaving Washington in 2021, she has resided with her family in Surfside (Florida). She has a daughter, Arabella Rose, and two sons, Joseph Frederick and Theodore James.
Today there are a relatively large number of proselytes in America and elsewhere, mostly due to marriage. Modern converts have come from all backgrounds and walks of life, including: models (Karlie Kloss), actors/actresses (Caroll Baker, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Jr., Isla Fisher, Zooey Deschanel), broadcasters (Joan Lunden, Mary Hart, John King, Morgan Ortagus), and authors (Nahida Lazarus, Karen Tintori, Julius Lester, Jamaica Kincaid, Geraldine Brooks, Daniel Silva).
Overall, Jews have historically integrated proselytes into their communities worldwide. From the native Jewish perspective, the sincerity of the convert is always what has mattered most. Since at least the Talmudic era, it was deemed sinful for Jews from birth to remind proselytes of their origins or to belittle their lineage. Admittedly, rabbinical literature records statements both favorable and unfavorable toward proselytism and proselytes; negative experiences with particular insincere or recreant converts—especially during wartime or periods of persecution—occasionally engendered negative attitudes, but these were exceptional, not representative.
It was generally acknowledged that converts of conviction enriched Jewry; indeed, not only did King David descend from Ruth the Moabitess, but such leading sages as Shemayah & Avtalyon (Pollion), Akiva ben Joseph, and Meir Ba’al HaNeis reportedly descended not only from converts, but from wicked adversaries of Israel (e.g., Sisera, Sennacherib, Haman, Nero). And certain sages in the medieval era even suggested that the purpose of the Jewish dispersion among the nations was to attract new adherents. Notably, the all-important “Amidah” prayer, recited thrice daily, includes an appeal for divine mercy on behalf of righteous proselytes (geirei hatzeddek). Moreover, there is a Jewish tradition that when the Almighty determined to grant the Torah to humankind, He offered it to every nation but they all refused to receive it; however, while the overwhelming majority of each nation rejected it, nevertheless there were minorities among them that wished to accept the Torah—and from those individuals are derived the souls of righteous proselytes.
In the final analysis, all native Jews descend from a proselyte: the patriarch Abraham. Thus the predominant attitude of Jews toward proselytes has been—beyond the usual initial surprise—to accept and welcome those who cleave to the House of Jacob and to bring them near under the wings of the divine presence, after the fashion of Bo’az toward Ruth: “May the Lord reward your deeds, and may your reward be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have sought refuge” (Ruth 2:12).