Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa

218 Pages·2012·9.05 MB·English

by  David Ellenson

Pledges of Je wish Allegiance
Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture
edited by Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein
Pledges of Jewish
Allegiance
Conversion, Law, and Policymaking
in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century
Orthodox Responsa
David Ellenson and Daniel Gordis
stanford university press
stanford, california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford
Junior University. All rights reserved.
Parts of chapter 2 are based on material that appeared in Daniel Gordis,
“David Zevi Hoffmann on Civil Marriage: Evidence of a Traditional
Community under Siege,” Modern Judaism 9, no. 1 (February 1990):
85–103. Parts of chapters 2 and 4 were originally published in an ear-
lier form in David Ellenson, “Representative Orthodox Responsa on
Conversion and Intermarriage in the Contemporary Period,” Jewish
Social Studies 48, nos. 3–4 (1985): 209–20; and in David Ellenson, “The
Development of Orthodox Attitudes to Conversion in the Modern
Period,” Conservative Judaism 36, no. 4 (1983): 57–73. Parts of chap-
ter 3 were originally published in David Ellenson, “On Conversion
and Intermarriage: The Evidence of Nineteenth Century Hungarian
Orthodox Rabbinic Writings,” in Text and Context: Essays in Modern
Jewish History and Historiography in Honor of Ismar Schorsch, ed. Eli
Lederhendler and Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary, 2005), 321–46. Reprinted with permission.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and record-
ing, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior
written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellenson, David Harry, 1947– author.
Pledges of Jewish allegiance : conversion, law, and policymaking in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orthodox responsa / David Ellenson and
Daniel Gordis.
p. cm.—(Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-7805-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Conversion—Judaism. 2. Responsa—History and criticism. 3. Jewish
law. 4. Jews—Identity. 5. Orthodox Judaism. 6. Judaism—History—
Modern period, 1750– I. Gordis, Daniel, author. II. Title. III. Series:
Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture.
BM645.C6E45 2012
296.1'85--dc23
2011021346
To our children
Ruth Ellenson
Micah and Sara Ellenson
Hannah Ellenson
Naomi Ellenson
Raphael Ellenson
Talia and Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis
Aviel Gordis
Micha Gordis
Whose Jewish commitments
are as varied, and as passionate,
as those represented in this volume

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Who Is a Jew? What Is a Jew?
Jewish Identity, Jewish Status, and the Challenge
of Conversion 1
1 Conversion in Jewish Tradition: An Introduction
to the Classical Sources 13
2 Trends in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century
German Orthodox Responses to Conversion
and Intermarriage 38
3 Hungarian and Central European Writings
on Conversion and Intermarriage 70
4 Europe and the United States in the Modern Period 90
5 Israel: Conversion to Judaism in a Jewish Society 121
Conclusion 165
Notes 171
Bibliography 191
Index 199

Acknowledgments
In the more than a decade and a half during which we wrote this book,
each of us has been privileged to be associated with institutions com-
mitted to both scholarship and the future of Jewish life. David Ellenson
has served as the I. H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious
Thought at the Hebrew Union College and, since 2001, as its president.
When we began this book, Daniel Gordis was at the University of Ju-
daism (now the American Jewish University), serving as vice president
and founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, and sub-
sequent to moving to Israel he has been vice president at the Mandel
Foundation and senior vice president and senior fellow at the Shalem
Center. Since 2011, he has also been president of the Shalem Founda-
tion. All these institutions have encouraged this project and have af-
forded us stimulating colleagues who have enriched our work. We are
grateful to all.
Our thanks, as well, to three people who did extensive work on the
manuscript. Elisheva Urbas brought great insight to shaping the volume
in its early stages, years ago, a task made appreciably more difficult by
the fact that the book was written by two people on two continents. Za-
hava Stadler, then a student at Princeton University, did extensive edit-
ing of an early draft of the complete manuscript and improved it greatly.
Janice Meyerson brought consummate professional abilities to the final
editing of the book and to the preparation of the bibliography. We are
grateful to all three for their significant contributions to the quality of
this volume. Our thanks to Leslie Rubin for her thorough and thought-
ful work on the index. Finally, Peter Joseph and Rob Bildner read an
early draft of our conclusion and suggested significant changes in tone
and direction that we incorporated and for which we are grateful.