Was Abraham a Ger?

Abraham’s Gerim

Abraham was the Father of all [subsequent] Gerim and he made Gerim. The Torah teaches that Abraham made Gerim in Haran; Abraham ‘migayered’ [made Ger; Ger’ed] the men and Sarah migayered the women. It is taught that they brought their students under the wings of the Shechinah, the Divine Presence of God. Truth be told, this is not a shocking revelation or a new innovation. What is startling about this teaching though, is that if you ask anyone what all of this means, the answer will always be the same. Abraham [and Sarah] made converts. Only they didn’t; they made Gerim, a type of conversion, a return to God’s ways. Scholarship of this subject is everything.

There is a gross misconception that Ger is synonymous with convert; don’t be fooled, it isn’t. Why do people think this way? Many amateur scholars began to think Ger means convert from the time that the English language moved into Jewish Academia. A massive effort to translate The Torah soon broke out, and people found themselves in a quandary having to choose ‘this over that’. Translators had to hastily decide whether Ger was [just] Ger, or if Ger ‘really’ meant convert. Bad translations ensued and their power to translate was misused and exploited; their efforts were easily corruptible.  

Conversion has become the main catalyst of gentiles coming to The Torah already for centuries; there isn’t much room to argue with the majority – ‘Ger means convert’ rationale. With a concrete trend to convert, the non-conversion path is regarded as largely irrelevant. Today this type of [non-convert] Ger is thought to be nothing more than a novelty item in Torah.

The Ger plight necessitates that we look to Abraham the self-proclaimed ‘Ger v’ Toshav’ and ‘Father of all Gerim’ who made Gerim in Haran, to remind us about the truth of Ger. Abraham wasn’t a convert nor did he convert people; so what did he do exactly and why?

There is a clear reason why Abraham made Gerim, not converts. A convert is someone who was born as a gentile and chooses to become Jewish. The Torah says, ‘Like ya’ll converted at Sinai, so too the convert in all future generations.

The Hebrews that came out of Egypt and descended there were from Jacob. They had the status of a Noahide – Ger, kept the 7 Laws of Noah, and were on a collision course with conversion. Just before arriving at Sinai, they received Laws at the Marah where they became officially Ger and prepared for their eventual conversion.

These Noahide – Gerim would soon enter into the Covenant of Sinai, effectively transforming a Nation into The Children of Israel; they became The Jewish People. Ergo anything or anyone that existed pre-Sinai fundamentally cannot be Jewish and it is wrong to consider them as Jews.

Abraham and his Gerim lived well before Sinai; they were not Jewish thus they were not considered as Jews. They were all Gerim, and are defined as ‘Coming under the wings of the Shechinah’. This wasn’t a religious conversion, but rather it was a spiritual transformation, empowered through Torah and devotion to God.

The Torah of Moses inherited every tradition of Ger. The Abrahamic tradition is contained within Genesis, 46 times the Torah warns about the Ger, and for those wishing to convert, the Torah is the eternal instruction. Moses got Ger, and he got it from God; that’s Sinai. However Moses received an Oral Torah as well, and it contains many laws for conducting full conversions to Judaism. What people don’t readily know, is that the Torah of Moses contains the traditions of Ger – how a gentile can return to God’s ways through renouncing idolatry while attaching to the Nation of Israel without having to convert. Those who take [conceptual] refuge of Sinai are considered ‘under the wings of the Shechinah’.

We find that there are two general categories of Gerim in Torah: converts who become Jewish, and Gerim who have come under the wings of the Shechinah. A convert is a Jew. But a Ger, who has come under the wings of the Shechinah, will always be identified as being like the Gerim that Abraham made in Haran.

The Torah’s distinctions are made without confusion, and are written in the Holy Tongue. ‘Convert’ is an English word and Ger tradition will automatically lose meaning under any translation. Perforce Abraham didn’t convert or perform covert conversions; he made Gerim, and the convert would find his place later on at Sinai.

They say if you can’t say anything nice, then it is best to say it in Yiddish, likewise, if one is to learn Torah, it must remain in the Holy Tongue Hebrew. That is the only way The Torah will ever make any sense, and the Torah has to make sense. But it doesn’t have to make converts.