By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

It was the spring of 1948.  A Catholic priest named Father Kenneth Cox walked into the office of Rabbi Israel Brodie, senior Jewish chaplain of the British Army.  Father Cox had an extraordinary request. After serving ten years in the priesthood, Father Cox wanted to become a Ger. This meeting would mark the beginning of one of the most remarkable religious transformations of the twentieth century.

Born in 1911 to a wealthy London family, Kenneth Cox had already undergone one profound religious conversion. Raised Anglican and nicknamed “parson” by his schoolmates for his religious fervor, he had converted to Catholicism in his twenties. By 1943, he was an ordained Catholic priest serving a parish in Stirling, Scotland. Yet beneath his priestly collar, a spiritual storm was brewing.

The catalyst for his crisis of faith came through an unexpected source: the scholarly works of Hebrew University Professor Joseph Klausner. Reading Klausner’s books “Yeshu of Nazareth” and “From Yeshu to Paul,” Father Cox found his foundational beliefs shaken. Klausner portrayed Yeshu as thoroughly Jewish, not divine, and suggested that Paul, not Yeshu, was Christianity’s true founder. For Cox, who had long felt an inexplicable attraction to Judaism and Jewish people, these revelations proved transformative.

But the path from Catholic priest to Orthodox Jew would prove far more challenging than his earlier conversion to Catholicism. When Rabbi Brodie heard Cox’s request, his response was not the warm welcome Cox had received from the Catholic Church years earlier. Instead, he warned of serious problems and difficulties ahead. The London Beit Din (rabbinical court) responded to Cox’s initial letter with stark brevity: “Write again in six months.”

When Cox did write back, exactly six months later, the rabbis’ skepticism remained. The Beis Din demanded he find employment in a Jewish environment to prove his capability to live as a Jew. The conversion process would take at least two years, they said, and he would need to master Hebrew, Halacha, and essential Jewish Hashkafos. As Cox later wrote, “I was in a heartbreaking position. I had left everything behind to enter the Jewish community, yet here I was, compelled to live without its consolations and suspended in a vacuum, as it were, neither Christian nor Jew.”

The physical demands of conversion proved equally challenging. His Bris Milah, performed with incomplete anesthesia at his own insistence because he wanted to fully experience the mitzvah, was followed by complications that would affect him for the rest of his life. He often spoke of this ordeal to his students, seeing it as a testament to his commitment to his new faith.

Finally, in 1953, after five years of study and testing, the London Beit Din declared Cox’s Geirus valid. He took the name Avraham, after the first convert to Judaism, and Carmel, from England’s Carmel College where he had begun teaching. Yet even this moment of triumph came with its share of isolation. As he later wrote, “In September of 1953, I had already joined myself to the faith and people of Israel through the rite of circumcision, and I doubt whether the first man to land on the moon could have felt more isolated or utterly alone.”

Carmel found his first real home in Jewish education. At Carmel College, “the Anglo-Jewish Eton,” he taught English literature, Latin, and history. His passion for both secular and Jewish learning made him an ideal bridge between these two worlds. In 1959, driven by his newfound Zionist convictions, he moved to Eretz Yisroel to teach at Haifa’s  Reali High School. Illness, however, would force him to relocate to New York after just eighteen months.

In America, Carmel found his true calling at Brooklyn’s Yeshivah of Flatbush, where he would teach for 22 years. Here, his unique background and profound dedication to both secular and Jewish learning made him an unforgettable presence. He lived modestly in Manhattan, rejecting material comforts in favor of spiritual richness. His tiny apartment contained little beyond his beloved books – volumes of Shakespeare intermingled with sets of Talmud and Jewish philosophy.

Carmel’s journey from Anglican to Catholic priest to Orthodox Jew represented more than just a series of religious conversions. It was a progressive stripping away of worldly attachments in pursuit of what he saw as absolute truth. In an age of increasing pursuit of gashmius and other materialism, his life stood as a testament to the power of spiritual seeking over material acquisition. When he passed away in 1982, he was buried in Beit Shemesh, Israel, his final resting place in the land he had come to love so deeply.

And now the three thoughts.

Everyone knows the famous dictum of Rabbi Akiva and the original verse in the Torah.  The Torah says, “Veahavta larayacha kamocha – love your neighbor as yourself.”  Rabbi Akiva adds –“zeh klal gadol baTorah – this is an important principle in the Torah.”  Rabbi Akiva, a light unto his people, adds that this is a fundamental point in the Torah.  Much of what we do, much of our divine service is predicated upon these three words.

Rabbi Akiva lived from before the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash until the aftermath of the Bar Kochva revolt in 135 CE.  We now fast forward exactly one thousand years from the passing of Rabbi Akiva.  A new light to the people of Israel, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon also known as the Rambam, (1135- 1204) is born.

In his Mishna Torah (Hilchos Dayos 6:4), we read:  “He has commanded us in the Mitzvah fo loving a Ger, a convert, like we love His own Name.”  Wait.  What happened to the word, “kamocha – as yourself?”

[Parenthetically, Rav Jewnin was a recognized world class scholar in Grodno who died tragically young]. He explains that the Rambam’s intent is that there is no upper limit to the amount that we must love the convert.

We see clearly that, according to the Rambam, the Mitzvah of loving a Ger, by far exceeds the amount we must love our fellow brethren that are not geirim.  Now it is true that the Ramban states that the Mitzvah of loving a ger states that it is equal to kamocha – disagreeing with the Rambam, but it, nonetheless, is at least equal.

I would like to suggest that we take this Rambam to heart in a number of practical ways:  In social interactions, in Shabbos invitations, in business ventures, in tzedakah, and in our dating as well.

THOUGHT TWO

The Mitzvah of v’ahavta layacha kamocha is one Mitzvah.  However, the Mitzvah of loving a Ger involves the fulfillment of two Mitzvos – Ahavas HaGer and Ahavas Yisroel!  If we love Hashem’s Mitzvos, then we should surely love a double Mitzvah.

THOUGHT THREE

The Mitzvah of loving a Ger is one that we can fulfill at all times.  We can do it in thought alone!  It is one of the “thought Mitzvos,” so to speak.  So the next time that we are standing in line without a sefer, or we are in a place where we cannot learn, for one reason or another, we can always contemplate the thought Mitzvos.

CONCLUSION

A Ger Tzedek is someone who left their entire background, their entire culture, out of love of Hashem.  This is what Rev Avrohom Carmel did.  Let’s think about the fact that he left two priesthoods.

This is also what Avrohom Avinu did when Hashem commanded him with lech lecha, meartzecha, memoladetcha, u’mibais avicha – from your land, from the place of your birth, and from the house of your father.  The commentaries explain that it was to give Avrohom Avinu more merit.  Certainly, we see the tremendous merit of a Ger Tzedek.  It is no wonder that the Mitzvah fo loving gerim is mentioned in the Torah so many times.  It is also no wonder that Hashem loves geirim so much as well.  Perhaps the next time we are in Eretz Yisroel, we should go to Beit Shemesh and visit his Kever.

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