The Mekhilta preserves a remarkable legal case involving a woman named Beluria, a proselytess — a non-Jewish woman who converted to Judaism. Beluria owned several maid-servants, and as her household underwent the process of conversion, a complication arose. Some of her maid-servants immersed in the mikveh (a ritual immersion pool) before Beluria herself completed her conversion. Others immersed after her.
The timing mattered enormously. When the case came before the sages, they issued a ruling with real consequences for everyone involved. The maid-servants who immersed before Beluria were declared free. Their act of conversion preceded their mistress's, which meant they entered the covenant of Israel as independent persons — not as someone else's servants. Since Beluria was not yet Jewish when they immersed, she had no standing as a Jewish master over them.
The maid-servants who immersed after Beluria, however, remained legally bound to her. By the time they converted, Beluria was already a full member of the Jewish community and their recognized mistress. Their immersion brought them into the covenant under her household authority.
Yet the Mekhilta adds a poignant detail: even the maid-servants who were legally free continued to serve Beluria voluntarily until the day she died. The law declared them free, but loyalty kept them close. This case became a precedent in rabbinic literature — a real-world demonstration that the timing of immersion carried binding legal force, and that human bonds sometimes outlast the technical requirements of law.