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Friday

י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

Friday
י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

חיפוש בארכיון

74. Convert (c) / גר

The Torah discusses commandments  regarding converts in thirty-six places. Therefore, when we meet a righteous convert it behooves us to have much compassion for him, to give him money, to make him comfortable and to appease him with pleasant words. Even if it is possible that the he might revert to his old negative ways, that is not a reason for someone who had shown him kindness to regret doing those favors, Heaven forbid. Nor should such a situation cause us to withhold good from other converts, for we are only expected to look at the person at that time and fulfill the commandments of our Creator. And if it should happen that the convert later rejected [Judaism], he harmed only himself while the reward for having helped him earlier will last forever.

 

Included in the mitzvah of loving converts [geirim] is to help and assist any Jew who wandered from his place and is now a “sojourner [geir] in a foreign land,” not only a righteous convert [geir tzedek]. It makes no sense to say that a any Jew should be treated with less care than a convert — the Torah explicitly explains the reason for having compassion for geirim-converts: Do not oppress a stranger; you know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Shemos 23:9). We see explicitly, then, that the mitzvah is not limited to converts but to any stranger in a foreign land; [after all, the Jews in Egypt were not converts but strangers who had migrated there]. Anyone who is a stranger in a foreign land, without kin or friend, whose heart is broken and lonely, is worthy of our compassion and of our befriending him. It is right that we help and support such a person in whatever way we can, and by doing so we fulfill this great mitzvah.

“My brothers and my nation, take this sefer Torah, and with this, and like this learn well, so that you should have it good; listen and enliven your soul, and achieve gladness and joy in this world and the world to come” (From the author’s intro.)