Inferior Jewish converts & Jews listed from most to least important

Converts to Judaism are inferior to "native" Jews.... they're like "a sore on the skin".... they're not to be trusted.... and they're a hindrance to the messiah's arrival

"Halevi (12th century Jewish poet & "philosopher") meets the problem of conversion by arguing that converts are indeed not the equals of native Jews and that only after many generations, so it would seem, can their descendants be fully amalgamated into the Jewish people. To adopt a brilliant and amusing metaphor of Daniel J. Lasker's, just as IBM PC clones may run the same software as original IBM hardware, but are still not the real thing; so, too, converts may believe what native Jews believe, and act as they do (software), they are still not the same as native Jews (hardware)."
Maimonides on Judaism & the Jewish People (1991)

Menachem Marc Kellner page 5

"the Midrash remarks: "do not trust the convert, even after the 22nd generation" (according to another source, for 7 generations a convert cannot be trusted not to

have returned to his old ways).

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

By Sacha Stern page 94

"(converts are also a hindrance to the coming of the MessiahY) his tendency to lapse is considered a liability to Israel, which explains Rabbi Helbo's well-known saying: "converts are as difficult to Israel as leprosy". The Babylonian Talmud treats the converts with suspicion: it wonders whether their motives were indeed sincere, and why they waited so long to convert; it also suspects them of acting out of fear rather than out of love. If a convert is suspected of (transgressing) a single commandment, he must be suspected of (transgressing) the whole Torah."

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

By Sacha Stern page 94

Jews listed in order of importance (most to least)

"In certain contexts the convert is distinguished from the Jewish-born as having inferior status. In the liturgy, he cannot refer to the Patriarchs as "our forefathers". More importantly, his lineage is inferior to that of most Jewish-born, as according to the mishnaic scale of lineages (yohasin):

1. Priest (cohen)
2. Levite
3. Israel (ordinary Jews)
4. Impaired priest (descendent of a cohen who'd broken the marriage rules)

5. Convert
6. Freedman (former slave)
5. Bastard
6. Natin (Gibeonite) (Jews forbidden to marry ordinary Jews)
7. Silent (of unknown fatherhood)
8. Foundling (abandoned as a child)"

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

By Sacha Stern source

The Zohar, the bible of the Kabbalah equates converts to boils:

"... proselytes (converts) are as bad to Yisrael (Jews) as a sore on the skin."

Zohar 12:89

See also: Non-Jews are dogs