In the following essay, Theoharis explores Ozzie's questions about and confrontation with Judaism in "The Conversion of the Jews."

The term "other" can express a relation of simple opposition—the reverse, "the other side of the coin," or a relation of simple identity—the additional, "the other penny." Very often, though, the relation presented by the 'other' involves a complex and dynamic fusion of opposition and identity. Literature and philosophy and religion may reasonably be thought of as attempts to disclose the laws by which that fusion works, to make its energy our own. The natural sciences and the humanistic disciplines have long given the name "conversion" to the process by which opposition yields up identity. For centuries the phrase "conversion of the Jews" has been a trope for the pragmatically unlikely, the tragically impossible, the heroically resisted, the idealistically sought for event. Andrew Marvell...