The Warning Before the Welcome

About This Talk

Issurei Biah 14 sets out the procedure for receiving a convert and then the family law that follows him. We inspect his background, and absent an ulterior motive we ask why he chose to convert and whether he knows that in this era the Jews are afflicted, crushed, subjugated and strained; if he answers that he knows and wishes to be part of them, he is accepted immediately. He is taught the unity of God and the prohibition of false worship at length, and some easy and some severe mitzvot without elaboration; the gifts to the poor, leket, shichachah, pe'ah and the tithe, are named specifically, as are the penalties he becomes liable for, forbidden fat and Sabbath desecration among them. But we do not teach every particular, lest worry turn him from a good path to a bad one, since a person is drawn with soft words first and bonds of love after. He is told the reward as plainly as the punishment, including that the World to Come is stored away for the righteous and that Israel's hardship reflects the good held for them, and we elaborate on this so he feels cherished. If he retracts he goes on his way; if he accepts he is circumcised at once, or has the blood of the covenant drawn, and immerses once he has healed entirely, with three judges standing over him repeating some easy and some severe mitzvot while he is in the water. A female convert is positioned in the water to her neck by women while the judges inform her from outside, immerses in their presence, and the judges turn away before she rises. A resident alien, who undertakes the seven Noahide laws and neither circumcises nor immerses, counts among the pious gentiles but is received only in an era when the Jubilee is observed. A purchased servant is not asked why he chose to convert, because he did not choose; he is asked whether he wishes to enter the category of Jewish servants, and if he refuses we wait twelve months and then sell him on. The second half rules that a convert is like a newborn child whose prior relatives are no longer relatives, that the Sages nonetheless forbade his maternal relatives though Scripture permits them so that no convert says he came from greater holiness to lesser, that paternal relatives remain permitted even where paternity is certain, that twins conceived before their mother's conversion and born after it are each liable for a brother's wife, that a man married to a convert with her converted daughter or to two converted maternal sisters keeps one and divorces the other, that no decree was made about the shniot who convert, and that a freed servant is a convert in every respect.