Giyyur 025

(For the Hebrew text of this passage please click here.)

35:
Recently one of the members of a Bet Din in Jerusalem stunned the non-Ĥaredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish world by a scathing attack on the conversion process in Israel which included the deposition of the rabbinic head of that process and the declaration that all the conversions that the official conversion process had performed were null and void! We have already seen that such a stance is in direct opposition to the spirit and word of the Talmudic sages and also to the spirit and word of a large number of medieval and more modern rabbinic authorities. We have already quoted many of them. In an carefully detailed responsum on the subject my colleague, Rabbi David Golinkin, has enlarged the list of more modern authorities whose halakhic stance is against that of the present ultra-orthodox intransigence. Rabbi Golinkin mentions:

• Rabbi Me'ir Posner (died 1807)
• Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (died 1829)
• Chief Rabbi of Cairo, Rabbi Raphael ben-Shimon (died 1929)
• Chief Rabbi of Eretz-Israel, Rav Avraham Yitzĥak ha-Cohen Kuk (died 1935)
• Rabbi Yosef Mashash (died 1974)
• Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, Rabbi Isser Yehudah Unterman (died 1976)
• Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz (died 1992)

Even more impressive, perhaps, is a statement of Rabbi Marc Angel, Rabbi of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue in New York City, who wrote in 1983:

36:
Art Evans has sent me the following message:

Recently news from Israel was that some thousands of conversions had been retroactively declared invalid. I look forward to reading your discussion of this matter.

This is my response. If a conversion has been performed according to all halakhic requirements (excluding the spurious stringencies of the modern ultra-orthodox) it is in no way conditional. One is either a Jew or one is not a Jew; there is no status such as this person is a Jew on condition that… – whatever the condition may be. Furthermore, once a person is a Jew – be it by birth or conversion – there is no way that their Jewish status can be abrogated. "Once a Jew always a Jew." Imagine a Jew-by-birth who decides to adopt Buddhism as his way of life. According to halakhah such a person is Yehudi mumar, a Jew who converted out. From the Jewish point of view such a person is still a Jew – and will remain so until the day he dies. The same applies to a Jew-by-choice: even if such a convert were to revert to their former religion they would still be considered Jewish according to halakhah. If any given halakhic authority (such as that Bet Din in Jerusalem) refuses to recognise the conversion performed by another authority that is their prerogative, but it in no way affects the recognition that other authorities still accord those conversions. The Masorti Movement in Israel, for example, recognises conversions performed under Reform auspices if the conversion was performed according to halakhah, and does not recognise a Reform conversion that was not performed according to halakhah.

37:
I would like to end this series of shiurim on conversion with a message that I received almost six moths ago. I think that it contains a message for all of us: that the success of a conversion depends more than anything else on the extent to which the community shows love and gives a warm welcome to the new Jew.

Let me remind us all of something that we learned at the very beginning of our study of this topic (Giyyur 002).

Derek Fields has sent me the following insight which I pass on to everyone.

It occurs to me, as I am learning the first aliyah of Vayechi, that the example that Jacob sets in adopting Manasseh and Ephraim can relate to the question of conversion. What struck me are the p'sukim (47:5-6) that read: "And now, your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt shall be mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine like Reuven and Shimon. But progeny born to you after them shall be yours; they will be included under the name of their brothers with regard to their inheritance." Why does Jacob make this distinction between Manesseh and Ephraim and any future siblings that they may have? Possibly, it is a statement that even though they were born outside of the Jewish people to a non-Jewish mother while their father was disconnected from his people, that they, Manasseh and Ephraim, are not only to be included amongst the Jewish people, but to be given a position of honor. I am not suggesting this as Aggadah Halachah, but simply another homiletic statement that may bear on the issue of the place and value of the convert amongst us.

Our series of shiurim on conversion has now reached its conclusion. Last week I asked people to send me suggestions and requests concerning the next topic to be studied in the Halakhah Study Group. So far I have not received any suggestions. So please do write to me by clicking here and offer a suggestion or request for our next topic. Assuming that I do get requests I shall set them before you in a couple of weeks so that all participants can choose the next topic to be studied. The deadline for sending your requests and suggestions is Monday 12th January.