ABSTRACT
Religious conversion and slavery were inextricably linked in medieval Jewish law and practice. Jewish law prescribed that masters should circumcise their male slaves and immerse them in a ritual bath for the purpose of transforming their slaves’ legal status from Gentile (non-Jew) to Canaanite (foreign) slave – a liminal category between Gentile and Jew. 1 Nonslave converts to Judaism were also expected to undergo rites of circumcision and immersion and to observe certain religious laws. Yet a Canaanite slave was in a distinct legal category of “partial conversion.” 2 The slave’s conversion to Judaism was only completed when his master emancipated him and the slave undertook another ritual immersion. Upon manumission, the slave was considered a full convert and a member of “the community of Israel.” 3
This chapter investigates the implications of the slave’s liminal status in Jewish law by analyzing sources from the Cairo Geniza. 4 Geniza documents from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries – including court records, letters, and deathbed wills – allow us to observe in much finer detail how the liminal position of the slave as “partial convert” inflected practices of domestic slavery in Jewish households and shaped the social experience of slaves themselves. Specifically, slave owners, and the Jewish community more broadly, accepted, encouraged, and supported slaves’ integration into “the community of Israel” through manumission and marriage. Slaves and freed slaves were also aware of how they could use religious conversion as a strategy of self-determination to shape their own life circumstances.
