Acknowledgments
The birth of this book is interwined with two other newborns. The year that our firstborn daughter, Gefen, was born, I was asked to teach a newly formed group of women studying the Talmud in Kibbutz Ein-Zurim. Ruth, Gefen’s grandmother, came to our kibbutz each Tuesday to attend this class, and later on took care of Gefen. It is probably not coincidential that while teaching this group, I became fascinated by the Talmudic phrase, “a convert is a like a newborn infant”.
This fascination prompted a long-term exploration of the Babylonian Talmud’s view of conversion to Judaism, the construction of Jewish identity, and the demarcation of inter-religious boundaries, culminating in this book. During my graduate studies at Ben-Gurion University, my interest in this phrase developed into a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Gerald J. Blidstein, and I am forever grateful for his guidance, support and encouragement.
In a manner that is reminiscent of the Talmudic discourse itself, this book emerged from the fruitful exchange of ideas with teachers, friends, students and colleagues. I was captivated by Talmudic scholarship during my years of studying and teaching at Yeshivat Hakibbutz Hadati and the Yaakov Herzog Center in Ein Zurim. Later, at the Goren-Goldstein Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University, I had the privilege to develop academically in an enriching environment.
Many teachers, friends and study companions have contributed to the development of my ideas and provided encouragement during these formative years. At Ben-Gurion University, I benefited greatly from the support and wisdom of Zeev Gries and Uri Ehrlich. Rabbi David Bigman, my mentor at Yeshivat Hakibbutz Hadati, encouraged me to choose the path of study and research. Menachem Katz, as an influential teacher, and Yoel Krechmer-Raziel, Yachin Epstein and Itay Meringberg-Milikowsky, as study companions, fanned the flames of my preoccupation with rabbinic texts.
The ideas in this book continued to percolate, while I taught at Leo Baeck College, London, and later at my current academic home, the University of Haifa. Many chapters of this book were written thanks to kind invitations to present my ideas in various conferences and forums during those years: the Royal British Academy conference on “Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late Roman Palestine”, the Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Oxford on “Conversion in Late Antiquity in Christianity and Islam and Beyond”, the
Tal and Ronit were also amongst the many who read, commented on, and contributed to various chapters in this book. I am grateful to them and to Neil Janes, Ishay Rozen-Zvi, and Moshe Simon Shoshan, who helped me reconceive the first part of the book, and to Yael Avrahami, for years of mutual academic mentorship. Thanks to Sara Tropper, whose endless editorial efforts yielded a book which conveys my ideas with clarity and elegance.
During the years I worked on this book I enjoyed the support of various institutions: a Kreitman doctoral fellowship from Ben-Gurion University, a post-doctoral grant from the Genizah and Canon research study group at the Scholion Center of the Hebrew University headed by Prof. Menahem Ben Sasson, and at the University of Haifa, the Wolfson Chair, the School of History, the Faculty of Humanities and the
Last but not least, I am indebted to my friends and family: François Grandchamp, whose support, hospitality, friendship and chevruta study have been an inspiration; Gilad Jacobson, whose friendship, continual encouragement and involvement throughout the years helped me complete this book, and my parents, Shlomit and Yehezkel, who have always been there for me. Above all I wish to thank my wife, Tamar and our three no-longer newborns, Gefen, Neta and Dror. Your love, support and partnership accompanied me during this long journey, and now that the job is done, I can say “ours is yours”.