INTRODUCTION

These essays explore conversion to Judaism and the issues connected with it in the late twentieth century. Our problems are very different from those of the past; they will be discussed in these

pages.

Conversion to Judaism by individuals and groups has been part of the Jewish heritage from the early Biblical period onward, but not in our modern sense. In the Biblical period it meant joining a community more than a religion. We should note that even this was peripheral to other concerns.

In the patriarchal tales of the Bible , the stories of the conquest of Canaan , and the period of the judges and kings, however, conversion to Judaism remained a minor matter. Much more important was the dangerous attraction of other religions; the prophets consistently spoke about the problems which those religions caused the Israelites and Judeans .

The only militant effort at conversion to Judaism occurred during the period of the Maccabees (165-125 B.C.E.), when the Idumeans were forced to become Jews . Subsequently in the Roman Empire we sought converts through persuasion. Some historians feel that the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire consisted of more converts than of born Jews . In addition, many people were attracted to Judaism but never officially joined the Jewish People; those individuals called Yirei Adonai or Gerei Tzedeq were loosely identified with Judaism and sympathetic to its ideas. The number of such individuals in the Roman Empire as well as the size of the Jewish population in the Roman Empire remains an area of scholarly disagreement.