SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

the report insists that this is only a baraita, and nowhere does Rabbi Judah mention it as a definite law in the Mishnah .

There is value, of course, in all this argumentation. It indicates, at least, that there was no legal requirement in Torah and Mishnah , only these change, off-hand, and debatable references. Certainly this fact must explain the debate in the Talmud itself as to initiatory rites of a proselyte(Yevamot 46a and b). There Rabbi Eliezar says that circumcision is the more important of the two rites, and therefore if a proselyte has been circumcised but has not bathed, he is a full-fledged ger. Rabbi Joshua, on the other hand, considers the bathing more important and says that if a ger has bathed and not been circumcised, he is a full-fledged ger.

Then, at the top of 46b, the statement is found that"all agree that if he has not been circumcised, he is full-fledged ger"; but further on it says, in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, that he is not a ger unless he both bathes and circumcises. So clearly the

initiatory rite was still, for a time at least, open to some debate and question.

This explains, perhaps, why in the Middle Ages there were occasional opinions which indicate that circumcision is not a sine qua non for the validity of conversion. There is the remarkable statement of the great Jewish polemical writer, Lippman of Mulhausen(14th-15th century), in his Sefer Nitzahon. This book, developing as a commentary on the Bible , defending our interpretation of it against Christian charges, makes an unusual statement in the commentary to Genesis 17:10, where the circumcision of males is enjoined upon Abraham as the sign of a covenant. Lippman of Mulhausen refers to the sneering statement of anti-Jews that if it were a covenant, why was not a type of covenant chosen which would include women? To which he makes the following answer:"Our faith does not depend upon

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