Question:
I saw in the Daily Dose:
But when you make your goal in life to be someone you are not, or to be part of a people that are not your own, that is the ultimate surrender. There is no greater captivity, for your essence and being have been locked away in a dark cell.
Can this also be seen as a shot across the bow directed towards a potential convert?
Response:
If I can divert just a bit, that will help to answer your question: The Talmud never talks about a "gentile that comes to convert" but "a convert that comes to convert." In English that makes no sense—how could you be called a convert even before you have converted?
But in Hebrew, the concept is entirely different. The word is "ger," and it does not imply being converted or transformed from one person into something else. Rather, a ger is simply one who comes from another people to live amongst us. Simply put, a ger is someone who comes to join the Jewish People.
So now, the language of the Talmud makes sense: It means, "A ger who comes to live amongst you." This is who he always was—always someone who did not fit in. He did not fit into the place from whence he comes, and now he comes from there to fit in among us. Eventually, he will be absorbed and become completely one of us—for, like himself, we are the people that never fit in amongst the nations. Perhaps it is for this that we are enjoined repeatedly not to remind the ger of his past and to accept him with no distinctions. For he was truly always one of us.
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