Next week is the annual feast of Passover, which commemorates the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt. In the Tanakh, Passover refers specifically to the sacrifice offered at the end of the 14th day of the First Biblical Month, whereas the feast is referred to as Chag HaMatzot, Feast of Unleavened Bread. Every Israelite was required to partake in the Passover sacrifice in order to remain part of God’s covenant-nation (Nu 9:7, 13). Eating of the Passover sacrifice was also the means for non-Israelites to enter the covenant. The Israelites left Egypt with a mixed multitude of people from numerous nations and the 12th chapter of Exodus explains how these foreigners could become part of the covenant-nation:
When a sojourner sojourns among you and does the Passover to Yehovah, circumcise for him every male and then he will approach to do it and shall become as a native-born of the land… There shall be one Torah for the native-born and for the sojourner who sojourns among you.”
The Torah is saying that by eating of the Passover sacrifice, the circumcised Gentile becomes an Israelite. There is no legal distinction between the native-born Israelite of the physical seed of Jacob and the sojourner who joins the covenant-nation through the Passover sacrifice.
With the destruction of the Temple, most Jews believe that the duty of sacrifice, including the Passover, must be fulfilled through prayer. This is a lesson that appears in the 14th chapter of Hosea. This prophet lived in the Kingdom of Israel at a time when it was at war with the Kingdom of Judah. The Jerusalem Temple was in Judah leaving the inhabitants of Israel cut off from the Temple and all legitimate sacrifice. In this context, the prophet teaches the people a path to repentance which includes fulfilling the duty of sacrifices through prayer:
Return, O Israel, to Yehovah your God for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Take with you words and return to Yehovah, say to him: “Forgive all iniquity, and receive goodness, and let us pay for the bulls with our lips. Assyria will not save us, nor shall we ride upon horse; and we shall no longer call the work of our hands ‘our gods’, because in you the orphan finds mercy.” Hosea 14:2-4
The elements of repentance that the prophet Hosea lays down are:
1) Return to God, 2) Ask for forgiveness, 3) Do good in place of the bad you have done, 4) ask God to accept prayer as a payment for sacrifice, 5) profess God to be your only savior, not man or your own might, 6) deny false gods of your own creation, and 7) proclaim God as the Father who acts mercifully even to the fatherless. Ever since the destruction of the Temple, Jewish “sojourners” have followed the teaching of Hosea and joined the covenant-nation by participating in prayers at the Passover seder, the annual commemoration of the sacrifice on the first night of Chag HaMatzot.
In modern times, becoming a Jewish sojourner has become not only a religious act but also a political one. It entitles the “convert” to citizenship under the Israeli “Law of Return”. The secular State of Israel has stepped in and imposed certain standards that every Jewish denomination must follow in their conversions. The Karaite Jewish community is no exception. As a result, modern-day conversion, unfortunately, has as much to do with Israeli religion-politics as it does with being a true Israelite in the eyes of the Creator as set down in his Torah. The running joke in Israel is that if Ruth the Moabite turned up at the border she would not be recognized as a Jew.
Up until 2007, the Karaite Jewish community did not perform any conversions of non-Jews. In July of that year I was privileged to be present at the first formal conversion ceremony of this sort in recent memory at the Karaite Jewish synagogue in Daly City, California. The conversion ceremony was carried out by the “Karaite Jews of America” with the approval of the “Council of Sages”, the official Karaite Jewish institution recognized by the State of Israel. When the idea of conversion was first presented to the “Council of Sages” they insisted on certain standards beyond those imposed by the State. One of their biggest issues was that Karaite conversion not be “evangelical”. The Christian evangelical spirit of going out and convincing people to change their beliefs is alien to the Jewish experience of the last 1000+ years. In most parts of the Diaspora, evangelizing to the Jewish faith was punishable by death at the hands of the Gentiles. This made Jews gun-shy about spreading their faith and this is still the general Jewish sentiment today. Whereas Christians consider it the greatest piety to convince people to change their beliefs, in the Jewish world this is considered a repugnant thing. The Jewish attitude is that our covenant of faith with God is a closely-guarded treasure. If a non-Jew wants to share in this treasure he must come of his own volition and internal conviction. In fact, Jewish tradition teaches that when a Gentile comes and asks to convert he must be refused three times. Only upon the fourth request is he allowed. We Jews are not eager to share our spiritual gold.
While the Karaite Jewish conversion process does not observe this ritual refusal, those who wish to convert are required to arrive at Karaite beliefs on their own before being eligible. Going out and evangelizing those of other faiths is strictly taboo. In the Christian and Muslim worlds “missionaries” are considered heroes but in Jewish culture they are thought of as vampires who prey upon unsuspecting and unwilling victims. While I can’t say this is a biblical attitude it certainly is a Jewish one that I am not immune to. Recently a friend on Facebook said I was “as pious as a missionary” and I thought she was casting the worst insult at me, until I realized that in her terminology this was meant to be a profound complement.
The conversion ceremony in Daly City wasn’t about missionizing or even making people Karaites. The candidates had to be of Karaite faith and practice long before being accepted into the year-long conversion process. The conversion ceremony was about making them Jews in the formal sense, recognized by an established Jewish community, and ultimately by the State of Israel. The Karaite Jewish Bet Din (religious court) in Daly City didn’t convert Christians or Muslims or Buddhists to Judaism; they converted non-Jewish Karaites to (Karaite) Judaism. The first man in line for the conversion ceremony was a dear friend who had been living as a non-Jewish Karaite for nearly a decade. His formal acceptance as a Karaite Jew was a monumental moment of prophetic significance for me. I see it as a fulfillment of Isaiah 56 which speaks about the son of the Gentile who joins himself to Yehovah becoming an integral part of Yehovah’s people. The end of that prophecy says:
Thus says Lord Yehovah, who gathers in the dispersed of Israel, I will gather others unto those I have gathered.
I have lived this prophecy, having been gathered from a dark corner of the Diaspora to the covenant-land that God gave my people. I’ve also seen those “others”, people all around the world, gathered to the God of Israel and his covenant. Most of these “others” will never convert to Judaism but I still believe they are a fulfillment of this prophecy, each through his own relationship with the Creator of the universe.
Over the years I’ve met Jews of both the rabbinical and Karaite persuasions who do feel called to convince people to embrace the Jewish faith. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this approach but it is the exception to the rule. One such exception was an old Karaite man in Jerusalem named Mordechai Alfandari. He once told me how Christian missionaries used to harass him on the subway in New York when he was a boy. He spent a great deal of his energies over the next 60 years engaged in Jewish apologetics. I consider Mordechai my mentor as he is the one who opened my eyes to speaking the name of God, which incidentally he pronounced Yihweh. When Mordechai passed away in 1999 I felt like it was expected of me to follow in his footsteps as a counter-missionary but my heart was never in it. The more time I spent speaking with Christians, the more I found I had in common with them. It seemed to me to be a colossal waste of time and energy arguing with them when there was so much we could learn from one another. I realized you can always find differences with people if you want to. God knows there are plenty of differences between me and other Jews and even between me and other Karaites. I decided I would focus my energies on what I have in common with people rather than the differences.
Today I don’t see it as my job to convince anyone to accept my faith. I believe God is the one who changes the hearts of men, not missionaries or preachers. I see my role as empowering people with information so they can understand the roots of their faith in its original language and context. I am convinced this has value for Jews, Christians, and anyone else who professes the truth of the one true God and his prophet Moses. I’m not sure Mordechai would be pleased with what I am doing today, but I need to follow what I feel my heavenly Father has called me to do. The good news is that a day is coming when the Messiah will sit as the flesh and blood King of Israel, enabling all those who believe in the covenant of the one true God to sit together at the same table and partake in the literal Passover sacrifice. May it be soon in our days!
Nehemia Gordon
Jerusalem, Israel