Lectionary Calendar
Friday, December 13th, 2024
the Second Week of Advent
Attention!
Tired of seeing ads while studying? Now you can enjoy an "Ads Free" version of the site for as little as 10¢ a day and support a great cause!
Click here to learn more!

Bible Encyclopedias
Converts to Christianity, Modern

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

Search for…
or
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
Prev Entry
Conversion to Judaism
Next Entry
Convicts
Resource Toolbox

The number of post-Mendelssohnian Jews who abandoned their ancestral faith is very large. According to Heman in Herzog-Hauck, "Real-Encyc." (10:114), the number of converts during the nineteenth century exceeded 100,000; Salmon, in his "Handbuch der Mission" (1893, p. 48), claims 130,000; others ("Divre Emeth," 1880, p. 47; 1883, p. 187) claim as many as 250,000. For Russia alone 40,000 are claimed as having been converted from 1836 to 1875 ("Missionsblatt des Rheinisch-Westphälischen Vereins für Israel," 1878, p. 122); while for England, up to 1875, the estimate is 50,000 (De Le Roi,"Die Evangelische Christenheit und die Juden," 3:60).

Modern conversions mainly occurred en masse and at critical periods. In England there was a large secession when the chief Sephardic families, the Bernals, Furtados, Ricardos, Disraelis, Ximenes, Lopez's, Uzziellis, and others, joined the Church (see Picciotto, "Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History"). Germany had three of these periods. The Mendelssohnian era was marked by numerous conversions. In 1811 David Friedlander handed Prussian State Chancellor Hardenberg a list of thirty-two Jewish families and eighteen unmarried Jews who had recently abandoned their ancestral faith (Geiger, "Vor Hundert Jahren," Brunswick, 1899). In the reign of Frederick William III. about 2,200 Jews were baptized (1822-40), most of these being residents of the larger cities. The third and longest period of secession was the anti-Semitic, beginning with the year 1880. During this time the other German states, besides Austria and France, had an equal share in the number of those who obtained high stations and large revenues as the price for renouncing Judaism. The following is a list of the more prominent modern converts, the rarity of French names in which is probably due to the fact that conversion was not necessary to a public career in that country. The names of living converts are not included.

G.
K.
I. Br.
Bibliography Information
Singer, Isidore, Ph.D, Projector and Managing Editor. Entry for 'Converts to Christianity, Modern'. 1901 The Jewish Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​tje/​c/converts-to-christianity-modern.html. 1901.
 
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile