Power By Numbers

I am not the biggest fan of the Jerusalem Post, but Mrs. Hausman pointed out this article as one of interest. I applaud Rabbi Rosenblum for saying this and find that there is too little opposition raised to those who raise these detrimental, anti-Torah "solutions" for Am Yisrael. Of course I am referring to the "power by numbers" game; where the Jewish people start internalizing the feeling that we need to take whatever we/they can get. It is very true that quantity does not yield quality; and it will actually hurt the Jewish people to take on loads of insincere converts and to brand every person with a bit of Jewish ancestry as one of the tribe. Now a halachaic Jew should be lovingly (and carefully) reintroduced into Yiddishkeit; there is the responsibility to bring in lost members of the family. But the responsibility is two-fold, and a certain level of respect for Judaism should be developed to attain the distinction of becoming a baal teshuva.

Many people across all Jewish denominations voice disdain about the difficulty of the process of converting to Judaism. Very rarely though do you hear them give any concrete examples of why they feel they way that they do. Perhaps they have lost sight of the fact that Judaism is not a faith that wants outsiders to come in so that they can "see the light" per se. I may be one of the few Jewishly-inclined Black people who does not feel like we are doing the world any favor by going into Uganda and converting the Abayudaya. This is not because they do not desire to be Jews or that they do not believe in what they are doing. However the very real issue is what the understanding and committment to Judaism is on an individual level. And apparently, this still seems to be a point of contention among the Abayudaya.

On the other hand, it seems that there may be a slight aire of "the Jews would rather not do conversions" to the [original] article. True a lot of this could be directed at the fact that many conversions are substandard. However this has the danger of spilling over onto sincere converts who really do find that Torah observance fits them like a glove, even though they were born to non-Jewish mothers. Unfortunately I recently heard from a very young child that "goyim have no neshamas". I think it's pretty safe to say that the child did not come to this conclusion all alone and evidently there are some pretty strong messages being sent out there to try to strongly designate "them vs. us". And it is true, a core aspect of Judaism (to loosely quote "The Believer") is to separate things. In fact, the very word קודש (holy) means to "be separate". But this separateness does not mean superior or inferior. Shrimp cocktails are not inferior to slices of gefilte fish; they are simply not permitted to Jews. Similary it is not that married gentile women are so immoral for walking around with their hair uncovered. But they are not in tune with the specific holiness allotted to certain states of being; nor are they expected to be. Without the Torah to regulate their lives, how could they be? However, this does not make gentiles inferior.

I liken the Torah to electric current. You can live perfectly fine without direct benefit or belief in utilizing it (like the Amish). You can also be an unsuitable conduit for it, like [unpure] water. However when properly applied and utilized through the correct mediums, it can be a treasure. Now when mankind first started to utilized electric current, we did not use it for all the things we use it for today. Converts to Judaism are like new inventions who make wonderful use of what is already there. Similarly, you have the most pointless, and even destructive, new things that are utilizing electricity nowadays. Just like you have "converts" who are not tapping into the Torah properly and become an overall drain on the Jewish people.

Assimilation is a very real problem, but the solutions are elusive. However so many of the proposals just do not seem "right". Propaganda against non-Jews does not seem right; tasteless pop-culture initiatives like Heeb magazine do not seem right; mass conversions are certainly not right. In fact the back and forth arguments over the standards of coversion seem devoid of one important piece of the puzzle -- which is personal motivation. Is the convert-to-be attracted to the Torah or to the idea of being a Jew? Of course, we must keep in mind that this "idea" varies so much from situation to situation. It seems that if the conduit is good, and if the source is good, you end up with a praiseworthy result. Any weakness on either end is bound to cause problems. I am pretty sure that even the most "evangelical" of Jews out there could agree on that.