A leading orthodox rabbi who regularly writes for major Jewish publications has revealed that the lasting rate of gentile conversions to Judaism is as low as 20 percent, which means that “assimilation” to the core gene pool of Jews has been constant throughout the millennia.
Writing in his latest article in the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner, rabbi Jeremy Rosen, said that recently he had “been asked once again to intervene in situations where a young Jew wants to marry a non-Jew.”
Rosen, who also writes in the Jewish Telegraph, the London Jewish News and often comments on religious issues on the BBC, is also director of Yakar Educational Foundation in London, and chairman of the Faculty for Comparative Religion (F.V.G.) in Antwerp.
“Being Jewish is so important to me and so is being human. Everyone is upset with everyone else. It becomes a battleground. What can I do? What can I say? I have been facing this problem ever since I entered the rabbinate 45 years ago,” he continued.
“In my youthful arrogance, I used to reply to parents that if all they showed of Judaism to their children was a social club with hardly any positive Jewish experience, then why shouldn’t their children want to join a bigger social club? . . . I had seen in the Jewish school I attended how so many parents wanted the school to inoculate their children so that they would not marry out, but Heaven forfend they should come home and want to be more observant,” Rosen wrote.
“Without any doubt, marrying out weakens the bonds with one’s religion and community. As a result of Jews from wealthy families marrying out, I have often seen fortunes that might have benefited Jewish charities fall into the hands of those who had no interest in supporting Jewish causes.”
And then he makes the remark which is a wink and a nod to his fellow Jews: they must not be overly concerned with conversions to Judaism because so few gentile conversions actually stay being Jewish.
“As a rabbi, I have always taken a lenient and inclusive approach to the less committed. I have justified this by saying that the majority of Orthodox rabbis take such a rigid and uncompromising line that I know they have driven many away that they might have salvaged. Surely someone needs to offer an alternative approach, just as Shamai and Hillel presented different ways of defending the faith. Yet the fact is that for every ten I have seen welcomed into the fold through easy conversions or sympathetic exceptions, perhaps only two have stayed the course.”
