Ephraim Kanarfogel | Wayne State University Press | 2020

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern

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During the Middle Ages, how warmly would a Jew who converted to Christianity be welcomed back to his brethren if he decided to revert to the religion of his birth? The dominant view, posited by the late historian Jacob Katz, has long held that the rabbinic authorities of that time did not impose restrictions on such individuals looking to return. (A position that early modern rabbinic authorities then changed.) However, as Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel argues in Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe, things were not so simple. Kanarfogel, the E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law at Yeshiva University and a long-time student of Katz, notes how despite Rashi's ruling that returnees could not be charged interest (as if they were non-Jews), and divorces they granted their Jewish wives were effective—based on the principle "A Jew, even though he has sinned [grievously] remains a Jew"—other rabbinic titans, including some of the Ba'ale haTosafot, disagreed. Rashi had aimed to dispel the notion that by converting to Christianity the individual had permanently separated himself from the Jewish community (i.e., baptism did not invalidate the person's halakhic status as a Jew) and make their return easy. French and German scholars, including Ri of Dampierre, Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi, and Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, "recognized and embraced" ritual immersion as a sort of "un-baptism" through which these Jews could return to the fold. As Kanarfogel writes, these scholars "supported this practice" beyond the level of a simple folk custom (which is likely how the suggested practice originated). Scholars who embraced this practice did so to remind the apostate of his religious and communal obligations, bind him to those obligations, separate him from his time spent in an idolatrous context, and as an act of repentance. Ri, for example, did "not require the returning apostate to make a formal reacceptance of his Jewish obligations before a tribunal," but he "implie[d] that there are some rabbinic authorities who did." A number of rabbinic texts and manuscripts record the stricter view of the German Tosafist Simhah ben Samuel of Speyer that all baalei teshuva are required to dip in the mikvah to mark their return. Rabbi Elazar of Worms, known as the Rokeach, explicitly mandated immersion for such individuals and required they undergo specific penitences for having celebrated non-Jewish holidays, including fasting regularly, not eating meat or drinking wine, washing their head only once or twice a month, and not approaching the courtyard of a church or the homes of priests. Rabiah of Cologne, as Kanarfogel documents, "saw the apostate as even closer to Judaism than did most contemporary Tosafists" and required intense preparations for mikvah immersion and formal reacceptance of the mitzvot before a beit din. Kanarfogel further demonstrates from a responsum of Rashi's reproduced in Sefer Mordekhai that Rashi was stricter than first presumed, determining that a wife of a Jew who had willingly converted to Christianity and consorted with a non-Jew could not return to her original Jewish husband. By way of explaining these strict positions, Kanarfogel suggests that "at least in part, as a response to the increased number of conversions among Jews in the Rhineland and elsewhere owing to the First Crusade, these German Tosafists may have adjusted their halakhic positions in light of contemporary events… as a means of strengthening their communities and protecting them from further spiritual if not physical damage at the hands of the Christian majority and its authorities." For decades, Ephraim Kanarfogel has produced definite works on the Tosafot and their times. In this latest entry, he offers a comprehensive, clear, and convincingly argument demonstrating that Rashi's students and even grandchildren held more variegated positions on the status of returnees to Judaism than the scholarly community originally perceived. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.