CONVERSION IN REFORM HALAKHAH

commandments. We have felt a good bit of discomfort with such a notion particularly as we have suffered from attempts to convert us for so many centuries. Although such efforts are now relatively rare in comparison to an earlier age, we have been stopped by the memory of those attempts directed toward us.

As we look back over almost a half century of fairly intensive discussion of converts and conversion, we can begin to draw some conclusions. The basic questions, sometimes already asked in the Talmud , have been raised again. In this century we have almost always taken a positive and open attitude with the hope of welcoming converts and integrating them into the community. Every effort has been made to provide positive answers while at the same time drawing clear lines of demarcation between us and the Christian community.

We have redefined what is important in conversion by including the ritual requirements, but leaving them as secondary.

Learning and acquiring a practical understanding of Judaism ranks first for us and we have made this clear in our halakhic development.

The initial open attitude toward non-Jews , particularly in connection with burial in our cemeteries, was seen as a friendly gesture not as a way of breaking down barriers of distinction between Judaism and Christianity . As that was not always clear in the early responsa, we have tried to be more specific in other areas as they have arisen and made those distinctions quite clear. The entire area of personal and family relationships with non-Jews will always have many gray areas which cannot be defined in advance, but we are now making the attempt to define all that is possible. Patrilineal descent has helped this in some ways and made it more difficult in others. The primary difficulty with that decision has been in its lack of definition of what are appropriate Jewish acts