[Avodah] Pre-Sinaitic conversions

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, February 22, 2008 11:52 am, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: This was the subject of the dispute between Yosef and his brothers,
: according to some meforshim.

I had a very different understanding. There are a number of berisim
made in chumash between HQBH and a person's progeny:
- Adam
- Noach (unless an amendment of the first beris)
- Avraham
- Sinai
- Arvos Moav

Various features of what we now call "being a Jew" are in truth due to
membership in one of the latter three berisim. The question becomes
which features of Jewishness applied to someone who was in beris
Avraham but not beris Sinai? The dispute wasn't over when Jewishness
starts, but which beris was to replace the chalos sheim "ben Noach".
Did beris Avraham replace or add to beris Noach?

It is impossible that the shevatim were subject to beris Sinai or the
beris in Devarim as Hashem wasn't koreis yet (really: whose kerisah
didn't enter the timestream yet). Nor anyone who chose to join them.

Geirus today means acceptance of all three berisim (and any others
someone else might count). Conversion in their day could only have
been accepting one. Regardless of whether or not that means replacing
beris Noach, conversion before matan Torah can not be the same as
geirus afterward. I think this distinction about whether they were
subject to beris Noach has little to do with the original topic.

And don't we prove dinim of geirus from matan Torah?

RHSchachter has a slightly different take in Eretz haTzevi. According
to one of the Chokhmei Tzarfas, the mekallel was not Jewish. The
Ramban says he was. RHS makes the machloqes about whether nationhood
-- via the mother -- was established yet, or whether being in the
michpachah -- paternal, still defined Jewishness.

I actually see this as being a variant on the same theme. Beris
Avraham -- was it national, or something inherited as zera Avraham?

BTW, I think it's possible/likely that beris Sinai was also familial,
and it's not until Devarim that the concept of national qedushah (as
opposed to a nation of qedoshim) began. But then RMM and I have argued
this one recently.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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