Syndication
Conversion
The Jewish Press Leans (a Little Bit) Left for a Change
The Jewish Press, the nationally distributed, Brooklyn-based Orthodox weekly, can be counted on to lean pretty far to the right when it comes to both politics and religion. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by a pair of remarkably progressive (by contemporary Orthodox standards) opinion articles on two hot-button religious controversies that were published last week by The Jewish Press.
Poof, You’re Not Jewish Anymore
Jewschool’s Josh Frankel is up in arms — and with good reason:
Just when you thought the conversion mess couldn’t get any worse - the good folk in Israel drop another bomb. The Jerusalem Post reports that the High Rabbinical Court has ruled to invalidate, retroactively, all of the conversions performed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman since 1999.
Get this straight, Rabbi Chaim Druckman isn’t a reform, conservative, or heck even some strange liberal YCT guy. Rabbi Chaim Druckman is a major Rosh Yeshiva, a recognized halakhic scholar, and at times has been in charge of the national religious education system in Israel. His only offense apparently - he wears a knitted yarmulke.
This isn’t a little thing. Rabbi Druckman isn’t just a private rabbi in a little synagogue. He was the head of the official, government conversion authority. This means that thousands of people’s conversions have been effectively invalidated. Also, this isn’t just a question of whether your local synagogue will let you enroll your kids in day school. This means that thousands of people are no longer Jewish, their kids are no longer Jewish, they are no longer married, they can not get married, they can no longer be buried in ordinary cemetaries, and can no longer go to religious schools. They have been placed as second class citizens. All apparently because one woman, more than fifteen years after she converted was no longer shomeret shabbat - according to the ideals of this rabbinic court.
Here’s The Jerusalem Post’s article on the ruling.
UPDATE: Writing in Ha’aretz in response to this ruling, Asher Maoz opens fire. Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post reports, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, is trying to reassure converts, and the Knesset is planning to take up the issue.
UPDATE II: The Rabbinical Council of America is lending its voice to the chorus of critics of the rabbinic court’s opinion, JTA reports.
How Anthony Lake Became a Jew — First in Others’ Eyes, Then Officially
Speaking before an audience at New York University’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life — where he was boosting the presidential bid of Barack Obama — former Clinton administration national security adviser Anthony Lake related the amusing story of how he was often mistaken for a Jew, sometimes allowed others to think he was a Jew and, finally, actually became a Jew. As far as I can tell from this brief sound clip posted by the JTA, he did it for the food, the jokes and the arguments.
Israeli Rightist: Conversion Is Existential Issue
The debate over conversion has been heating up, here in America and in Israel. Last week, the left-wing Israeli daily Ha’aretz weighed in with a searing editorial urging the rabbinate to stop obstructing the conversion of the masses of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not considered Jewish under halacha. This week, it’s a right-wing Knesset member who’s pushing to make conversion easier.
Ha’aretz reports that Yisreal Beiteinu Knesset member David Rotem is submitting a bill that would expand the numbers of rabbis able to conduct conversions:
Rotem says the Chief Rabbinate once permitted all municipal rabbis to conduct conversions, but it withdrew that authority. Rotem wants to restore it and to expand it to rabbis in moshavim and kibbutzim.
The Yisrael Beitenu MK argues that, “If we do not resolve the conversion problem, the Jewish state is done for. The nation of Israel will be divided into two and they will start keeping books of yuhasin [family trees]. I want to preserve the unity of the nation of Israel.”
Ha’aretz reports, however, that without the support of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Rotem’s bill “will be shelved.”
Who’s Your Messiah?
“If you believe that a dead man is the messiah, does that disqualify you from converting to Judaism?”
That’s the question raised in a Jerusalem Post article about an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who came to Israel under its Law of Return and was interested in converting to Judaism. While the rabbis were impressed with his religious observance, the problem came when they started asking him questions prompted by his affiliation with the Chabad Hasidic sect, which tends toward the belief that its late rebbe is the messiah.
The Post reports:
