Questions for Discussion:
- Is Ruth 'converting' here?
- If not religious conversion, what other possibilities are there?
- Becoming a 'citizen' or part of a tribe vs. religious conversion
- If we were to design a conversion program & ceremony, what would it include? What knowledge, experiences, etc, would be important to include? How would we welcome the convert into the community?
Questions for Discussion:
- What do you think of the preliminary conversion process outlined here?
- What values in the conversion process are espoused by this text from the Talmud ( ~600 CE)?
- What principles from this text do you think are important to conversion today?
The baraita continues: Once he has immersed and emerged he is a Jew in every sense. The Gemara asks: With regard to what halakha is this said? It is that if he reverts back to behaving as a gentile, he nevertheless remains Jewish, and so if he betroths a Jewish woman, although he is considered to be an apostate Jew, his betrothal is a valid betrothal.
Question for discussion:
- What are the drawbacks and benefits of the permanence of the conversion process?
Through most of Jewish history, immersion in a mikvah has been the universal ritual of conversion to Judaism. Since the first or second century C.E. women and men, adults and children, have submerged themselves in water, recited prayers, and emerged as Jews. When you walk into the water of the mikvah, you follow in their wake. You also enter a Jewish institution and partake of an ancient and elemental Jewish experience that is utterly foreign to the vast majority of liberal-born Jews.
[…] Mikvah is an experience of the body and the soul. Although preparing for a conversion is largely an intellectual activity, immersion is an altogether physical act, a ritual enactment of commitment, a spiritual leap. Mikvah defies logic; after all, how can getting wet change your life? And yet, as most Jews-by-choice will tell you, it is a transforming emotional experience. Floating in the mikvah, every limb, every pore, every strand of hair covered by waters as warm as those of your mother’s womb – you are held in a primal embrace and emerge, in a way, reborn.
Immersion can be understood as a personal experience of Sinai – of revelation. Although there is no mention of mikvah in the Torah itself, later interpreters used the story of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai to create a biblical precedent for ritual purification through water. Immediately before the Ten Commandments were given to Israel, God tells Moses to sanctify the people and have them ‘wash their garments.’ Just as the Jewish people purified themselves before receiving the Torah, the convert enters the mikvah before being called upon to hold the Torah in his or her congregation.
You share this experience of Sinai with Jews-by-choice of every generation, all the way back to the ‘mixed multitude’ – the non-Israelites who followed Moses into the desert in search of freedom – mentioned in Torah. As one Jew-by-choice put it, “When you lead a Passover seder, you have all of the generations of you Jewish family, since Sinai, standing behind you. When I lead the seder, I feel as though I have all of the generations of Jews who entered the mikvah standing right beside me”.
Mikvah is not about cleansing sins of a rebirth that blots out your life prior to conversion. And yet, entering the water does offer an opportunity to redefine yourself in fundamental ways. Since the days of the ancient Temple, mikvah has been used to signify changes in status- within the community, within personal relationships, and within one’s own heart.
Anita Diamant Choosing a Jewish Life 1997; p.119-120
Questions for Discussion:
- If you had to come up with a metaphor for what conversion is to you, what metaphor would you use?
-What does mikveh symbolize for you?
- What do you make about this rabbinic prohibition about reminding someone that their parents converted?
*Come up with any additional questions you may have about conversion.