Raphael Patai (Hebrew: רפאל פטאי; November 22, 1910 − July 20, 1996), born Ervin György Patai, was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer, historian, anthropologist, and ordained rabbinical scholar.
. . .During the late 1930s and early 1940s Patai taught at the Hebrew University and served as the secretary of the Haifa Technion. He founded the Palestine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology in 1944, serving as its director of research for four years. He also served as scientific director of a Jewish folklore studies program for the Beit Ha'Am public cultural program in Jerusalem.
Patai's work was wide-ranging but focused primarily on the cultural development of the ancient Hebrews and Israelites, on Jewish history and culture, and on the anthropology of the Middle East generally. He was the author of hundreds of scholarly articles and several dozen books, including three autobiographical volumes.
. . .In 1976, Patai was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish History category for The Myth of the Jewish Race.
An excerpt from, "The Myth of the Jewish Race" by Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975, Pg. 51 - 54:
Proselytism, the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism and their incorporation into the Jewish community, is a phenomenon which has accompanied the Jewish people throughout its long history,' and which among its other results, has had far-reaching genetic consequences for the Jewish community.
The documentary evidence concerning proselytism, although available from biblical times down to the present, is sporadic and gives no total picture of the phenomenon in any age. It is in the nature of historical records that they either pertain to the lives and doings of important figures or else describe great group actions and events. The lives and works of simple folk have always passed unnoticed. If a bishop, count, merchant prince, officer, scholar, or author converted to Judaism, there was a chance that the event would leave its traces in some records. Even in such cases the embarrassment of the ruling church which the proselyte deserted, and the possibility of vengeful persecution of the community whose ranks he joined, often resulted in a conspiracy of silence. If the convert was one of the common people, the fateful step taken in embracing Judaism would remain unrecorded, except in those cases in which the convert subsequently suffered a martyr's death, and his name was listed in a communal martyrology along with born Jews who shared the same fate.
In every age and place, there must have been many times more converts to Judaism that those whose names have come down to us. How many times more is difficult to guess. But considering the numerical relationship between outstanding people and the common folk, and the fact that it was the common folk for whom Judaism held more attraction, it does not seem far-fetched to assume that for every known proselyte there may have been a hundred or more whose conversion left no traces in the annals.
While the historical evidence is thus tantalizingly unsatisfactory, it nevertheless appears that the early centuries of Jewish dispersion before the triumph of Christianity were especially propitious for Jewish proselytizing. After examining all the extant Greco-Roman sources, the German historian Emil Schürer came to the conclusion that "the Jewish propaganda in Hellenistic-Roman times must have been a very lively one." He emphasizes that in the Diaspora, "Israel felt itself the teacher of the world of nations,'' and that
the success of these endeavors was a very considerable one. By all the indications which we have it can be assumed that, in Hellenistic-Roman times, the number of those who joined the Jewish communities. . .participated in the Jewish synagogue service, and observed the Jewish law, sometimes completely, was very great.Schürer finds that
almost everywhere in the Diaspora the Jewish communities were joined by a following of "'God-fearing'' pagans who adopted the Jewish (i.e., monotheistic and aniconic) manner of worshipping God, frequented the Jewish synagogues, but as to the observances of the ritual law confined themselves to certain main points, and were, consequently, not at all counted as part of the Jewish communites.Of those Gentiles who completed their conversion by baptism and circumcision and thus became full members of the Jewish community, Schürer remarks that while we do not know how large was their number, "in the early period of the Jewish propaganda it was presumably very great, since the enormous spread of Judaism can scarcely be explained by the natural increase of the people alone."
There is general scholarly agreement that the large number of Jews found in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. cannot be attributed to natural increase alone, but was to a great extent due to proselytism. Sociologists and historians estimate that at the time of the destruction of Judaea by Titus (A.D. 70), the actual number of Jews reached about 4.5 million, constituting 8 to 10 per cent of the total population of the Roman Empire; and the latter was shown by a census carried out in the year of Augustus' death (A.D. 14) to have been 54 million. Soon thereafter the number of the Jews declined and remained fluctuating between 1 and 2 million until the end of the eighteenth century, when it began its rapid increase. It reached 4.5 million again by 1840, and peaked at 16.5 million by 1940, just prior to the Nazi genocide.
In the High Middle Ages Jewish proselytism again intensified, and at least one historian has estimated that in Muslim lands the conversion of slaves alone doubled the number of the Jews. Since in this period many slaves were practically coerced by their Jewish masters into accepting Judaism, it is understandable that the attitude of some contemporary rabbis to proselytism was negative or skeptical. Another factor making for such a negative view was that in both the Muslim countries and Christian Europe proselytizing entailed grave dangers, not only for those directly involved in the conversion of a Gentile but also for the entire community. For this reason many leaders discouraged proselytism, except in the case of New Christians or New Muslims, that is, former Jews or people of Jewish ancestry who wished to return to Judaism. Some would-be proselytes traveled from one country to another in futile search for a rabbi willing to accept them into the Covenant of Abraham. It is remarkable, to say the least, that despite such difficulties and obstacles the number of proselytes was so great, even in countries and periods in which the Jews were despised and persecuted and where Gentiles who converted to Judaism courted death at the stake.
Those who persisted in their desire and joined the Jewish community were considered---in most ages by most rabbis---full Jews, children of "Abraham our father" and, more than that, precious jewels in the crown of Israel. We shall have repeated occasion to return to this later in this chapter. But as an introduction let us quote here two different attitudes toward proselytes. The first is that of Maimonides, writing to a scholarly proselyte, Obadiah by name, who lived in Palestine. Maimonides addresses Obadiah as "Master and teacher, the enlightened and understanding Obadiah, the righteous proselyte,'' and says in the course of his lengthy responsum:
Anyone who becomes a proselyte is a pupil of our father Abraham and all of them are members of his household . . . hence you may say the prayer ""Our God, and the God of our fathers,'' for Abraham, peace be upon him, is your father.. for since you have entered beneath the wings of the Divine Presence and attached yourself to Him, there is no difference between us and you . . . in any matter. You may certainly recite the blessings, "Who has chosen us; who has given us; who has caused us to inherit; and who has separated us,'` For the Creator has chosen you and has separated you from the nations, and has given you the Torah, since the Torah was given both to us and to the proselytes. .. . And do not belittle your lineage: if we trace ourselves back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you trace yourself to Him by whose word the world came into being.Bahya ben Asher ben Halawa (d. 1340), while he cannot be compared in breadth of knowledge and vision with Maimonides, was one of the most distinguished biblical exegetes of Spain. In his book of religious and moralistic teachings, Kad HaQemah (Jar of Flour), Bahya displays a decidedly ambivalent attitude toward proselytes. On the one hand he says that the reason for the Talmudic rule that a would-be proselyte must be told about the penalties he would incur were he to disobey the commandments is to "discourage them from converting, since there is no advantage at all in proselytes'" and "their joining the Jewish community does not turn out well, nor, in most cases, is their offspring worthy. . ." But after adducing biblical examples in support of this negative view, Bahya goes on to say that the difficulties proselytes cause to Israel stem from the fact that they are more pious than the born Israelites and shed an unfavorable light on the latters' lack of complete devotion to God. This positive and, in fact, glowing, view of the proselytes' piety is illustrated by Bahya with numerous Talmudic quotations, all of which speak in praise of proselytes. Bahya concludes his discourse on proselytes with the expression of the messianic hope that ultimately all the nations of the world will convert to Judaism.
The story of proselytism as it unfolded in one country after another will be outlined beyond the Middle Ages and even into the nineteenth century. It is, however, not our intention to discuss the phenomenon of conversion to Judaism in modern times, although the process is continuing at present in those countries in which Jews live as free and equal citizens. In the United States there are now about 2,000 conversions annually; this influx of Gentile blood into the Jewish gene pool is bound to have the long-range effect of gradually obliterating whatever genetic difference still exists between Jews and Gentiles in those countries where conversion is common. For our purposes, proselytism in past periods is the important factor because its result decisively contributed to the Jewish gene pool in recent times.
