Jewish Converts Research Articles

Religious Attraction and Its Discontents: Tensions Surrounding the Monachization of Baptized Jews in Early Modern Italy

Both female monasticism and Jewish conversion acquired an accentuated significance in Catholic Europe during the age of reformations. Their convergence was ritually expressed in the celebration of the monastic vestition of converts from Judaism. This article centres on the experiences of baptized Jewish girls who entered monastic communities, based on an analysis of cases from central and northern Italy. It argues that Church authorities valued the radical break of formerly Jewish girls with the religious traditions of their ancestors. Yet at the same time, the highly esteemed attraction to female monasticism on the part of baptized Jews could also arouse considerable anxiety, which led to distancing attempts. These, the article suggests, were manifested by restricting converts’ monastic professions to designated institutions; by giving the cold shoulder to baptized Jews who took the veil and socially isolating them within their communities; or by not assisting sickly neophytes to fulfill their religious vocations.

Jewish Muslims in The Handsome Jew and Don’t Leave Me Here Alone: Conversion, Identity, and Liminality

The present article addresses the complex interplay of boundaries, belonging, and modes of identity and investigates the space between the distinct boundaries of religious identities. It focuses on the Jewish Muslim identity as it defies categorization and plays out in the liminal space of the Jewish Muslims, a space of fluid and blurred contours, haunted by ancestral religion and inherited culture, and obsessed by a crucial need to reconstruct a new sense of self. The article explores these concepts by referring to two narrative works: Ali Al-Muqri’s The Handsome Jew and Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s Don’t Leave Me Here Alone, which extensively elaborate on the relationship between conversion, identity, and liminality. It argues that Jewish Muslims stay within a liminal space due to their inability to forget their past and assimilate into the present, and that a non-binary Jewish Muslim subject lives in a place that borders the Jewish and Muslim spaces but never crosses into either position completely. The study aims to investigate discourses, as presented in the two texts under discussion, that construct boundaries between individuals of different religious affiliations and the motives for such constructions, and it tries to demonstrate the extent to which liminality can be used as an apt metaphor to define the life of Jewish converts to Islam.

Self‐suasion: agents of Jewish conversion in Israel in search of religious sincerity

AbstractThe title of this essay is intended as ironic. The irony resides in the fact that while the agents of state‐run Jewish conversion in Israel are preoccupied with the sincerity of conversion candidates, they are also troubled by the sincerity of their own religious belief and conduct. This essay will explore ethnographically how these religiopolitical actors engage with semiotic and interactive strategies of self‐suasion in order to reconcile their Zionist and religious commitments with the moral toll that they pay for knowingly facilitating less‐than‐ideal conversions. The essay demonstrates that while these actors embody the Israeli state's national missionary impetus to convert newcomers, they rely on a variety of communicative practices that help them project the constructed sincerity of converts onto their own self‐suaded religious sincerity.

Are You Our Sisters? Resistance, Belonging, and Recognition in Israeli Reform Jewish Female Converts

The religious conversion process is a significant expression of an individual’s intention to gain a new religious identity and be included in a particular religious community. Those who wish to join the Jewish people undergo giyur (conversion), which includes observing rituals and religious practices. While previous research on Jewish conversions in Israel focused on the experiences of persons who converted under Orthodox auspices, this study analyzes the experiences of female immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the Philippines who chose to convert through the Reform Movement in Israel. Based on qualitative research, we discovered that the non-Orthodox process, which is based on liberal values, not only grants converts under the aegis of Reform entry to the Jewish people, but promotes their affiliation with the Reform Movement and advances their acculturation into Jewish Israeli society. Their choice is a political decision, an act of resistance against an Orthodox Israeli religious monopoly, and an expression of spiritual motivations. The converts become social agents who strengthen the Reform Movement’s socio-political position in Israel, where it struggles against discrimination. Furthermore, since most converts are women, new intersections between religion, gender, and nationality are exposed.

The persecution of minorities: Majorcan Jewish converts in the last third of the seventeenth century

ABSTRACT The persecution of ethnic or religious minorities has been a longstanding object of historiographical analysis. One widely disseminated thesis affirms that elites collaborate economically with minorities, but when conflict or crisis erupts the latter are used as a scapegoat to satisfy the masses. In Majorca, by negotiating with the nobility and the clergy, Majorcan converts (Xuetes) had attained an important position in trade and credit by the last third of the seventeenth century, but in 1677–1679 they suffered an important institutional attack from the Inquisition. The process led to the imprisonment of more than 300 people, the seizure of their property and, finally, their religious conciliation. In 1688 an escalation of the persecution led to the autos de fe of 1691, which resulted in 43 deaths. Contrary to the usual account, this article suggests that those persecuted were not simply a random group of the community of converts. Rather, the Inquisition’s intervention ensured that it included all economic and religious leaders, who were interlinked by endogamic marriage strategies. The economic factor was fundamental in both 1677–1679 and 1688–1691. The consequences varied for both Xuete families and other spheres of Majorcan society.

Contesting Religious Truth

Abstract Christian theologians were involved in anti-Jewish arguments almost since the ‘parting of the ways’ of the two religions. In late antiquity and the early middle ages, anti-Jewish arguments were based almost exclusively on Biblical quotations, which were adduced as evidence meant to substantiate the Christian interpretation of scripture. It was only in the scholastic period that new forms of evidence were included in the traditional argument Adversus Iudaeos, which were derived from the recourse to reason. The Jewish figures presented by Christian authors within their writings are constructed entirely according to Christian assumptions and prejudices; only rarely do we get any real Jewish voices representing points of view close to any kind of Jewish reality. This only changed when growing numbers of Jews converted to Christianity in the high middle ages; Jewish converts drew the attention of Christian authorities to rabbinic literature. At first, the Talmud was targeted as a sinister text allegedly undermining theological truth, but later it was appropriated by Christian propagandists, who tried to base their anti-Jewish arguments on the post-biblical canon of Rabbinic Judaism. The article analyses the gradual expansion of anti-Jewish evidence; in particular, it highlights turning points when anti-Jewish strategies tried to include new methods and media to substantiate the credibility of Christian claims to monopolise religious truth. The Jewish side reacted against such attempts by reinterpreting and rewriting the history of anti-Christian Jewish arguments, notably on the occasion of the Paris Talmud trial. The redirection of Christian-Jewish arguments in the high middle ages provides ample evidence for the study of contesting truths, the substantiation and subversion of validity claims, as well as the rewriting of history in order to further political aims.

„… prawda musi wybrać połowę paradoksu i połowę stereotypu”. O tajemnicach Żyda wiecznego tułacza Aleksandra Wata

Aleksander Wat’s novella The Wandering Jew, published in 1926, is his only prose text in which the Jewish motif is the very center of the narrative. Wat carefully avoids dramatic or frightening notes, staying away from the characters created by Potocki, Quinet, Schubart, and Meyrink. However, certain aspects of the old version of the ancient myth remain: the millennial peregrination through history, the absolute solitude of the hero, and his magical movement and appearance in different parts of the world. The fusion of Catholicism and communism in the shadow of Marranism, represented by the protagonist Nathan, reflects grotesquely either on the phenomenon of Jewish youth fleeing the shtetls observed by young Wat, or on his own ecumenical dreams and reflections on the metahistorical role of Jews and their conversion. The article analyzes this issue also with particular regard either to the reception of the old Christian legend, or to the Anti-semitic narrative on the conspiracy of Jewish converts, shared by Keith Gilbert Chesterton, a contemporary writer very important for Wat.

Islamic Historiography as Polemic Literature: Deconstructing Biographies of Medieval Jewish Converts

Abstract This article considers biographical material on Jewish converts authored by Muslim historians, primarily in Mamluk Egypt and Syria from the 13th to 15th centuries, enumerating and analyzing its recurring themes. Among its key findings is that the motifs found in this material are consonant with Islamic theological perceptions of other faith-based groups, especially the Jews. These themes also reflect their writers’ notion of exemplary history. Beyond this, I suggest that the main objective behind the texts under review is the affirmation of basic principles espoused in the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, and the sīrah for the purpose of demonstrating the veracity and superiority of the Muslim faith.

Jewish Conversion in the Riots of 1391: The Legal Justification

Abstract This study presents the halakhic rulings that preceded the riots of 1391 in Spain and provided the moral infrastructure that allowed the conversion to Catholicism of Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (known by the acronym Rivash) and many other Jews. Rivash was willing broadly to define duress, which exempts one from halakhic obligations. The rulings Rivash attributed to Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet (known by the acronym Rashba) – that the commandment “He shall live by them” applies even when a Jew is forced under the threat of death to abandon his faith and that the choice of martyrdom is a secondary religious commandment – were both revolutionary statements. They provided legitimacy to the religious elite – and, as a matter of course, to the simple folk – to choose life, even if it required converting to Christianity.

Conversion and Polemic in the Late-Fifteenth Century Ottoman Empire: Two Polemical Treatises Against Judaism

Two Jewish converts to Islam in the service of Bayezid II penned the earliest known anti-Jewish polemicals in the Ottoman Empire. This article aims at exploring the historical context of the two epistles and their connection with Islamic polemical literature. The simultaneous appearances of Abd al-Salam’s Risāla al-hādiya and Abd al-Allam’s Risāla al-ilzām al-Yahūd will be discussed in the context of the Sephardic influx to the Ottoman lands, an encounter that stimulated scholarly interest in the Jewish faith among Ottoman intellectuals. At first glance, the two treatises seem to be structured so as to persuade a Jewish audience to embrace the Muslim faith by abandoning their former religion. However, the choice of Arabic instead of Hebrew, and the circulation of the texts primarily among Muslim readers suggest that ad- dressing the Jews appears to have been a rhetorical tactic. Considering the negative connotations attached to converts by the Ottoman elite, the authors might also have viewed the composition of anti-Jewish treatises as an effort to distance themselves from their Jewish past.

Defining “Conversos” in Fifteenth-Century Castile: The Making of a Controversial Category

This article recovers a fifteenth-century debate over the meaning of the category “conversos.” Departing from the standard account, in which “conversos” is seen as a neutral category designating Jewish ancestry, we demonstrate that in fifteenth-century Castile, the question of “who is a converso?” had a much less certain answer. Rather than a consistent view of how Jewish converts and their descendants should be classified, contemporary discourses reveal a myriad of options and a deep sense of consciousness about the implications of terminological choices. Drawing on a large range of historical sources, we analyze this terminological struggle, while paying special attention to the debates that followed the revolt of Toledo of 1449. We examine the arguments made by those who sought—or resisted—labeling the descendants of Jews as “conversos” or “neophytes.” Furthermore, we explain how debates over such labels were linked to broader interpretations of the meaning of conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Finally, we demonstrate that although the descent-based interpretation of “conversos” eventually prevailed, the problem of classifying Christians of Jewish descent continued to haunt political discourses well into the reign of Isabel I and Fernando II (1474–1504).

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Women and Witnesses Twice Silenced: Giving a Voice to Holocaust Complicity and Resistance

Women’s voices had no place in the Third Reich, and the Christian churches agreed: a woman’s place was in the kitchen. After the war, women’s voices frankly discussed the churches’ shame. Some Christians had colluded, others stood silently by, and some of those who resisted the persecution of Jewish converts did not fully understand the injustice and cruelty of socially normalised anti-Semitism. Theologically trained female vicars who had never been permitted to serve the church, stepped into pastoral duties when men were imprisoned, executed, or sent to the front. They took risks to bring spiritual hope to villagers who were fearful, confused, and appalled, by war. Victoria Barnett worked as a journalist in Germany in the 1970s and collected the accounts of Confessing Church members who resisted Hitler, to help expose the moral failures of the holocaust for the evangelical church. When Barnett returned to the US, she began her life’s work in the reconciliation of Christians and Jews. Her books analyse the silence and complicity of ordinary people during the holocaust. They are not easy reading, but her work is important in an age where people still face discrimination, repression and persecution, and institutional silence.

Religion in Britain, 1660–1900: Essays in Honour of Peter B. Nockles, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library

This special edition of the Bulletin is a well-deserved and welcome Festschrift celebrating the work of the historian, librarian, and archivist Peter Nockles. Several of the essays deal with subjects on which Nockles has himself made significant scholarly contributions. His seminal contribution to the study of the Anglican High Church tradition and its transmutation into Tractarianism is particularly well represented: Nigel Aston contributes a luminous essay on the transmission of High Churchmanship through gentry and clerical networks in the case of Thomas Townson, which is followed by Derya Gurses Tarbuck’s analysis of George Horne as an exponent of the Hutchinsonian strand of the tradition. George Westhaver bridges the earlier and later forms of High Churchmanship with a discussion of continuities and discontinuities in the championing of typological readings of scripture by William Jones of Nayland and the Tractarians. Late refractions of the tradition are represented by Kenneth Parker on the theological trajectory of Henry Manning’s conversion to Rome and James Pereiro’s review of Manning’s interest in Jewish affairs, especially his interventions against pogroms in Russia after his conversion to Rome. Similarly, Nockles’s interests in High Church discussions of the relationship between church and state are reflected in Stewart Brown’s insightful account of the public discourse surrounding the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, which highlights the triumph of voluntaristic arguments against the claims of the sacred mission of the state in the case of Ireland.Appropriately enough for a celebration of a scholar who also made a significant contribution as an archivist, a number of the essays look at both the problems and potential of historical sources, notably William Gibson on the Court sermons of James II and Richard Sharp on the surviving corpus of engraved clerical portraiture from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. In her consideration of the production of the biography of the early Methodist leader Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Carol Blessing shows how the priorities of writing for the more settled denomination of the 1820s resulted in the downplaying of Fletcher’s preaching ministry and the radicalism of her apologia for it, as well as an overshadowing of the importance of her team of female assistants. Andrew Crome looks at the way in which British novels about Jewish conversion reveal not only the complex attitudes of nineteenth-century Britons toward Jews but also the complex relationships of Evangelicals inside and outside the island’s established churches with each other. David Bebbington’s analysis of the Leeds Brunswick Wesleyan Methodist Circuit obituary book (an underused category of source for Victorian Methodism) uncovers evidence to support his famous definition of Evangelicalism. However, it also reveals its subjects as preoccupied with a series of other concerns, including the role of the deathbed as revelatory of the nature of individual faith and the importance of assurance of salvation for both subjects and readers. Bebbington also skilfully shows how the obituary book can be used to inform our understanding of gender roles within the church community, the importance of prayer and hymn singing, and the relative lack of stress placed on sacramental worship. He also argues that a discriminating use of the same material reveals much about the dynamics of Methodist class meetings and cultural changes within the Methodist community that led to greater reticence about declarations of religious experience or perhaps a silting up of the channels of Methodist spirituality in the decades before the First World War.Potentially the most fruitful contribution to the volume, however, fits neither of these categories but is more closely related to Peter Nockles’s important contribution as a librarian of Methodism. This is Rachel Cope’s exploration of how the engagement of an early American Methodist, Catherine Livingstone, with reading and writing texts opened spaces in which she could find and express her own voice but also connected her to a rich network of deeply felt spiritual kinship. This allows us to glimpse into her spiritual formation as created relationally, rather than through the categories of the modern liberal individualism.Altogether, this is a volume wide in scope and rich in insights, well deserving of a place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in the theology, history, and trajectory of both the Anglican and Methodist traditions.

‘New perspectives on religious conversion in medieval England’ a review essay on Lauren Fogle, The King’s Converts: Jewish Conversion in Medieval London, Lexington Books, Lanham 2019

ABSTRACT This paper is a review essay on a new publication concerning Anglo-Jewish history: Lauren Fogle, The King’s Converts: Jewish Conversion in Medieval London. After addressing the contents of the aforementioned monograph, I concentrate on new aspects of research on Jewish medieval conversion to Christianity. The second part of the essay is dedicated to some methodological concerns. The essay closes with a discussion on the necessity of integrating the perspective of Jewish sources when writing about Jews.

«Проклятий антихрист»: стереотипізація єврейської ідентичності в романі «Михайло Чарнышенко, или Малороссия восемьдесят лет назад» П. Куліша

The article aims to study the representation of Jewish stereotypes in P. Kulish’s first novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago” (written – 1842, printed – 1843) in the characterof the Cossack Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. The literary image is considered in a three-dimensional plane: the attitude towards the Jewish converts during the events described by the writer in the 2nd half of the 18th century, as well as information known from historical sources and new facts from modern sources about Colonel A. Kryzhanovsky, and, finally, correspondence of historical truth with modeling of the literary image in the novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago”. The article traces how the writer used the historical sources known to him and how the widespread ideas about the Jews of that time found a place in his novel. Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky, who is the only prototype of a real historical person in P.Kulish’s novel, is devastatingly described in the anonymous treatise “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia” and fully corresponds to the literary image in the text of the novel. The article shows how P. Kulish, using the completely false information of the “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia”, repeats the factual errors of the treatise author, since its text combines information about the conversion of Anton Kryzhanovsky’s father with the historical fact of the recruitment of Ukrainian “Holsteinians” by Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. However, the same inaccuracy can be traced in the works of Ukrainian scientists of the 19th century, for example, the historian-genealogist O. Lazarevsky and the historian D. Miller. The paradox of Kryzhanovsky’s image in the novel lies in the fact that being a consolidating character for others and an impetus for the unfolding of events, he almost always remains aloof as if deliberately emphasizing his mysteriousness and insidiousness, which are reinforced by a characteristic portrait. P. Kulish ignores the real history of the conversion of Jews in the Cossacks when with a change of religion yesterday’s Jew became a “Cossack’s friend” and had all the prospects for successful integration. In his first novel, P. Kulish produces the mythologeme of a Jewish convert, who selfishly and deliberately integrates into the Ukrainian Cossack community and gradually emancipates himself to the extent that he obtains a high military position thanks to the patronage of the Russian Emperor Peter III and irreparably harms the Cossacks, who are trying to balance thoughts about the glorious past and the present colonial time. However, this author’s position is at odds with real historical facts, including biographical data about Cossack colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky.

Jewish Conversion Theory: Philip Roth's "The Conversion of the Jews"

Previous research on Philip Roth's short story "The Conversion of the Jews" (1958) has focused on the protagonist Ozzie's personal struggle with Judaism as he prepares for his Bar Mitzvah. However, during these lessons, Ozzie asks provocative questions that challenge the foundation of Judaism. Roth confronts the reader with two interpretations of Judaism: a canonical one, personified by Rabbi Binder, and Ozzie's more radical approach. Operating outside of clearly defined theological parameters, Ozzie's naïve attitude opens Judaism to fresh, non-Jewish interpretations and asks such provocative questions as whether a conversion to Christianity can be an answer for modern Jewish Americans. Although Ozzie chooses Christianity as a myopic solution for his identity struggle, Roth knows that conversion is not really an option. In search of an American Judaism that fits Jewish Americans, this study, like Ozzie himself, will meet at the crossroads of theological doctrine and literary criticism.

Philo-Semitic Representation of Jewish Nationalism and Identity in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

This paper explores Daniel Deronda, which is a political novel where Eliot openly takes a stand for the Jewish cause and provides her solution to the Jewish Question. Eliot attempts to reveal through her book that Judaism which seems to have lost its fervour (due to Jewish conversions and expulsions), is not lost and remains at the very core of Jewish hearts and values. Through various instances in the novel, Eliot supports Jewish nationalism and their struggle for identity and rebukes British racial dominance and the literary antisemitic tradition.

Jewish-Christian Identities in Conflict: The Cases of Fr. Daniel Rufeisen and Fr. Elias Friedman

The status of Jewish identity in cases of conversion to another religion is a contentious issue and was brought to the forefront of public attention with the 1962 court case of Oswald Rufeisen, a Jewish convert to Christianity known as Br. Daniel, which led to a shift in the way that the state of Israel defines Jewish identity for the purposes of citizenship. At the same time, however, another test case in conflicting interpretations of Jewish identity after conversion was playing out in Rufeisen’s own monastery, hidden to the public eye. Of the fifteen monks who lived together in the Stella Maris Monastery in Haifa, two were Jewish converts, both of whom converted during the Second World War and later immigrated to Israel. Both outspoken advocates for their own understanding of Jewish identity, Rufeisen and his fellow Carmelite Fr. Elias Friedman expressed interpretations of Jewish-Christian religious identity that are polarized and even antagonistically oppositional at times. This paper argues that the intimately related histories and opposing interpretations of Rufeisen and Friedman parallel the historical contestation between Judaism and Christianity. It investigates their overlapping and yet divergent views, which magnify questions of Jewish identity, Catholic interpretations of Judaism, Zionism, Holocaust narratives, and proselytism.

Conversos, Moriscos, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections on Jewish Exceptionalism

Sacrilegious attitudes toward the Eucharistic host are one of the most commonplace accusations leveled against Jews in premodern Europe. Usually treated in Jewish historiography as an expression of anti-Judaism or antisemitism, they are considered a hallmark of Jewish powerlessness and persecution. In medieval and early modern Spain, however, Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants) were not the only proclaimed enemies of the Eucharist. Reports about avoidance, rejection, criticism, and even ridicule and profanation of the consecrated host were similarly leveled against Muslims and moriscos (Muslim converts to Christianity). This essay seeks to assess the parallels and connections between the two groups through a comparative examination of accusations of sacrilegious behavior towards the host. The first part of the essay analyzes religious art, legal compendia, and inquisitorial trials records from the tribunals of Toledo and Cuenca in order to show some evident homologies between the two groups. The second part of the essay focuses on the analysis of the works of Jaime Bleda and Pedro Aznar y Cardona, two apologists of the expulsion of the moriscos, and draws direct connections between Jewish and morisco sacrilege. By exploring the similarities and differences between accusations against conversos and moriscos, this essay aims to offer a broader reflection on Jewish exceptionalism.