[Avodah] Geirut

[Chana Luntz]

RTK writes:

>As I wrote in another letter, trying to become a ger without keeping
the mitzvos would be like to trying to become an American so you can be
an American 
>gangster.  To me KOM seems to be so intrinsic to being a Jew that it
just would not have occurred to any generation before the Reform
movement that there >could even be such a concept as "a Jew who does not
keep mitzvos."  There could be such a thing as a Jew who is porek ol, a
rasha, a sinner, a bad person, >but there couldn't be such a thing as a
Jewish identity DEFINED other than "the ones who are beholden by the
bris, the ones who are subject to the 
>Torah."  I think that the earlier generations didn't list KOM as a
requirement for gerus because it literally did not occur to them that
somebody who was >not born a Jew would approach a court and say, "I am
not presently a Jew but I want to become one, al me-nas  to be a porek
ol, a rasha, a sinner, or a tinok shenishba." 

But your premise is falses - because there are cases, discussed cases in
the gemora, about somebody coming to the court without necessarily any
intention to keep all the mitzvos - such as the case of the fellow who
came to Hillel and said he wanted to convert on condition he could be
Kohen Gadol.  And the Rishonim use that as a basis for discussing
somebody who does not want to accept all the mitzvos.

And then there is the case being discussed between RMB and RMS in the
Rambam, about the wives of Shimshon and Shlomo HaMelech.  However you
want to hold on that discussion, you cannot say in the light of that
discussion that it never occurred to the rishonim that such a case could
occur, because that is precisely what they are discussing.

And then there is the case of the Kusim whose conversions were very
dubious and debated.

And there the discussions of Tosphos which is the basis for the
requirement for KOM for adults in the Shulchan Aruch.  

> If you had said any such thing to a bais din before the 19th century,
they would have said, "This--does--not--compute."  If you had said to
them, "I want >to convert al me-nas to be a Tzedoki, or a Karaite" I do
not believe that any court would have accepted such a ger (unless it was
a Tzedoki or a Karaite 
>court).

No of course they wouldn't have.  Nor for that matter would any court
today.  And of course, it still doesn't compute.  The person cannot
become a Jew and not be bound to keep the mitzvos, whatever they say (or
think).  The question is, bideved, is such a person a Jew and bound to
keep the mitzvos, or are they not Jewish at all and nothing at all every
happened.

I think your analogy with becoming an American in order to become a
gangster does shed light on the issue.  If somebody fronts up and
insists they want citizenship because they want to be a gangster, they
are unlikely to get it.  If they do get citizenship, and then they
become a gangster nobody says they did not have citizenship (and it does
not matter whether that person wanted to become a gangster at the time
he applied for citizenship and hid it from the authorities, or only
decided to do it later).  What the American law allows for, however, is
for citizenship to be revoked - which is what then happens - if they get
caught they get stripped of citizenship and thrown out.  However, this
is only allowed because American law specifically provides for this.
You need to show something similar in halacha.  In halacha, however, it
is clear there is no method of revocation.  Hence the only question is
whether the halacha allows for a mechanism whereby the whole thing is
uprooted retrospectively (unlike the American scenario).  This is
proposing something more similar to the Catholic concept of annulment of
a marriage or perhaps mekach taus in a kiddushin.  But in every legal
system, you have to understand what the mechanism is for achieving the
legal end achieved.  The American law says that we can strip you of your
citizenship if you violate our laws.  The Catholic system says [well I
don't really know, as far as I am aware, it is more - anything the Pope
says goes, including that there was never a marriage, but there is
probably more to it than that].  In halacha, too, we have a lot of
discussion about what exactly is involved in mekach taus and when that
means there never was a marriage.  You need a similar analysis here.
You can't just waive your magic wand and say - well it seems to me that
person should never have been allowed into the system, so poof, he
disappears.  There are loads of marriages that I am sure we all agree
should never have happened, that does not mean that they simply
disappear (unless perhaps if you have a Pope or King who can indeed
waive a magic wand and say they do - and even here you need a legal
system that vests such power in such an individual)


--Toby Katz
=============


Shabbat Shalom

Chana