This is a list of notable converts to Christianity from Judaism.
The Jewish Encyclopedia gives some statistics on conversion of Jews to Protestantism, to Roman Catholicism, and to Orthodox Christianity [1] Some 2,000 European Jews converted to Christianity every year during the 19th century, but in the 1890s the number was running closer to 3,000 per year—1,000 in Austria Hungary (Galizian Poland), 1,000 in Russia (Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania), 500 in Germany (Posen), and the remainder in the English world.
The 19th century saw at least 250,000 Jews convert to Christianity according to existing records of various societies. [2] Data from the Pew Research Center that as of 2013, about 1.6 million adult Americans of Jewish background identify themselves as Christians, most are Protestant. [3] [4] [5] According to same data most of the Americans of Jewish background who identify themselves as some sort of Christian (1.6 million) were raised as Jews or are Jews by ancestry. [4] According to 2012 study 17% of Jews in Russia identify themselves as Christians. [6] [7] According to Heman in Herzog-Hauck, "Real-Encyc." (x. 114), the number of converts during the 19th century exceeded 100,000. Salmon, in his Handbuch der Mission (1893, p. 48) claims 130,000; others [8] claim as many as 250,000. For Russia alone 40,000 are claimed as having been converted from 1836 to 1875 [9] while for England, up to 1875, the estimate is 50,000. [10]
Modern conversions mainly occurred en masse and at critical periods. In England there was a large secession when individuals from 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 32 Jewish families and 18 unmarried Jews who had recently abandoned their ancestral faith (Rabbi Abraham Geiger, "Vor Hundert Jahren," Brunswick, 1899). In the reign of Frederick William III., about 2,200 Jews were baptized (1822–1840), most of these being residents of the larger cities. The 3rd 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 because conversion was not necessary to a public career in that country.
Franz Rosenzweig was a German theologian, philosopher, and translator.
Georg Ritter von Schönerer was an Austrian landowner and politician of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A major exponent of pan-Germanism and German nationalism in Austria as well as a radical opponent of political Catholicism and a fierce antisemite, Schönerer exerted much influence on the young Adolf Hitler. He was known for a generation as the most radical pan-German nationalist in Austria.
The German word Müller means "miller". It is the most common family surname in Germany, Switzerland, and the French départements of Bas-Rhin and Moselle and is the fifth most common surname in Austria. Other forms are "Miller" and "Möller". Of the various family coats of arms that exist, many incorporate milling iconography, such as windmills or watermill wheels.
Jewish population centers have shifted tremendously over time, due in modern times to large scale population movements, and in earlier times due to a combination of population movements, religious conversions and religious assimilation. Population movements have been caused by both push and pull factors, with the most notable push factors being expulsions and persecutions, in particular the pogroms in the Russian Empire and the Holocaust.
Johannes Pfefferkorn was a German Catholic theologian and writer who converted from Judaism. Pfefferkorn actively preached against the Jews and attempted to destroy copies of the Talmud, and engaged in a long running pamphleteering battle with humanist Johann Reuchlin.
Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann was a German-Jewish painter.
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger was a German orientalist scholar from the Electorate of the Palatinate, now best known as the author of Entdecktes Judenthum, which was published in two volumes in 1711 and 1714.
Karl Freiherr von Vogelsang, a journalist, politician and Catholic social reformer, was one of the mentors of the Christian Social movement in Austria-Hungary.
Monsignor John Maria Oesterreicher, born Johannes Oesterreicher, was a Catholic theologian and a leading advocate of Jewish–Catholic reconciliation. He was one of the architects of Nostra aetate or "In Our Age," a declaration which was issued by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and which repudiated antisemitism.
Karl Otto Thieme was a German historian and political scientist. Thieme converted to the Catholic Church from Lutheranism and was part of an international intellectual network, along with figures such as Waldemar Gurian and John M. Oesterreicher, who initially argued against anti-Jewish sentiment and for Jewish conversion to Christianity. After the Second World War, he was a pioneer in Catholic-Jewish interfaith dialogue through his work at Gertrud Luckner's Freiburger Rundbrief and numerous personal correspondencies. Although Thieme died before the end of the Second Vatican Council, his activities, along with "his intellectual sparring partner" Oesterreicher, paved the way for Nostra aetate.
There is a long history of Jewish conversion to Catholicism, both voluntarily and forced conversion. What follows is a partial history of some of the well known forced conversions.
Moritz Hall was a Polish Christian missionary, metalworker, timber merchant, and hotel proprietor.
The following is a list of the more prominent modern converts ... Abrahamson, A. (1754–1811), German stamp-cutter.
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