Israel-US conversion authority crisis resolved?
Last week, an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post (by Matthew Wagner) announcing that “the Chief Rabbinate has agreed to recognize conversions performed by the Rabbinic Council of America.” This sounds like a momentous occasion, trumpeting greater recognition by the Israeli rabbinical establishment of Diaspora rabbis and conversions. However, the reality is not quite as rosy.
In point of fact, the Chief Rabbinate has agreed to recognize 15 Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) courts across the country, as well as 40 rabbinic judges as authorized to perform conversions. Anyone not appearing on the list, no matter how frum, will not be automatically recognized. Conversions performed by judges not on this new list will have to be approved by the head of the RCA’s Beit Din of America. And new conversion judges who wish to be on the list must receive approval from the head of RIETS (rabbinical seminary) at Yeshiva University and the deputy head of the Beit Din of America, as well as a representative of the Chief Rabbinate.
How did this whole balagan (mess) begin? Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is responsible for conversions in Israel, “announced in April 2006 that he would no longer automatically recognize conversions performed by RCA rabbis.” It seems R. Amar was under the impression that RCA rabbis do not adhere to the most stringent standards in accepting converts.
I’ve been reading a fair bit on this issue lately, and there have been several controversial cases and articles on it in the past few months. The general trend, both in Israel and in the U.S., has been for Orthodox rabbis to demand total observance of would-be converts. This is not the halachic standard, however; until a precedent-setting case in the 1870s, the accepted practice had always been to instruct the proselyte in some of the major and minor mitzvot. That was it. Conversion was recognized as a process, and if someone was sincere about converting, his or her desire to learn and to take on new practices gradually was enough to persuade a rabbinical court to perform the conversion. Nowadays, however, the Internet has made rabbinic decisions available worldwide instantaneously and created an environment in which rabbis are much more careful (and fearful) about their rulings and decisions. Under those conditions, no rabbi wants to seem lax or sloppy in applying standards to conversions.
In response to this “deal” between the Chief Rabbinate and the RCA, Rabbi Marc Angel (former president of the RCA) and Rabbi Avi Weiss (head of the liberal Orthodox Chovevei Torah rabbinic seminary) plan to set up an alternative rabbinic organization called Rabbinic Fellowship. Rabbis Angel and Weiss blame the RCA for “capitulating” to pressure from the Chief Rabbinate and its “narrow and extreme views on the question of conversion.”
Rabbi Seth Farber, who assists converts in navigating the Israeli Rabbinate, is concerned that hordes of RCA converts will not be recognized as Jewish in Israel. He also fears that the conversion model adopted now by the RCA will make conversion a bureaucratic process rather than a personal one.
My questions and concerns about this “resolution” are many. I am always alarmed to see people who purport to practice halachah take a flying leap from the foundations of the Torah into new, uncharted, usually overly strict territory. I fear this is what is happening here. Will halachic Judaism lose traction and the interest of would-be converts and practitioners because those who adjudicate it (rabbis) are more interested in applying chumrot (stringencies) than encouraging people to make mitzvot part of their lives? What conditions will new rabbis have to meet to make the list? If one’s conversion was performed by a rabbi who is not recognized, will one have to approach an Israeli-recognized Beit Din for an “upgrade”? What will happen to would-be converts who approach rabbis from the Rabbinic Fellowship, R. Angel’s and R. Weiss’s breakaway organization, and someday want to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel)?
Orthodox conversion already involves many adaptations between Judaism and the would-be convert. It’s a bit like packing a big house for a move, where one needs to decide what to keep and what to let go with a thousand different items. With this recent development between the Israeli rabbinate and the RCA, it seems there is yet another decision to be made: where one will want to live in the future. For those who know they will only ever live in America, the choice is much broader. But those who think they might wish to live in Israel someday should choose their Beit Din accordingly.
Hi Shimshonit,
Interesting post. I have been following this issue quite a bit too, and I have to say that it has been hard to listen to the things R. Shlomo Amar has said about it. On the one hand I understand where he is coming from, given his background and responsibilities as the Sephardi Chief Rabbi. Yet I have a really hard time conceding his point about the validity of conversions performed by RIETS graduates, let alone the implications for those presided over by graduates of YCT, or for that matter JTS and AJU.
I was interested in your point about what conversion required even as recently as a couple of generations ago. Do you think R. Amar’s position comes from being in Israel, where anyone who wants to convert can walk around the corner to a community recognized by the Chief Rabbinate and join, becoming "fully observant"? It seems to me his decision is based on missing the fact that there are far-flung Jewish communities around the world in which such an approach is impossible. But converts who come from these communities are not any less sincere about Judaism.
You’ve made the biodiversity argument on this site before, and I totally agree, in addition to the idea that converts bring in new perspectives that sharpen and beautify the Mesorah. Plus, with Rabbi Akiva, Herod the Great, David ben Yishai, and so many other important people in Jewish history being directly descended from converts, it seems gerim have often played pivotal roles. So what does the Chief Rabbinate gain for the Jewish People as a whole by making this decision vis-a-vis overseas converts?
Finally… :)… Given my own situation, this really has no bearing on me. As a Masorti convert, the Chief Rabbinate wouldn’t recognize me anyway. The המשרד לקליטת העלייה would for purposes of citizenship, but the position of the Chief Rabbinate is irrelevant unless I decided to make an Orthodox conversion in Israel. Which, it turns out, I’d probably do just because it would be so much more accessible than where I live now.
Anyway, great post, this is an interesting issue!
Shabbat Shalom,
Yair
Just one important point, on which is more accurate than the Jewish Week article. Rabbis Angel and Weiss didn’t come up with this Rabbinic Fellowship idea in response to the conversion crisis. They’re not one-issue candidates.
Steg I tried to fix the mangled linkage in you’re comment but it mangled it more myself. Care to repost the links?
Sorry about that!
oops, let’s try that again.good JTA article:http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/2008022620080226angleweiss.htmlnot so good Jewish Week article:http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a4620/News/New_York.html
Steg, thanks for the links. I scanned the Jewish Week article–much the same information about the compromise. Doesn’t say what originally prompted the founding of the Rabbinic Fellowship, though I’m perfectly willing to believe they were planning it before the current conversion crisis. The JW article does not give more information, however, about what the RF’s function will be, other than setting up alternative religious courts. Much as I admire Angel and Weiss, and wish more rabbis thought and did as they think and do, I stand by my concern about converts from their courts wanting to make aliyah.
Thanks for your comment, Yair. While I make an effort to understand where people are coming from (even when they say nutty things), I don’t agree with R. Amar’s decisions or his beliefs about conversion. I think many rabbis (particularly haredi ones) these days have become enamored of stringency, of tacking on as many requirements as possible, and of demanding standards of converts and other rabbis that go well beyond the requirements of halachah. In Israel, the Rabbinate is a big fish in a little pond, and has been given total control over all religious functions in the country. They are eager to assert their sometimes extreme beliefs and standards, and insist that everyone (even those who are completely halachically observant) follow them. And they don’t share power; non-haredi rabbis and learned Orthodox women are rarely given posts on municipal religious councils or religious courts.
I don’t think anything is gained by making a power-grab like this that affects overseas converts. I think it’s an embarrassment when rabbis treat each other this way, and a shame to trap converts in the middle of such a dispute. Halachah forbids placing a stumbling block in front of the blind, and in going so far beyond the halachic requirements in conversion, I think the Rabbinate may be in violation of this law. I sometimes wonder where the Judaism has gone in situations like this…
And last but not least, thanks for the anti-spam device, Avi. The Trackbacks were starting to get to me.
There was a time not so long ago, when I felt a sense of personal responsibility in terms of trying to a find a middle ground with orthodoxy, on the subject of "who is a Jew," but not anymore. What’s going on, is no longer about Halacha (as I think you point out in this post,) it’s about power and control, at the hands of a minority group.
Don’t worry I’m not going to go into what my “ armchair pundits” solutions might be, but suffice it to say, we need to take a radically different approach to this problem.