Within the modern spectrum of religion, at least in the Western World, the Jewish faith often takes on the characteristics of mysticism, historical relativity, and a more solid notion of the beginnings of Christianity. Some Jewish scholars believe that Judaism takes everyday and ordinary experiences and transforms them through prayer and rite into sacred metaphors. In fact:
To gentiles who want to understand how eternity echoes in the lives of their Jewish friends and neighbors, as it does in Christian life as well, and to Jews who seek to grasp how they in their everyday encounter with ordinary life form part of that sacred society that is Israel, [one looks for] the Jewish people (Neusner, 1987, p. ix).
Contemporaneously, the modern Jewish religion has several levels of thought, and, like any great philosophy, is espoused by many and shunned by a similar contingent. For the purposes of this research, however, the topic of concern will be conversion to Judaism and will briefly cover the history of conversion to Judaism, the basic steps outlined for conversion, and the perception Jews have about those who convert to Judaism. Interspersed within these topics will be some of the trends of modern Jewish thought, particularly in the way they relate to the broader subject of conversion, and to the more limited subject of the philosophical appeal that Judaism seems to have within the ironies of the modern world itself.
The Hebraic scriptures use the conception of conversion to denote the fundamental decision by which humans have the ability to respond to the call of God. In fact, Jewish scholars indicate that it is the human attitude that corresponds to the divine action of election (free will), and election calls for conversion, conversely conversion is experiences as election. The radical, and often extraordinarily philosophical, change or conversion of a person's innermost thoughts and perceptions about the external and int...