"No Converts Allowed"

There's an interesting side conversation going on in this comment section over at Shmarya's. Something was brought up that I had somehow never known: that the Syrian Jewish community has taken upon themselves a ban on marrying or including Gerim (converts) in their community. I found a detailed explanation for the ban here, which seems to have originated in 1927 as a means of preventing intermarriage, and has been periodically renewed ever since. From Wikipedia:

In the early twentieth century the Syrian Jewish communities of New York and Buenos Aires adopted rulings designed to discourage intermarriage. The communities would not carry out conversions to Judaism; they would not recognise the conversions of other communities or admit converts to join Syrian synagogues; marriages between Syrian Jews and converts would not be recognised, and the children of such marriages would not be allowed to join the Syrian community.

Hacham Uzziel, then Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, was asked to rule on the validity of this ban. He acknowledged the right of the community to refuse to carry out conversions and to regard conversions performed with a view to marriage as invalid. At the same time he cautioned that persons converted out of genuine conviction and recognised by established rabbinic authorities should not be regarded as non-Jews.

The ban is popularly known within the Syrian community as the "edict" or "proclamation" (in Hebrew, takkanah). Every twenty years or so, the edict is reaffirmed by all leaders and rabbis of the community, often with extra clauses.

So I called a Syrian friend of mine a few hours ago to ask her for more details. She had some, telling me that the ban is taken very seriously, that there are signs up in every shul proclaiming the ban to be in effect, and that Gerim are not allowed to be part of their minyanim or to get aliyot. She also gave me a little speech about how the Syrian community has, through this ban, kept intermarriage rates low, and that that end justifies the means of keeping the ban intact. Indeed, the source I found here says something similar:

Thirdly, the community, at the time of the original ban, had an intermarriage rate of less than 1%. As they say, the proof is in the pudding. Because of this ban, while the intermarriage rate in the general Jewish Community is over 50% (may Hashem save and forgive us), the intermarriage rate in the Syrian Jewish Community is under 3% (yes three per cent).

I question these statistics, however. I highly doubt that a Jewish community that follows similar observance levels to that of the Syrian community has intermarriage rates that are "over 50%". I would venture to guess that among Modern Orthodox communities, the intermarriage rate is far closer to the rate quoted for the Syrian community, 3%. If that's so, I do have to question whether the means of completely excluding any Ger Tzedek (righteous convert) from their community justifies the ends of an intermarriage rate that might well be no lower than the average in other Orthodox communities (This source claims the intermarriage rate among all Orthodox Jews is around 3% - the same rate that the Syrian community boasts).

I don't deny that in today's day and age, many converts to Judaism likely do so more for reasons of love or marriage than because they feel a genuine calling to Judaism. And that's something that Halacha frowns upon. That said, there are many converts that have not made the decision for ulterior motives, such as converts that were converted to Judaism at a young age, or converts that truly felt drawn to the religion. I personally know many more than a handful of truly righteous Gerim who are so sincere that they make me ashamed of my comparatively rote commitment to Judaism. It seems a damn shame that they are not to be so much as counted in a minyan by members of the Syriam community.

It's hard to ignore that the Torah commands us to "love the Ger", and harder to still to accept that a community will completely exclude any Ger at all, even the most righteous and sincere, from any and every aspect of their communal life.