On Jewish proselytism

Factual Questions
1

I was reading a bit about the Khazars, a rather strong and important Turkic kingdom of the 1st millenium C.E. that was largely Jewish (and, according to some, the ancestors of the Ashkenazic Jews).

What struck me about the story (legend?) of the conversion of the Khazars (or at least their nobility) to Judaism was that it was an “active” conversion - the Khazars sought a deputation of Jews, as well as deputations of Christians and Muslims, to present their cases as to why the Khazars should adopt their respective religion, and the Jews won.
What wasn’t surprising to me was that the Jewish deputation won, but instead that they participated in the first place. It had long been clear to me - and strongly emphasized by my religious Jewish friends - that Judaism was emphatically not a proselytizing religion. Converts were welcome, but not sought.

So I did a little poking around on Google, and found various links asserting that Judaism was originally a strongly proselytizing religion. Claims were made that anywhere from 10-25% of the Roman Empire was Jewish. Unfortunately, just about all the web pages I found on the subject were, in one way or another, suspect - usually advocacy pieces, and either I couldn’t find anything about the affiliations of the authors, or their affiliations were somewhat (to totally) screwball.

So, I was hoping someone here could give me the Straight Dope[supTM[/sup].

  1. Was there a tradition of proselytism in pre-Rabbinic Judaism?
  2. Did the tradition continue for any period of time in Rabbinic Judaism?
  3. Was the tradition, if it existed, grounded in a religious imperative - that is, did G-d command the Jews to convert other nations? Or was it just a natural evolution of the religion?
  4. Again if the tradition existed, and regardless of its basis, why did it end? The reason given in the web sites I found was that the post-Constantine Roman Empire imposed a death penalty on proselytizing Jews. Is this correct?
    4a) If the end to Jewish proselytism came about due to persecution, is there now a Talmudic stricture against proselytism, or is it now simply the new tradition not to proselytize? Or is there an (whatdoyoucallit?) an emergency decree (permanently or temporarily) barring proselytism by Jews?

Thanks in advance,

Sua

2

**

It’s not so much that there was an “active movement” of conversion to Judaism, as much as there were times in history (and the Roman Empire period was one) where conversion to Judaism was far more common than it is today. There may have been relaxed standards at one time or another (i.e. where they didn’t turn away converts as vigourously as they do now), but there was, to my knowledge, no active campaign to convert non-Jews to Judaism.

**

There is no impertative of that nature, becuase of the beliefs of Judaism. Judaism doesn’t require one to be Jewish to merit the afterlife or even be considered a good, moral person. As such, the need to “convert” everyone is simply not there. There are campaigns that arise from time to time to try to get non-Jews to obey the seven Noahide commandments, but that’s not the same thing as converting people.

**

Well, as said above, I don’t think the premise for these questions is valid, so…

You’re welcome.

Zev Steinhardt

3

The tradition hasn’t ended entirely. The Lubavitcher sect continues to shill their brand of Judaism to anybody who will listen, as well as anybody who won’t. They seem to take the view that if we’re not doing it their way, we’re not Jews. Needless to say, many of us in the Reform and Conservative branches (let alone seculars like me, and Reconstructionists) take a rather dim view of them.

I realize that the above sounds hostile, but I don’t like anybody who hawks religion to people who aren’t interested. By and large, Judaism places more value on how you live your life than on how you label it, and conversion is often discouraged – if you’re living a good and proper life, why upset your family by making this change?

4

Zev, I’ve got to disagree with you. There was, at times, in Judaism, a pro-proslytizing sentiment. For example, the Hasmonean kings conquered the Gallilee and Idumea, and forcibly converted the Gallileans and Idumeans.

There are also pro-conversion messages in the Talmud and other Jewish writings.

Leviticus Rabbah 2:9

Gerim 4:3

Judaism never put as high an emphasis on conversion as Christianity or Islam, but a pro-conversion attitude existed.

I’d say that first Christianity, and then Islam, both of which had laws against converting from their religions, pretty much destroyed whatever proslytizing movement there was in Judaism.

5

I think you imply this here but it is not clear. The Lubavitchers only proselytize to other Jews, never to non-Jews. It’s not enough for them that you be Jewish, you have to be their kind of Jewish. They’ll take converts but you have to come to them.

Haj

6

That’s another matter altogether. Sua was talking about the conversion of non-Jews to Judaism. What Lubavitch does is try to bring non-Orthodox Jews into Orthodoxy. They don’t target non-Jews.

Zev Steinhardt

7

Captain Amazing,

I’m not sure if a forced conversion is a valid one under Jewish law. In any event, the Hasmonean kings did not always follow Jewish law.

Furthermore, stating that converts are highly praised in Judaism (which is true) does not equate to encouraging them. In any event, I will concede that at times in the past, the trend of active discouragement was either less than it is today or may have even been absent altogether.

Zev Steinhardt

8

From the OP: What wasn’t surprising to me was that the Jewish deputation won, but instead that they participated in the first place. It had long been clear to me - and strongly emphasized by my religious Jewish friends - that Judaism was emphatically not a proselytizing religion. Converts were welcome, but not sought.

I don’t see why it would be surprising that they participated–the Khazars sought them out (i.e. inquired about becoming converts). Why wouldn’t the Jews respond with the information requested?

9

Thanks all for the responses.

A few follow-ups.
First, any comments on the assertions that a goodly percentage of the Roman Empire was Jewish? (Again, the figures given range from 10-25%.) If those figures are near accurate, it begs a few more questions, but let’s pin that down first.

Second, how does that Khazar conversion fit in with the various POVs on proselytism addressed above?

Third, a bit off topic, but is there any credence to the theory that the Ashkenazim are descendants of the Khazars, rather than of Semetic Jews?

Sua

10

**

I can’t speak with any authority on this, but I highly doubt it. The Roman Empire, at it’s height, was most of the known world at the time. To say that even 5% of the known world was Jewish is kind of stretching it, IMHO.

See the FAQ for soc.culture.jewish (go to question 3 of this section).

Zev Steinhardt

11

:smack: Make that question 4. Sorry.

Zev Steinhardt

12

You might want to check out www.khazaria.com. I’m not a historian, and certainly not a Jewish historian, but Kevin Brook posts to some newsgroups I read on www.jewishgen.org, and he has some interesting things to say. Caveat lector, however.

13

Well, I don’t know that forced conversions are valid under the law, and you’re right…the Hasmoneans didn’t always follow Jewish law, but whether they should have converted the people or not, they did, and, as far as I can tell, the converts were generally recognized as Jews, except by some members of the school of Shammai. In the Talmud, the term for them is “Gerei Ayarot”. (The question about Herod’s status didn’t come from the fact that his father was Idumean, but that his mother was an Arab).

I think we’re saying the same thing in different ways…I’m not arguing for a big population of ancient Jewish missionaries…just that, until the various Christian and Muslim states passed laws against conversion to Judaism, conversion wasn’t discouraged.

Sua, the 10-25% figure seems pretty high to me. There was a fairly large Jewish population in the city of Rome itself, but those numbers seem high for the entire empire. The 10-25% might be referring to gerim toshav, who were non-Jews who practiced a kind of ethical monotheism based on the Noachide laws. (Can you still call them gerim toshav if the live outside Israel?) 10-25% still seems high, but I know there was a movement in the late Republic and early Empire embracing the Noachide commandments.

As for the Khazar conversion, Judaism has never, to the best of my knowledge, forbidden conversion, and I know that Spanish Jews were fascinated and curious about the Khazars…you get the attitude in a lot of Spanish Jewish writing, “We Jews are just as good as the gentiles, because we also have a powerful Jewish state”. There’s some question as to the extent that the Khazars were Jewish…there’s no question that the Khans and upper classes were, but there’s some evidence suggesting that the average Khazar kept the old shamanistic religion, and gave lip service to Judaism, if that.

As for the Ashkenazim being descendants of the Khazars, I’ve heard it claimed, but I tend to doubt it. It’s usually a claim without evidence, and while the Khazars may have been some of the ancestors of some Ashkenazi Jews, both the “Cohen gene” (a genetic, Y-chromosome marker found in a good deal of Kohanim, showing that they shared a common male ancestor), and certain drug interactions and allergies that appear more often in Arabs and Jews then in the rest of the population) seem to argue against it.

14

The reason the Khazars converted to the Jewish faith is not because of proselytizing, but because if they choose Christianity it would have upset the Turks and visa-versa if they choose Islam.
The same thing happened when the Russians became Greek-Orthodox and were playing the Muslims and Roman Catholics against each other.

This site tells the story and comes up with the theory that Russian Jews are a hybrid branch.

15

Regarding the Khazar-Ashkenazim connection:
Arthur Koestler wrote a book in the late 1970s that posited that the majority of Ashkenazim were actually descendants of the Khazars. It was a provocative idea, but written as a popular work rather than as a serious historical study. Unfortunately, a number of anti-Jewish groups seized on his theory as “proof” that the “Jews were not really Jews.” (melvig.org has the worst and largest attempt to make this point, although their page has been stolen by a large number of other hate sites–no honor among bigots, I guess).

Now one aspect of the Khazar-Ashkenazim connection is intriguing. A number of philologists (including several Israelis) have come to the conclusion that Yiddish, although it is based on a Germanic vocabulary, has a very strong component of Slavic influence, particularly in syntax and structure–almost as if a Slavic-speaking group had adopted the German language without adopting its speech patterns. Since most historians agree that survivors of the destruction of the Khazar kingdom fled West into what is now Ukraine, Hungary, and the Danube valley, this leads to speculation as to just exactly what actually happened.

Recently, however, DNA studies (reported in the free-but-requiring-registration New York Times site) have demonstrated that the Khazar connection is tenuous, at best, and that the older view that the Ahkenazim were the descendants of mid-Eastern people who probably migrated East from Central Europe has more substance than any other hypothesis. (This DNA study also posits a view that Jewish male traders intermarried extensively with local women which might provide an interesting hypothetical explanation of the Yiddish question.)

Regarding the number of converts and the size of the Diaspora prior to 70 C.E., Dr. Solomon Grayzel in his book discussed that at some length (although I won’t be able to quote him until I get home). His interpretation was that the emphasis on education and morality tended to help Jewish traders rise to the top of the social ladder, encouraging other to admire and join them. I don’t recall a 10% figure for the whole empire, but he does discuss very large communities in Egypt, Libya, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. I’ll dig out his comments this evening.

16

I have often wondered about the huge Jewish population in Alexandria ( I bet there they were 10-25%). Could such a population have only been immigrants and the descendants of immigrants or would the attraction of a monotheistic religion had converted large numbers of Egyptians. And not only Egyptians “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesoptamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontis and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene. … Rome … Cretans and Arabians.”
The only other religion that could be generously considered monotheistic would that of the Magi. At the time we are discussing, except for the far eastern Persian lands, it had been corrupted with Hellenistic and Parthian influences.
If monotheism was the thinking man’s religion, which certain Greek philosophers seem to indicate, Judaism was the only game in town.
Zev, you mention “merit the afterlife”. Was that not a Pharisaic minority doctrine at this time (the year 0).

17

Thanks, hajario and [zev.** I appreciate the correction of a long-held misconception.

18

I cannot find any population estimates of the Diaspora in Grayzel’s A History of the Jews. (He provides some estimates for the city of Rome based on captives from the defeats of 70 and 132, but does not mention numbers for other cities, earlier.

As he presents it, blessed by many years of peace (interrupted only by the Greek oppression at the time of the Maccabees), the land had been turned extensively to agriculture resulting in a population boom that reached 2 1/2 million in the first century B.C.E. While the Hasmoneans attempted to secure more room through conquest, the more typical response was emigration. The dynamics of conversion that he then describes has the people surrounding the Jews seeing an educated, industrious group who seemed to have a great deal of success in their business dealings while following a strict ethical code. At the same time, following the thoughts of the Greek Philosophers, many people were questioning the nature of polytheistic religions in which the members of the pantheon often cavorted about like randy teenagers rather than comporting themselves like beings who judged and blessed humanity. In that situation, many people did convert to Judaism.

Although Grayzel does not publish any numbers, he notes that the Roman Strabo remarked that there was hardly a place in the world where one could not find Jews.

19

mipsman:

Not at all. Belief in reward and punishment in the afterlife is central to Jewish belief (as understood by the Pharisees), it wasn’t merely a minority of them that held of that doctrine.

20

A couple of comments/corrections on the above:

  1. “Gerei arayot” means “converts because of lions.” The reference is to the Cuthean (Samaritan) colonists, who were being attacked by lions and attributed this to the fact that they were offending G-d by not observing His laws (see I Kings 17:24ff, especially vv. 25-28). I have never seen this expression used anywhere of the Hasmonean converts. (It’s true that they both have in common the fact that their conversion was insincere, but there is a crucial difference: the Idumean converts were compelled by the power of the state; the Samaritans were indeed motivated by fear, but there was no external force majeure compelling them to convert rather than, say, trying to get rid of the lions in some other way.)

  2. There are several disputes in the Talmud about the status of the Samaritans: (a) there are differing opinions about whether to classify them as gerei arayot or as gerei emet (sincere converts) (Kiddushin 75b); (b) assuming that they are gerei arayot, there is a dispute whether such a conversion is valid post facto (Yevamot 24b). The school of Shammai doesn’t figure in any of these debates - all of the disputants are sages who lived a century or so later.

  3. The Talmud (Bava Batra 3b) calls Herod a “slave of the Hasmonean dynasty,” and further on states that “anyone claiming descent from the Hasmoneans is [a descendant of Herod, and therefore] a slave.” A slave, in this context, is a quasi-Jew, who has undergone circumcision and is obligated to observe some of the commandments; his mother’s nationality is immaterial. (From the ensuing narrative (ibid. 4a) it seems that Herod was indeed considered a Jew, albeit one who was not acting as a Jew should.)

Based on this last point, then, it seems that what the Hasmoneans did when they conquered the Idumeans was to force on them the status of slaves - which involves (partial) conversion to Judaism. (I don’t know whether this means that they actually enslaved them.) Jewish law states that this partial conversion must be performed with the slave’s consent (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Forbidden Relations 14:9), so clearly the Hasmoneans were not following Jewish law in this case.

Yes, since “toshav” (=“resident”) means that the Torah allows such a person to live in the Land of Israel if he wants to.

There are a variety of halachic opinions as to what a ger toshav is, though (Talmud, Avodah Zarah 64b and Arachin 29a). In particular, there is an opinion - which is accepted as the final halachah - that the concept of ger toshav applies only when most of the Jewish people live in the Land of Israel (which has not been the case since the reign of Josiah, circa 600 BCE). So the non-Jewish ethical monotheists that you mention would have been considered gerei toshav only according to some Rabbis (although, of course, they may well have identified themselves as Jews or quasi-Jews regardless).