Abstract
More than a half century ago, Jacob Katz briefly sketched the attitudes that
the Tosafists of northern France and Germany— and other related rabbinic
decisors— displayed toward converts to Judaism. In doing so, he identified
several key Talmudic interpretations and halakhic constructs as the axes
around which the rabbinic positions could be charted. At the same time,
Ben Zion Wacholder published a study on conversion to Judaism in Tosafist
literature. Rami Reiner has supplemented these earlier efforts by focusing
on the status of converts in the rabbinic thought of medieval Ashkenaz.