Religion: Missions to the Gentiles

Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr. and May Britt are not the only ones; what Jewish Journalist Gershon Jacobson calls a “rash of conversions” to Judaism is under way in the U.S., with more than 2,000 Christians a year trading New Testaments for Old.

Although some of the converts are girls who want to marry Jewish men, many are drawn not by romance but by the patient proselytizing of such new missionary groups as Chicago’s Jewish Information Society of America and the National Jewish Information Service, in Los Angeles. This soft-sell approach reflects the historic reluctance of Jews to seek converts: the traditional Jewish code enjoins rabbis to discourage prospective converts at least three times. But if applicants insist, the code provides a mechanism for conversion. Rabbi Ralph Simon, new president of the Jewish Information Society, is calling for more “aggressive presentation of Judaism, with conviction on the part of those who do this work that we possess unique truths, that can contribute to a peaceful and perfected world.”