Rationalism and Jewish Conversion
A major scholar describes the factors involved in the conversion of Jewish intellectuals to Christianity in this period as follows:
Polemical literature written by converts begins with the twelfth century, and the importance that [the convert] Petrus Alfonsi attributes to “philosophy” in the process of his “rebirth” is indicative of the mood of that class of intellectuals, officials, and merchants which was the main source of the later “Taufwellen” [waves of conversion] in Spain. Alfonsi’s main argument against his older Jewish self…amounts to the accusation that neither halakha (the rabbinic legal tradition) nor exegesis [commentary] are compatible with reason, that is, philosophy….Alfonsi is an early prototype of the later, and far more subtle, Abner of Burgos and of many average converts for similar reasons….Alfonsi’s conversion seems to have been a very sincere one; his dialogue contains no defamation. Though introducing many examples and demonstrations from the Talmud and the Midrash, he never takes refuge in the accusation, which was later to become pernicious, that they contain deliberate blasphemies against Christianity.
(From Amos Funkenstein, “Basic Types of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 2 [1971], p. 378-9.)
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