Scabs and “Erev Rav”: a Healthy Response to the Unhealthy Slurs
against my being a Convert.
I am a convert. That is a fact. In addition, I have an
ill-hidden penchant for disputes. That, alas, is also a fact. In recent times,
mostly following political arguments, I have been labeled, by some enlightened
representatives of Italian Jewry (in Italy), as both “erev rav” and as “sapachat”
or psoriasis, which are the two traditional labels used by the Rabbis of the
Gemara to refer to the negative effects of the presence of converts within the
social fabric of the Chosen People. I will not hide the deep pain felt upon
having being called those two things. But it is also clear to me today that
those individuals labeled me thus specifically because of an undeniable
“virtue” of converts: they force Israelites to confront themselves, indoors,
with intestine criticism.
To begin my response, I wish to bring here two canonical
sources in the Talmud, where converts are presented as scabs –
Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 47b:
The Gemara analyzes the baraita. The Master said in the
baraita: With regard to a potential convert who comes to a court in order to
convert, the judges of the court say to him: What did you see that motivated
you to come to convert? And they inform him of some of the lenient mitzvot and
some of the stringent mitzvot. The Gemara asks: What is the reason to say this
to him? It is so that if he is going to withdraw from the conversion process,
let him withdraw already at this stage. He should not be convinced to continue,
as Rabbi Ḥelbo said: Converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous
scab [sappaḥat] on the skin, as it is written: “And the convert shall join
himself with them, and they shall cleave [venispeḥu] to the house of Jacob”
(Isaiah 14:1). This alludes to the fact that the cleaving of the convert to the
Jewish people is like a scab.
Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 70b:
The Gemara analyzes the baraita. The Master said in the
baraita: With regard to a potential convert who comes to a court in order to
convert, the judges of the court say to him: What did you see that motivated
you to come to convert? And they inform him of some of the lenient mitzvot and
some of the stringent mitzvot. The Gemara asks: What is the reason to say this
to him? It is so that if he is going to withdraw from the conversion process,
let him withdraw already at this stage. He should not be convinced to continue,
as Rabbi Ḥelbo said: Converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous
scab [sappaḥat] on the skin, as it is written: “And the convert shall join
himself with them, and they shall cleave [venispeḥu] to the house of Jacob”
(Isaiah 14:1). This alludes to the fact that the cleaving of the convert to the
Jewish people is like a scab.
These are just two examples of sources which present the
convert as an allegorical scab on the skin of the People – the comparison is
not casual of course and takes us back to Leviticus 13:2:
“When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a
rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of
his body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the
priests.”
The swelling and the scab are closely discussed in the
Babylonian Talmud Sotah 5b, where they are interpreted allegorically as the
physical signs of spiritual or intellectual characteristics:
“And for a sore [se’et] and for a scab [sappaḥat]”
(Leviticus 14:56), and se’et means nothing other than elevated, as it is
stated: “And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are
lifted up [nissaot]” (Isaiah 2:14). And sappaḥat means nothing other than an
appendage, as it is stated in the context of the curse given to the descendants
of Eli: “Put me [sefaḥeni], I pray of you, into one of the priests’ offices,
that I may eat a morsel of bread” (I Samuel 2:36). They will have to be joined
with another priestly family to receive their priestly gifts. One can therefore
interpret the verses discussing leprosy as teaching that one who initially is
arrogant, se’et, will eventually become a sappaḥat, diminished in stature.”
The attitude of the convert is, in this conception, one of
arrogance, which is then deflated, forcefully, to the status of a mere scab, an
attached source of irritation of the skin – the problem is, therefore, the
assumption that, as Rashi interprets on the Gemara in Yevamot 47b, the convert
is an external individual who joins the people of Israel and brings with him
the impurity of the alien, or of an extraneous culture:
“… converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous
scab, as it is written (Isaiah 14:1) ‘But the LORD will pardon Jacob, and will
again choose Israel, and will settle them on their own soil. And strangers
shall join them and shall cleave to the House of Jacob.’ They shall join them,
like a scab. For they hold on tight to their past conceptions and beliefs, and
the Israelites the learn from them.”
There is in the Jewish tradition as strong current which
conceives of Jewishness and the bond between the people and the Divine as exclusive:
there is a Jewish culture, with its tradition, its borders its limits, its
regulations, and its interpretational rules. And then there is the rest of the
world, persistently trying to endanger that exclusivity and strenuously trying
to challenge or even knock down the cultural uniqueness of Israel. Yet, there
is a less prominent current which perceives Jewishness as a constantly
developing concept vis-à-vis the presence of “others” – the Torah is filled
with references to the importance of those “others” and I have already written
on this matter on Pagine Ebraiche International. One of the few commentators
who sees things differently is the Rosh (Asher ben Jehiel 1250-1327) providing
the reader with a different perspective on the harsh opinions presented by the
Tosafot in their commentary to Yevamot 47b: “For they [the converts] are not
well formed in the rules and regulations, and eventually the Israelites learn
from them their wrong praxis.”
The Rosh writes in response:
“… some argue that they [the converts] cause the Shechina
[Divine Presence] to leave the people of Israel due to their presence within
the people, and God places his Divine Providence only upon families with deep
roots. This is in no way true: for converts deserve to have Divine Providence
placed upon them…”
The problem, continues the Rosh, is not in the converts, but
in the people of Israel themselves – because God provided an overwhelming
number of rules and regulations with regard to converts and to the ways in
which Jews-from-birth are required to respect them and safeguard them, the
latter naturally have a great difficulty in accepting these aliens and thus
come to see them as scabs and not as part of the people.
Yes, my fellow Jews, I am a "scab." And I will continue to
present you with the uncomfortable perspective of one who is both within and
without, both part of and alien. And you will continue to see me as erev rav,
as a scab, as a painful infection. Indeed. And as long as you see me as an
infection, you will be the infected one, and I will be merely forced to wait a
little longer, for a more enlightened group of people who will finally be able
to accept the existence of theological, halachic and yes, political ideas
different from theirs. Converting is not a process of homologation into a
cohesive body, but is, rather, the archetype of Jewish cultural and ethnic
variety – a convert brings difference. And if one is unable to accept the
challenge of confrontation, that difference will always be a painful and
unpleasant scab on its unhealthy ideological skin.
