Admiration, Discrimination, and Forced Integration: Maimonides's Embrace of Converts to Judaism and his Responsum to Obadiah the Convert

"We have received questions from our master and teacher Obadiah," Maimonides writes, "the wise, knowledgeable and righteous convert. May the Lord reward his deeds, may he have a full recompense from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings he has sought refuge."¹ About Obadiah, the recipient of this uncharacteristically great show of warmth, we know very little. Obadiah was a convert to Judaism. Although Maimonides never specifically says from which religion Obadiah had converted, his refutations of Obadiah's rabbi's contemptuous views of Islam point toward Obadiah's previous life as a Muslim. We never hear Obadiah's own voice but, from Maimonides's paraphrases of his questions, we glean that he was a philosophically inclined individual whose questions to Maimonides embraced theology, comparative religion, and social and religious practice.² Alienated from his former religious community and feeling unwelcome in his adopted one, Obadiah's position was precarious. How could he reconcile his individual spiritual journey to conversion with the social process of absorption and assimilation into a new community? Further, Obadiah felt alienated by the contemptuous interpretations of Islamic beliefs and practices articulated by his rabbi. What then, he wondered, was the Jewish attitude to Islam? Maimonides's response to Obadiah was deeply personal, comforting, and carefully attuned to his needs. Although firm dating of the responsum is not possible, it was likely written toward the beginning of Maimonides's career, given that it mentions two of his earlier works, the Commentary on the Mishnah and the Book of the Commandments, but none of his later ones. In this paper, I compare the responsum to Obadiah with Maimonides's discussions of similar issues in his later writings on Islam and conversion to Judaism. I show how, in both cases, his concerns for the social needs of both Jews and converts influence his formulation of the law. Where differences exist between Maimonides's response to Obadiah and his later works, I argue that these are best understood by considering Maimonides's discussions on the tensions between law, that is formulated for the benefit of the greatest number, and the needs of discrete individuals.

Conversion as an Individual Act: The Figure of Abraham

Obadiah's main question concerns the technical issue of whether converts can recite prayers in which the worshipper claims Jewish ancestry. Maimonides's response, however, suggests that he believes that a deeper question underlies this one: Can conversion ever make a convert fully a part of the Jewish people? Maimonides puts the question to rest by reassuring Obadiah that "there is no difference between you and us," and by explaining how and why conversion works:

Anyone who converts and anyone who proclaims the unity of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, as is written in the Torah, is a disciple of Abraham our father, peace be upon him, and is one of his household. … Consequently, as a result of Abraham's command to his sons and his household after them, future generations will convert. Abraham our father … is thus [both] the father of his worthy descendants who follow his ways and the father of his disciples and each convert. Therefore, you must say, "Our God and God of our fathers"—because Abraham … was your father.³

Maimonides's description of Abraham here is similar to his descriptions in the Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed.⁴ Although raised in an idolatrous community, Abraham attained knowledge of the true God through a philosophical process. After achieving this knowledge, he became a teacher and gained a large following, known as the "men of the house of Abraham" (Genesis 17: 23).⁵ Thus the Abrahamic community is not exclusively a genealogical dynasty. All who share in its intellectual ideal are members regardless of whether they share Abrahamic genealogy. Maimonides tells Obadiah that it is because of his intellectual membership in the Abrahamic community that he is permitted to claim Israelite ancestry in his prayers—no genealogical connection is necessary.

Maimonides does, however, acknowledge some differences between converts...