Bastards and Believers: Jewish Converts and Conversion from the Bible to the Present

369 Pages·2020·4.14 MB·English

by  Theodor Dunkelgrun (editor), Pawel Maciejko (editor)

Bastards and Believers
JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS
Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center
for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania
Series Editors: Shaul Magid, Francesca Trivellato,
and Steven Weitzman
A complete list of books in the series is available
from the publisher.
BASTARDS AND
BELIEVERS
Jewish Converts and Conversion
from the Bible to the Pre sent
Edited by
Theodor Dunkelgrün
and Paweł Maciejko
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from
the Publications Fund of the Herbert D. Katz Center for
Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2020 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www . upenn . edu / pennpress
Printed in the United States of Ameri ca on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Dunkelgrün, Theodor, 1976– editor. | Maciejko, Paweł, 1971– editor.
Title: Bastards and believers : Jewish converts and conversion from the Bible to
 the present / Theodor Dunkelgrün and Paweł Maciejko.
Other titles: Jewish culture and contexts.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2020] |
 Series: Jewish culture and contexts | “Publication of this volume was assisted by a
 grant from the Publications Fund of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced
 Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania.” | Includes bibliographical
 references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019031271 | ISBN 9780812251883 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Christian converts from Judaism. | Jews—Conversion to
 Christianity. | Jewish converts from Christianity. | Jewish Christians. |
 Conversion—Christianity—History. | Conversion—Judaism—History.
Classification: LCC BV2620 .B35 2020 | DDC 248.4/466—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031271
Contents
Introduction 1
Theodor Dunkelgrün and Paweł Maciejko
Chapter 1. The Term Ger and the Concept of Conversion
in the Hebrew Bible 26
Sara Japhet
Chapter 2. Ex-J ews and Early Christians: Conversion
and the Allure of the Other 42
Andrew S. Jacobs
Chapter 3. Conversion to Judaism as Reflected in the Rabbinic
Writings and Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz: Between Germany
and Northern France 58
Ephraim Kanarfogel
Chapter 4. Of Purity, Piety, and Plunder: Jewish Apostates
and Poverty in Medieval Eur ope 75
Paola Tartakoff
Chapter 5. “Cleanse Me from My Sin”: The Social and Cultural
Vicissitudes of a Converso Family in Fifteenth- Century Castile 89
Javier Castaño
Chapter 6. Converso Paulinism and Residual Jewishness: Conversion
from Judaism to Chris tian ity as a Theologico-p olitical Probl em 112
Claude B. Stuczynski
vi Contents
Chapter 7. Return by Any Other Name: Religious Change
Among Amsterdam’s New Jews 134
Anne Oravetz Albert
Chapter 8. The Persuasive Path: Giulio Morosini’s Derekh Emunah
as a Conversion Narrative 156
Michela Andreatta
Chapter 9. “Precious Books”: Conversion, Nationality,
and the Novel, 1810–2010 182
Sarah Gracombe
Chapter 10. Between Eu ro pean Judaism and British Protestantism
in the Early Nineteenth Century 207
Elliott Horo witz
Chapter 11. When Life Imitates Art: Shtetl Sociability
and Conversion in Imperial Rus sia 231
Ellie Schainker
Chapter 12. Opposition, Integration, and Ambiguity:
Toward a History of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s Policies
on Conversion to Judaism 250
Netanel Fisher
Notes 273
Contributors 349
Index 353
Introduction
Theodor dunkelgrün and Paweł Maciejko
In The Merchant of Venice (act 3, scene 5), the clown Launcelot Gobbo briefly
becomes a theologian, explaining to Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, that she is
damned beyond salvation:
Clown Yes, truly, for look you, the sins of the father are to be laid
upon the c hildren therefore, I promise you, I fear you. I was
always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of
the m atter. Therefore be of good cheer, for, truly, I think
you are damned. T here is but one hope in it that can do you
any good, and that is but a kind of bastard hope neither.
Jessica And what hope is that, I pray thee?
Clown Marry, you may partly hope that your f ather got you not,
that you are not the Jew’s daughter.
Jessica That were a kind of bastard hope indeed, so the sins of my
mother should be visited upon me.
Clown Truly, then, I fear you are damned both by f ather and
mother: thus, when I shun Scylla your f ather, I fall into
Charybdis your m other; well, you are gone both ways.
As David Nirenberg has written, The Merchant of Venice is “a drama of
chronic conversion whose every participant— including playwright and
viewer— moves suspended like a compass needle trembling between Juda-
ism and Chris tian ity.”1 It is only through conversion that Jessica escapes the
collective guilt that Christian doctrine had attributed to Jews for centuries
2 Theodor Dunkelgrün and Paweł Maciejko
and would continue to attribute to them for centuries to come. Without con-
version, her hopes to escape her Jewish heritage would be illegitimate “bas-
tard hopes.” Yet no sooner has Jessica declared her salvation by marrying a
Christian than Gobbo the theologian turns back into Gobbo the clown:
Jessica I shall be saved by my husband; he hath made me a
Christian!
Clown Truly, the more to blame he; we w ere Christians enow
before, e’en as many as could well live on by another. This
making of Christians w ill raise the price of hogs if we grow
all to be pork eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the
coals for money.
Gobbo’s (that is, Shakespeare’s) joke is on the Christians: even beyond con-
version, the Jew continues to affect their lives for the worse— and indeed,
remains somehow essentially Jewish. Or, in this case, it is Jessica who becomes
the true Christian, while the clown exchanges his economy of salvation for
the supply and demand of the Venetian market. In terms of the play, Gobbo
(whose name alludes to the Italian form of Job) becomes more Jewish than
Jessica. Nirenberg speaks of the play’s “systematically staged confusion of
Christian and Jew,” arguing that “it is through this more general— indeed
all- pervasive— confusion that Shakespeare achieves his dramatization of a
crucial question: How can a society built on ‘Jewish’ foundations of com-
merce, contract, property, and law consider itself Christian?”2 The questions
spring forth: Can a Jew become a legitimate Christian? Is Chris tian ity a
legitimate offspring of Judaism? How do answers to these questions change
when the terms of that legitimacy change? Is it pos si ble to leave Judaism
entirely? Is it pos si ble to become a Jew? Are all Christians somehow Jew-
ish? Are all Jews potentially Christian? Is a convert a Jew, a Christian, or
perhaps a category unto itself? Does he or she become an illegitimate child
of the old tradition? A legitimate child of the new one? Is such an individual
a bastard or a believer? Or both?
The term conversion is profoundly polysemous. We use it to speak of a
change of religion: Jews who turn to religions other than Judaism and non-
Jews who tie their fates to that of the Jewish people. We use it when talking
about Christians becoming Muslim (or vice versa), Christians becoming
“born again” or moving from one Christian church or confession to another,
or efforts to Christianize or Islamize indigenous populations of Asia, Africa,
Introduction 3
and the Amer i cas. And we use it to speak about modern, secular people dis-
covering spiritual creeds and joining religious communities. Once a meta-
phor drawn from astronomy and alchemy to describe religious change, we
now use it as a meta phor drawn from religion to describe vari ous changes of
mind, such as “conversions” to po liti cal ideologies, philosophies of life, and
all manner of vocation. Converts themselves use the term for a plurality of
experiences, too: forced and voluntary, sudden and extended, public and pri-
vate, social and metaphysical. This vast historical, cultural, and contextual
variety implies, as the medievalist Karl F. Morrison puts it, that “it would
be a confusion of categories to use the word conversion as though it were an
instrument of critical analy sis, equally appropriate to any culture or reli-
gion. . . . T he word is more properly a subject, rather than a tool, of analy-
sis.”3 At the same time, to label something “conversion” is not to describe
but to interpret. Thus, conversion can certainly be an analytical instrument
in the hands of both the convert and her historian, just not an objective one.
The history of conversion, in this sense, is a history of such subjective
interpretations— that is, a history of what it meant for people to have been
called, or to call themselves, converts.
It is a central premise of this volume that, while we do take Jewish con-
version to be a par tic u lar version of a universal phenomenon (“conversion”)
in a religiously diverse world, we also consider it a specific phenomenon, quite
unlike any other act we use that term to describe. Our sphere of interest,
then, encompasses conversions of non- Jews to Judaism but especially con-
versions of Jews to Chris tian ity. The importance of conversion to Judaism
for understanding what a “Jewish conversion” is seems self- explanatory; re-
stricting conversion from Judaism to cases of conversion to Chris tian ity is
not. The decision, then, warrants a word of explanation.
We believe that the Jews’ conversion to Chris tian ity offers a unique lens
through which one can see Jewish conversion. To be sure, conversions of Jews
to Islam were numerically as impor tant and shaped the histories of entire
branches of world Jewry over hundreds of years. Yet—we posit— the under-
standing or concept of Jewish conversion that prevailed among Jews and non-
Jews alike was shaped by conversions to Chris tian ity more than anything
else. We can account for this in several ways. First, Chris tian ity’s relation to
Judaism differs from its relation to any other religion. Chris tian ity teaches
that it is the set of prophecies of the Hebrew Bible that Jesus Christ fulfills;
it is that fulfillment which turns the Tanakh into the Old Testament,
incomplete without the New. In this supersessionist sense, Chris tian ity is