Becoming Jewish In Times And Places Of Danger – OpEd

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President-elect Donald Trump picked Morgan Ortagus as a deputy to Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East, suggesting her appointment was influenced by other Republicans.

During Trump’s first term, Morgan Ortagus was part of the team that worked on the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations. Morgan Ortagus, a former evangelical Christian, converted to Judaism in 2007.

Jeannie Suk Gersen writes in the New Yorker Magazine (12/2/2024) “I was raised in a Korean American evangelical church, where people spoke in tongues as the Holy Spirit moved them. My Bible teacher referred to me as “devil’s spawn” because I had a habit of picking arguments with Scripture. (Eve’s lust for knowledge wasn’t sinful, I remember declaring; God’s curse on humankind was an overreaction.) By the time I reached adulthood, I’d developed an emphatically rationalist world view, which for a while I thought precluded religion. 

But I knew the first books of the Old Testament cold, and I still sometimes prayed to God. I also nurtured a nascent affinity for Judaism, born of both disposition and circumstance. My father, a physician, did his medical residency at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, where his department chief was an Orthodox Jew, and he’d occasionally serve as a “Shabbos goy,” turning on lights for the religious doctor on the Sabbath. Like many devout Christians, my mother was fascinated with Israel, and she visited Israel often.

In 2023, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, my friend Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl of Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in New York City, gave a sermon focussed on atoning for the “sin of passing judgment,” and in particular judgment of intermarriage. Rabbi Buchdahl has a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother. 

I’ve known her since we attended college together, in the nineteen-nineties, when she already seemed poised to become the first East Asian American Jew ordained as a rabbi. She reached that milestone in 2001, and has built a robust following within her congregation and beyond. I live-streamed her Yom Kippur sermon from my home in Cambridge.

Rabbi Buchdahl drew a contrast between the Bible’s Ezra, who promoted the idea of a Jewish “holy seed,” and Ruth, a Biblical model of conversion. A Gentile by birth, Ruth married an Israelite and, when she was later widowed, told her mother-in-law, Naomi, “Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, your God, my God.” Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David, an ancestor of the future Jewish Messiah. As Buchdahl later put it to me, “We’ve been a mixed multitude all along.” 

Plus, in her experience—contra fears about conversion “diluting” Judaism—those who join the faith often “make their Jewish spouses more Jewish.” Buchdahl invoked Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a former leader of the American Reform movement, who made the front page of the Times in 1978, when he pressed Jews to seek converts. Proselytizing is often understood to be anathema to Judaism, but Buchdahl told congregants, “Throughout Jewish history, you should know, whenever Jews felt safe, we sought new adherents. This moment in America should be such a time.”

Two weeks later came October 7th. Hamas invaded Israel, massacring some twelve hundred people and kidnapping two hundred and fifty more. Israel, in turn, launched a devastating war in Gaza that has killed approximately forty-five thousand people. Around the world, anti-Israel protests erupted, and antisemitism spiked; many Jews faced a fresh reckoning with the relationship between Israel and Jewish identity. It was a time of fear and dread and painful fractures within the Jewish community—it was no longer, as Rabbi Buchdahl had suggested, a moment when Jews widely felt at ease. Yet rabbis from a broad range of Jewish institutions observed something they hadn’t anticipated: a surge of interest in Judaism. 

Elliot Cosgrove, a Conservative rabbi and the author of the new book “For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today,” told me that since October 7th he’s seen engagement from “within and beyond the boundaries of the conventional Jewish community” at a level he’s never before witnessed. This has included increased synagogue membership, expanded enrollment in Hebrew-school programs, full houses at Shabbat services—and oversubscribed courses for people interested in becoming Jewish. 

Suddenly, my own halting path to conversion was meeting a larger movement. At Central Synagogue, another rabbi, Lisa Rubin, runs the Center for Exploring Judaism, which educates and guides Jewish-curious newcomers. Since October 7th, the program’s courses have enrolled double the usual number of students and accrued a seven-month waiting list. Rabbi Rubin told me that she warned potential converts that “this is not a great time to be stepping into Judaism.” 

Judaism is not only a faith but a tribe, a culture, and a lifestyle, and the motivations behind conversion are as varied as Jewishness itself. I spoke to converts who had always suspected that they had Jewish ancestry. Deb Kroll, a woman in her early seventies, grew up in the Bible Belt with parents who became Pentecostal leaders, but when she was a child her Christian grandmother told stories of her family fleeing at night from a county where the Ku Klux Klan was active, soon after the lynching of Leo Frank. Kroll remembers thinking, I’m a little Jewish girl who’s been born into the wrong family. 

For most of her life, she didn’t realize that it was even possible to convert to Judaism. Then, in recent years, Kroll said, DNA testing of relatives suggested that she had significant Jewish ancestry on both sides. She was studying in Rubin’s program online from her home, in Georgia, when the events of October 7th occurred. “I thought, Well, I’m not going to stop my Jewish journey out of fear,” she recalled, adding, “I throw in my lot with the Jewish people.”

As a Reform Rabbi I would add that this desire to become Jewish, or become more Jewish, in a time of danger is due to hope which is not just a feeling or an emotion, but also a virtue and a Mitzvah.  Hope that goes back to the Exodus when non-Jews (a mixed multitude) joined those Jews who were leaving Egypt. Exodus 12:38-39 states: “And a mixed multitude went up with them”. The term “Mixed Multitude” refers to a diverse group of people who accompanied the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt. 

According to most Kabbalist (mystic) Rabbis all true converts have Jewish ancestors that also were at Sinai. The Kabalistic (mystical) book Sha’ar HaGilgulim written by Rabbi Chaim Vital Calabrese states that when Joseph was in charge of distribution of grain, millions of Egyptians converted to the faith of Joseph’s father Jacob-Israel. These people, who would come to be called the erev rav (a mixed multitude), lived in Israelite villages and followed Israelite practices. Many Israelite souls were included among these Egyptian people, including – most significantly – the soul of the Messiah (Ben Joseph).

According to Rabbi Issac Luria, Eliezer, the  servant of  Abraham was a Canaanite who due to his  righteousness, merited to be reincarnated  in the days of Moses within the tribe  of  Yehuda. Eliezer reincarnated as Caleb Ben Yefuneh. His soul later incarnated higher and higher until he became a High Priest (Zecharia, the High Priest) and many centuries later a Master Kabbalist (Rabbi Moshe Cordevero). (See Sha’ar HaPesukim of the Ari’)

Also in Persia, as the Book of Esther recorded: “Many people of other nationalities became Jews because the Jews had seized them.”  (Esther 8:17) Since Jewish survival is part of the miracle of Jewish life; and conversion in a time or place of danger is awesome according to the Bible, Jews should never discourage converts at such times.

According to Kabbalah, only the souls of self conscious moral creatures like human beings reincarnate; and they reincarnate only when they have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation. Since Judaism is an optimistic religion, most Kabbalists teach that most people can accomplish their life’s purpose in one or two lifetimes. 

A few souls may take 3-5 lifetimes or more. The bright souls of great religious figures like Moses or Miriam can turn into dozens of sparks that can  reincarnate several times. 

The tragic souls of Jews whose children have been cut off from the Jewish people, either through persecution or forced conversion to another religion, will reincarnate as one of their own no longer Jewish descendants. These descendant souls will seek to return to the Jewish people.

A majority of people who end up converting (or reverting) to Judaism and the Jewish people have Jewish souls from one of their own ancestors. Thus, the Jewish mystical tradition, claims that the souls of most converts to Judaism are the reincarnated souls of Jews in previous generations that were cut off from the Jewish people. 

Through conversion to Judaism they are coming home. Sometimes these souls are descendants of Jews who were part of whole communities that were cut off, like the Marranos in Spain. Other times they are descendants of individual Jews who married out and did not raise their children as self identifying faithful Jews.  

Other people who become Jewish do not know of a specific Jew who was an ancestor but come from a population that contains the descendants of past Jewish communities.  

Millions of Spanish and Portuguese speakers are descendants of Jews who were forcibly baptized during the 15th century. In 1391 there were anti-Jewish riots in several Spanish cities. Thousands of Jews were forcibly baptized. The Roman Catholic Church viewed these forced baptisms as valid because the Spanish Jews had freely chosen baptism over death, unlike the Jews of France and Germany during the first and second crusades, who chose to kill themselves rather than be baptized. Over the next three generations there were additional riots that led to more forcible baptisms. 

Of course, Jews forced to become Christians didn’t stop believing in Judaism, but they had to practice Judaism and teach their children in secret. The Church knew this but thought that all the children and grandchildren of the Marranos (as the secret Jews were called) would be indoctrinated in the true faith and become believers. This did not happen. 

In 1480 the Inquisition began holding trials in Spain. Over the next two centuries thousands would be tried/tortured, and imprisoned or executed. 

In 1492 all unbaptized Jews in Spain were exiled. Over 100,000 Jews left Spain, most of them going to nearby Portugal. 

In 1497, they again were expelled from Portugal, but first all their children were forcibly baptized, so parents who didn’t want to lose their children had to freely choose baptism. 

In later decades many of these secret Jews and their children came to the new world seeking freedom so the Inquisition was established in Lima in 1570 and in Mexico City in 1571.  

Secret Jews fled to all parts of central and south America to escape. (see: A History of the Marranos by Cecil Roth) . Most of these people have Jewish souls and are now returning to the Jewish people.

In Recife Brazil, at least 400 people with Sephardic Jewish ancestry have undergone Orthodox conversions to Judaism. “Twenty years ago, the return to Judaism was a dream. Now it’s simply our reality,” said Jefferson Martins dos Santos, president of Recife’s Aboab de Fonseca synagogue, one of the two new congregations. Over the past decade, more than a dozen congregations like it have been established across Brazil’s north.

Members of these new communities call themselves “bnei anusim” —”children of the forcibly converted” from Judaism to Christianity. TheBrazilian state of Pernambuco for a while had been a haven for many Portuguese and Spanish Jews because it was controlled by the relatively tolerant Dutch from 1630 to 1654. 

But when the Dutch left, their colony was taken over by Portugal, which enforced the Inquisition. Many Sephardic Jews fled with the Dutch to the Netherlands, and one shipload landed in New Amsterdam.

While many Jews left by 1655, many others stayed and continued to practice Judaism in secret, becoming crypto-Jews. But their families became Catholic as the centuries passed. Still, in villages in northern Brazil, some Jewish customs prevailed, including covering mirrors at a deceased person’s home.

Decades later many secret Jews, or their children, found freedom in the new world. When the Inquisition was established in Lima (1570) and in Mexico City (1571) secret Jews fled to all parts of central and south America to escape. 

Other secret Jews in Spain, Portugal, Holland and France became importers of Asian spices and other goods; and married Asian women whose grandchildren and great grandchildren were absorbed into the local Asian populations. These descendants are also now returning home by becoming Jewish.

Rabbi Allen S. Maller

Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.

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