Presence

I meant to link to this before Shavuos; better late than never. Last year I wrote an essay entitled: Conversion, Covenant and Commandments: Maimonides on Joining Yisrael. The basic idea is that the acceptance the commandments, according to Maimonides, is not a pre-requisite to conversion, but instead acts as the terms of the deal, so to speak. At last week's Kollel Yom Rishon, I had a chance to speak with R. Zvi Sobolofsky after his shiur on assorted topics in conversion, and he told me that he believes that R. Soloveitchik understood the Rambam that way as well, but the majority of rishonim felt differently.