SCENARIO
Three candidates for conversion appear before the Beth Din [rabbinical court] of the Consistoire, in 1992, pleading their conduct in biblical times… They are Tzipporah (wife of Moses), Jethro (Moses’s father-in-law, priest of Midian), and… Ruth.
The set: kept very simple, since it has to be put up during the service: a 1.20 m table for the 3 rabbis; a 0.60 m table for the candidate; an enormous stack of files on the rabbis’ table; a sign reading: “Special Purim Beth Din.”
1st Candidate: TZIPPORAH
The Av Beth Din: “Madam, kindly explain to my colleagues and to myself the reasons for your wish to convert to Judaism!”
Tzipporah: “My name is Tzipporah, wife of Moshe Rabbenu. We met at the edge of a well, in the land of Midian. He fell in love and asked my father, Jethro, the priest of that place, for my hand. We married and had two children, Gershom and Eliezer. My husband having been called to high office, and having to lead 600,000 Hebrews out of Egypt, I thought it only natural to draw closer to his religion in order to take part in the life of his people. I would add that, in the haste, my husband not having had time to circumcise our son Eliezer, it was I who took up a stone and circumcised him.”
1st rabbi: “So, you come to us, the rabbis of the great Beth Din of Paris, whose reputation extends to the ends of the earth, and perhaps beyond, to inform us that you wish to become Jewish, even though you have violated the most elementary rules of Judaism: you seduced your husband at the edge of a well, like a vile prostitute. You had two children, knowing that, according to the Halakha, they could not be considered Jews, having been born of a non-Jewish mother — and a pagan one at that. You usurped the office of Mohel. And finally, you endangered your son’s life by circumcising him with no medical precaution whatsoever, with a stone picked up off the road!”
2nd rabbi: “Madam Rabbenu, can you tell us whether, in the desert, you duly observed all the rules of kashrut? Did you have 2 sets of dishes? Do you have a certificate from your glatt kosher butcher? Do you wear a wig?”
Tzipporah: “I am not sure I applied to the letter all those rules, some of which, I rather believe, did not yet exist.”
The A.B.D.: “You see, Madam Rabbenu, it is not enough to try to move the Beth Din with fine declarations and so-called pure intentions. What we want here are concrete facts! As for you, we are obliged to note that, though married to a man who has rendered a few small services to our community, you come from a milieu in which you have, alas, kept its sorry habits: you seduced an innocent young Jew; you bore him two children; you took it upon yourself to circumcise one of them; you do not observe the most fundamental laws of Judaism. I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you. (To the wings) Next!”
2nd Candidate: JETHRO
The A.B.D.: “Sir, kindly give us your name, your profession, your age, and the reasons for your request for conversion.”
Jethro (a noble, majestic old man): “My name is Jethro, but I am also called Reuel, Jether, Hobab, Heber, Keni, Putiel. I was a priest of Midian, a profession I abandoned upon my discovery of the One God — the very same who delivered the people of my son-in-law Moshe Rabbenu from the clutches of Pharaoh. The number of the years of my life is lost to my memory. I wish to convert out of love for this Saviour-God and for the people he led out of Egypt.”
1st rabbi: “What is this business of bearing 7 different names? Is it to muddle the Beth Din? Moreover, are we to trust a man who served foreign deities his whole life long? I have also heard that you took it upon yourself to give your son-in-law advice on how to lead the people. By what title? By what right? And besides, what is one to think of a man who runs to the rescue of the victor. Where, then, were you when Israel suffered in Egypt?”
Jethro: “It is true, I was a sinner. But I understood where the truth lay. The rabbis even decided to give my name to a parashah of the Torah — and what a parashah! The one that contains the Ten Commandments. Is that not enough for you to accept me today?”
2nd rabbi: “Taratata! The rabbis who decided that must have been some of those false Liberal rabbis. We recognize their sentimentalism and their treacly universalism all too well. We — we are real rabbis, authentic Jews who do not pay ourselves in fine words! No, Mister Jethro, I have heard quite enough of your speech. Go peddle your nonsense to someone other than us.”
Jethro: “Let me add just one more word. When my son-in-law, Moshe, left my daughter and her two sons, it was I who brought them back to him, thereby preventing the destruction of a family.”
The A.B.D.: “A fine argument indeed, to have prevented one of our own from separating from his non-Jewish wife! You would have us congratulate you on this feat, when it was Ezra who precisely asked the Jews who had married non-Jewish women to part from them! No, Mister Jethro, your case is indefensible. I shall, moreover, propose to the next Beth Din that your name be removed from that important parashah. It is usurpation! I shall propose that this parashah be called not Yitro, but Schneerson. You may step down! Next!”
3rd Candidate: RUTH
The A.B.D.: “Madam, numerous letters of recommendation have reached us in support of your candidacy. Be aware that it is not the number of interventions that weighs in our judgment, but your deep motivations. Kindly tell us who you are and why you wish to convert.”
Ruth: “I am Ruth the Moabite, widow of Chilion the Judean, of Beth-Lehem. In second marriage I wed Boaz, a distant kinsman of my first husband. I am the great-grandmother of King David. I sincerely desired to be Jewish — so much so that when my mother-in-law, Naomi, urged me to leave her after the death of my first husband, I said to her: ‘Do not seek to make me forsake you, for wherever you go I will go, where you lodge I will lodge; your people is my people, your God is my God; where you die, I want to die and be buried… only death will part me from you.’”
1st Rabbi: “What a fine tirade! One would think it Corneille. Your romanticism is a pleasure to hear. Be aware, my dear little lady, that one does not make Judaism with fine sentiments. ‘Your people is my people’! By what authority do you decide that? Who put it into your head that one can change peoples the way one changes a shirt? A Moabite you were, a Moabite you shall remain! One does not become Jewish with a wave of a magic wand. ‘Your God is my God’! What next? By what right do you compare your deities to our God? ‘Where you die, I want to die and be buried’! Be aware, Madam Moabite, that there are Jewish plots in the cemeteries. We shall certainly not bury a Moabite in them, converted or not!”
2nd Rabbi: “You call yourself the great-grandmother of King David. What of it? The Bible does not even mention you; read for yourself: (he hands her a Tanakh) ‘Salmon begot Boaz; Boaz begot Obed; Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David.’ Where do you see your name appear?”
Ruth: “But I thought lineage followed the mother?”
1st Rabbi: “Not when it doesn’t suit us! A fine thing it would be if King David — and therefore the Messiah — descended from a woman, and a foreign one at that! Look, the only Jewish quality I’ll grant you is Chutzpah!”
Ruth: “The what?”
1st Rabbi: “Chutzpah; or if you prefer, nerve! It takes a fair amount of it to appear before our Beth Din with fine words and not a single certificate.”
Ruth: “What certificates?”
2nd Rabbi: “Why, quite simply the ones that vouch for your Jewish commitment: a certificate from the kosher Beth Din butcher in your neighborhood attesting that you do not give that glatt kosher meat to your cat while you yourself eat taref meat; a certificate from your employer stating that you work neither on Shabbat nor on Jewish holidays; a certificate from the headmaster of your children’s lycée stating that they do not attend his school on Shabbat or on holidays; a certificate from your concierge stating that on Shabbat you wait for someone to press the electric button to open the door before going in yourself; a certificate from your electrician stating that you have had timers installed for your lights and your appliances; also to establish that you do indeed remove the light bulb from your refrigerator before Shabbat so as not to switch it on inadvertently. There are still dozens more certificates, the only things capable of assuring us of your honesty toward the Beth Din. How else do you expect us to grant your candidacy any attention at all?”
Ruth: “But have I not always been cited as the model of the convert?”
The A.B.D.: “Enough, Madam! Your insolence is matched only by your hypocrisy. I imagine the rabbis who converted you were some of those Liberal infidels! Thank God, we are more prudent than they. Never shall we accept into the family of Israel anyone who, like you, tries to move us with declarations of intent whose sincerity we have no means of verifying! You may step down! Next!”
An “offstage” voice
“That day, the Beth Din of Paris, the great capital, flanked by its satellites of Sarcelles and Créteil, decided that neither Tzipporah, nor Jethro, nor Ruth could be considered Jewish, for lack of proof. It also decided to institute a points-booklet of Jewish observances. Squares stood for the principal mitzvot. Stamps would be affixed to them by the Beth Din of Paris. 613 squares. Anyone with at least 400 unstamped squares would be struck from the community’s rolls. An annual inspection would be carried out by a special Commission.
The Beth Din was conscious, that day, of having achieved a great advance in assessing the sincerity of candidates for conversion and the degree of Jewishness of Jews by birth. It had understood that Judaism was something far too important to be entrusted to thinkers, poets, prophets, idealists — in a word, to men and women moved solely by their hearts and their intelligence…”
* This skit was performed at the synagogue on the evening of Purim by: Pauline BEBE (1st rabbi), Fernand SLAMA (2nd rabbi), Daniel FARHI (3rd rabbi), Julie OHANA (Tzipporah), M. RELKINE (Jethro), Monique CHICHA (Ruth), Philippe de SAINT-CHERON (the offstage voice).
EDITOR’S NOTE: Any resemblance to a real person, institution, or situation is absolutely not coincidental, alas.