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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #223 - Halakhic Purist Rabbi: Part 3, Nehemia brings back Rabbi Asher Meza to discuss proselytizing in 2nd Temple Judaism, how the conversion process has become dramatically more burdensome over time, and where believers in Yeshua fit in according to the Sanhedrin’s halakhic decrees.

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Rabbi Asher Meza: Within my own religion, I don’t think someone has to drop the belief in Jesus, okay, as long as they incorporate Torah observance. Right? Because like the word “avoda zarah”, the word used in Judaism to describe idolatry, doesn’t appear in the Torah.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Rabbi Asher Meza. He works in Jewish outreach; he’s a Bible enthusiast and a self-described halakhic purist. He’s the founder of Torah Judaism International. Shalom, Asher. You talked about proselytizing and how Judaism is against proselytizing. And, of course, the classical thing that every Jew, certainly with any kind of education knows, is that if somebody comes to you and says, “I want to convert,” that you have to turn them away three times. And you’re saying that Rabbinical Judaism in ancient times was a proselytizing faith, which is actually what the New Testament says, right? In Matthew 23, Jesus says that they crossed the oceans, or something like “cross the sea” to find one convert. And you read that and you’re like, “Wait. Did Jesus ever meet a rabbi?” Because that’s not Rabbinical Judaism. But you’re saying it was.

Asher: Yes.

Nehemia: So, talk to us about that.

Asher: So, right. Anytime I say something is Rabbinical Judaism, I mean that it was done in the time of the Mishnah and the rabbis that appeared during the time of the Second Temple. Nowhere in Jewish law does it tell you to reject the convert once, twice, or even three times. It never says that, okay? That’s a myth, in some way misconstrued on the story of Ruth, which the rabbis don’t incorporate on their procedure and how to accept the convert.

Maimonides says that “Yes, if somebody comes to convert, you ask them, ‘Why do you want to convert?’” If their answers line up, it says that you accept them immediately. And then it says that you teach them some of the laws, not all of them, “lest you turn him from the good path that he has chosen back to the bad path”. Maimonides is acknowledging that a Gentile remaining a Gentile when he already wants to become Jewish is the wrong path. And he says that, from the outset, we draw a person forth, and he quotes Hoshea, that says that “with bonds of love I drew Israel from Egypt,” right? That this is the way that we should reach out to converts.

Now, what Maimonides has to say about conversion is identical to what appears in the Talmud, in Masekhet Yevamot, which is identical to what appears in Shulkhan Arukh, in Yoreh De’ah. There is no source that says to turn converts away. Now, clearly, we want people to be sincere. Okay? But that’s neither here nor there. That has nothing to do with proselytizing. Actually going out and making someone a lover of God, that’s also not prohibited. Maimonides says that one way that we fulfill the commandment of loving God… The Rambam has a book called Sefer haMitzvot, The Book of Commandments. The third commandment, the third positive commandment of loving God, he says, “The way you fulfill that commandment is by doing what Abraham did.” Now, this is a midrash that teaches that Abraham sought converts. He converted the men, and Sarah converted the women. It’s a midrash, but it’s there. But the reason I’m mentioning it is to tell you how even Rambam thought about the idea.

It wasn’t really till post-Kabbalah that the mistreatment of converts began. And I know that it always boils down to Kabbalah, but it’s such a big part of the Jewish world. The main reason people are against seeking converts is because Kabbalah introduced this idea of a Jewish soul. Kabbalah teaches that a Gentile cannot convert to Judaism. If they do convert, it’s because they were Jewish all along. And it’s tied on this midrash a little bit that all souls were on Mount Sinai, you know. So, if they acquired a Jewish soul now, it’s because they always had a Jewish soul.

So, their job is to, in some way, make it hard for anybody who comes to sift out the real Jewish souls from the false Jewish souls. Because Kabbalah invented, or solidified, this idea of Esav le’sone Yaakov, that Esau intrinsically hates Jacob. That the reason Israel suffers is not because of Israel’s sin, which is basically the standard that appears in the Torah, right, or the system, but because Gentiles have this soul that come from the Sitra Achra, from, like, the other unclean worlds. While the soul of the Jew, it says in… like, in chasidut, says that chelek eloka mima’al mamash, that the soul of a Jew is physically part of God. Intrinsically, not because they keep commandments. So, if you separate the world as “us intrinsically” and “everyone else”, of course, you’re not only not going to believe in proselytizing, you’re going to make it hard for converts who do come in. And…

Nehemia: This is… wow! So, you said a lot here. So, I want to go back to this idea of… So, this idea that the Jewish soul is inherently… because it’s interesting. I’ll hear this in like… especially like Chabad people, I’ll hear them saying, like, “You have a Jewish soul and there’s something beautiful about it.” But there’s an implication there that the non-Jew has a different nature of their soul, and you say in Kabbalah it comes from the Sitra Achra, which is the other side, which is something like Satan and all the impure things in the world. So, I mean, this is obviously nothing… this is inherently, from my perspective, right, to be fair, is inherently contrary to one of the central messages of Genesis, which is that we’re all made be’tselem elohim, in the image of God, right? So, you’re saying that in Kabbalah, there are two types of souls among humans; the Jewish soul and the non-Jewish soul.

Asher: Correct. I mean, I have to organize Orthodoxy a little bit here.

Nehemia: Please.

Asher: I encourage people to become Jewish, and I’m an Orthodox Jew. However, my form of Judaism, which is a more rational, halakhic-based form of Judaism, views all these extracurricular ideas, right, as optional. I mean, there’s some beautiful option