This panel’s papers approach conversion in the politically fraught nineteenth century as a complex and uneasy transition, during which converts sought to define religious change on their own terms, or, in the case of would-be converts, to reject the offer altogether and arrive at a surer sense of their own religious identity. The first paper uses the writings of Rahel Varnhagen as a case study for considering Jewish women’s conversions as a form of religious activity in itself. The second argues Heinrich Heine’s conversion was a choice to leave Jewish law and enter into German law (understood as both spiritual and literary) to become a new self. The third paper examines the writings of the Jain monk Vijayānanda Sūri, also known as Ātmārāmajī. It argues that one of his tracts both defended Jain doctrine against missionary critique and articulated a vision of Jain identity that combined theology and anti-colonial critique.
This paper offers a case study in the history of Jewish assimilation through the lens of female Jewish experience. The apparent “success” of Jewish women’s conversions to Christianity in the nineteenth century obscures a more complex picture of Jewish women’s self-expression and religiosity. I argue that while a potent combination of antisemitism and misogyny led to increased conversions, Jewish women's participation in Christian spaces was a meaningful form of religious activity.
Focusing on the writings of Rahel Varnhagen, the paper situates female conversion within broader debates about gender and Jewish assimilation. In the early nineteenth century, conversion was often considered more socially acceptable for Jewish women than for men. I argue that Varnhagen’s correspondences and eventual baptism engage Christian symbolic frameworks while remaining connected to Jewish identity, revealing conversion as a layered, dynamic process rather than a singular act of assimilation.
This paper examines Jain responses to Christian missionary critiques in late nineteenth-century India through the writings of the Jain monk Vijayānanda Sūri. Focusing on his Hindi text Īsāīmata Samīkṣā, written as a defence of Jainism against the Gujarati missionary tract Jainamatanī Parīkṣā, I explore how theological debate became a space for negotiating questions of religious identity, authority, and colonial power. In particular, the paper analyses Ātmārāmajī’s critiques of Christian theology, especially his engagement with the problem of evil and the attributes of the Christian God. I argue that these arguments, beyond defending doctrine, helped articulate a new Jain self-understanding within an emerging pan-Indian intellectual and political context. By situating Vijayānanda Sūri’s critiques of the problem of evil in the Christian context, the paper shows how theological criticism of Christianity became intertwined with broader anti-colonial concerns and contributed to the formation of a more self-conscious Jain identity in colonial India.
On 28 June 1825, in the Prussian town of Heiligenstadt, a young law student – a Jew – opened his mouth and took an oath. He recited the relevant creed, was brought to some water, and was pronounced baptised. Harry became Heinrich – Heinrich Heine. Little has been made of the legal dimensions of Heine’s conversion. To acquire this, through a ritual Heine would create a new self, one which exited Jewish law and entered into German Recht ("Right" or "Law"). In this paper, I contend that what brought Heine into this act of conversion was his way of thinking about law: specifically, its liturgical and philosophical dimensions. I wish to propose that Heine saw the Bürgerrecht (bourgeois-Right or "law") that he gained access to in converting as comprised of both a spiritual Recht and a literary Recht.
| Eliza Kent, Skidmore College | ekent@skidmore.edu | View |