Within the Cairo Genizah are a bounty of narratives and records highlighting the experiences of refugee proselytes, albeit less detailed and more fragmentary than that of Obadiah haGer.
These fragments do, however, point to a few particular themes present in Obadiah’s narrative, and those are of letters of appeals or recommendation, converts fleeing Christian lands and living as refugees in the community of Fustat-Misr in Egypt, and the ease with which these communities gave to such proselytes.
Most of these refugee converts were almost certainly formerly Christians, not Muslims, and not all were poor.
The Financially Needy
One female convert who appears on several bread distribution lists from around 1107 joined the community as a convert from Christianity in her country of origin. According to the records, it appears that she was likely physically secure, but more financially needy in Egypt than when she lived in her homeland as a convert from Christianity to Judaism.
The Church Cleric
One intriguing story tells of a European convert to Judaism, a former cleric of the Church, who writes in Hebrew to a distinguished local Jewish woman who looked after him. In the letter, notable for the former cleric’s fluency in Hebrew, the man advises the woman on how to bake certain types of cake. Evidently, converts received more wheat in Fustat distributions than others because in Europe, where many of these refugee converts came from, eating habits were very different.
This same convert relates more of his story, including his impoverishment following his conversion, his attempt to induce the archbishop and other priests to convert, and his imprisonment and subsequent release by a guard who had a “telling night apparition.”
The Widow
A fascinating proselyte saga that has received a certain amount of notoriety tells of a widowed convert and refugee from Europe. The woman was married to a Jewish notable, R. David, the nasi of Narbonne in southern France.
The widow was pursued by her wealthy Christian family, so she and her husband and children had fled from Narbonne to another place, believed to be northern Spain, where the letter found in the Cairo Genizah was written. R. David is murdered and the widow’s children are kidnapped, and so the letter is one of appeals attesting to the woman’s plight and requesting assistance.
The Intimidated
Another narrative written by a widow tells a similarly remarkable saga in which the woman suffered intimidation from Christians because she had converted to Judaism. The widow’s husband had been killed, leaving her with daughters and pregnant. The woman is ransomed, and eventually ends up in Egypt where we can assume she either died remarried and no longer needed the letters of recommendation.
Charitable Giving
The amount of proselytes encountered in the Cairo Genizah fragments, not to mention the amount of converts’ children who end up on alms lists, is surprising. The alms lists and the plethora of letters of appeals reveal that the problem of the foreign Jewish poor reached enormous proportions in 11th- to 13th-century Egypt.
Poverty was a permanent feature of the Middle Ages. In Fustat-Misr alone in 1150, it is estimated that one-quarter of the Rabbinate Jewish population, or 3,300 individuals, was in dire enough straights to collect alms from the communal dole. An examination of the laws surrounding giving, as well as those surrounding the convert, however, might help connect some of the dots that led these widows, former clerics, and Norman nobles like Obadiah haGer to Egypt to this specific community. Likewise, we might be able to garner some insight into what charitable giving to proselytes meant during the 12th century in Fustat-Misr. Charitable giving, or as it is understood in Judaism as tzedakah, is, after all, an obligation rather than an option.
Biblical laws of charity favor the “stranger,” or ger, who in biblical Hebrew is a resident alien who attaches himself to the Israelite people. Typically needy because he or she is separated from family, the “stranger” is grouped with widows and orphans, what Cohen calls the “classical paradigms of the socially weak.”
These laws, however, were later understood — especially in the Diaspora — to hold sway only in the Holy Land, not to mention that in rabbinic times ger came to represent the convert rather than the “stranger.” Thus arose in medieval times a halakah on the acceptance of the foreign as worthy recipients of assistance that appears in the Geniza letters, which say, “The poor of your household have priority over the poor of your town, and the poor of your town have priority over the poor of another town,” with foreign indigents coming last.
That the “poor of another town” came last posed difficulties for travelers, and newcomers sensed that they were competing for local funds earmarked for resident indigents or for local and visiting relatives.
The “poor of another town” were sometimes placed, or expected to be placed, then, low on the list of philanthropic priorities, as prescribed by the halakah, and thus proving one’s deservedness became a life-or-death situation.
This is when the letter of appeals or recommendation letter with the autograph of a respected rabbi, which refugee proselytes without a doubt carried close to them at all times while sojourning, came in handy and allowed for the convert to become a member of “your household” and receive immediate alms.
The hierarchy of giving is found in the midrash in Numbers Rabbah 8:2 contains a parable about the stag that attaches itself to the king’s flock. Daily, the king instructs his shepherds to take care of the stag, and they ask the king why he cares so much about this one animal:
“The king responded, ‘The other animals have no choice; whether they want or not, it is their nature to graze in the field all day and to come in to sleep in the fold. Stags, however, sleep in the wilderness. It is not in their nature to come into places inhabited by man. Is it not to a sign of this one’s merit that he has left behind the whole of the wilderness to stay in our courtyard?’ In like manner, ought we not to be grateful to the proselyte who has left behind his family and his relatives, his nation and all the other nations of the world, and has chosen to come to us?”
This parable responds to the unvoiced question/critique of the born Jew: “Why does the Torah provide all of these protections for the convert? Does God care more about them than about me?” The midrash responds, “Consider what the convert has given up.” This section of the midrash concludes:
“Accordingly, God has provided the convert with special protection, warning Israel to be very careful not to do any harm to converts, and indeed, it says, ‘Love the convert’ (Deut. 10:19) … Thus God made clear safeguards so that converts might not return to their former ways [which God fears they might do if native Israelites treat them poorly].”
Although some rabbis voiced suspicions that the convert might fall back or that the convert might not entirely abandon his past beliefs, this latter text places responsibility for backsliding converts squarely upon the shoulders of born Jews.
It must be noted that proselytes were not the only individuals who arrived in Fustat-Misr with letters of appeals or recommendation. Scholars traveling came with recommendations from great European rabbis and appeals also were brought by foreign families living in Fustat-Misr who fled persecution at the hands of Christians.
Without a doubt, Jewish and non-Jewish travelers from faraway places like Morocco, Sicily, Muslim Spain, Christian Spain, France, Kiev-Rus, Syria, and Mesopotamia, Iraq, and, later,Trieste, arrived with letters “vouching for their neediness” with multiple signatures in anticipation of locals being wary or reluctant.
The difference, however, is present in a variety of complaints from such foreigners about a lack of charitable hospitality that appears unmatched by converts’ experiences.
Further Reading
Cohen, Mark R. Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.
Golb, Norman. “The Autograph Memoirs of Obadiah the Proselyte of Oppido Lucano and The Epistle of Barukh B. Isaac of Aleppo.” Convegno Internazionale Di Studi. Oppido Lucano. 28-30 Mar. 2004.
Goodich, Michael. Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1998.
Twersky, Isadore, and Jay Michael Harris. Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979.
