RabbiPod On The Israeli Conversion Crisis
Last week Rabbi Eli Garfinkel of Temple Beth El (a Conservative Synagogue in Somerset, NJ) recorded an interesting Podcast. In short the good Rabbi shares some of his concerns regarding the recent conversion fiasco in Israel.
Here is a brief summary of the episode from the RabbiPod site.
In this episode of RabbiPod, I argue that Israel needs to have a law permiting civil marriage, and that the Israeli government should not have the power to decide who and who is not a Jew. That power should be left to individual rabbis and their respective communities.
I have listened to it a few times now (its short) while writing and collecting the links for this post and wow, it’s good! The rabbi is pretty much on the money with most of what he says. I personally enjoyed how the Rabbi managed to quote the Shulhan Aruch in a way that clearly demonstrated how this decision to overturn Orthodox conversions is in fact not rooted in Jewish law.
However, I’m not sure that I agree or rather understand everything the rabbi is suggesting. For example, at one point he states that the government should not be involved in deciding who is a Jew and that it should be left up to individual rabbis and their communities. He also states that Judaism is not a race but an ethnicity and a country. So if there are two separate things going on religion (which I believe he’s saying should not be regulated by the state,) and citizenship, I’m not sure how he would suggest reconciling these two things. On the one hand we don’t want the “who is a Jew” question decided by the ultra-Orthodox but for the purposes of immigration and naturalization does the government not need to have a say in deciding who is and is not a citizen and therefore a Jew, according to the current system? I may have misunderstood him but I’m definitely little confused about how he would resolve this.
Anyhow the bottom line is, I highly recommend checking out this Podcast. Especially if your a JBC who is interested in and/or concerned about status issues within Israel. Oh he even touches on the church/state (which might be better framed as the synagogue/state)issue, including the recent court rulings which have seen fit (I believe) to begin publicly funding synagogues built by the Reform and Masorti communities within Israel. He like others points out that while on the surface this may seem like a good idea it may actually just be adding to a larger problem. Namely, that it may serve to fuel the corruption and power grabs which are often associated with publicly funded religion.
I’m not sure I completely agree but he does make some good points and he’s got me rethinking a thing or two.
Anyhow check it out and let us know what you think!
Hat tip to Alissiana (a regular JBC.org reader) for FYI’ing me on this.
Sweet! I’m glad you found it thought-provoking!
I also don’t necessarily agree with all the points in it, but I thought it was very eloquent and well reasoned. I liked the halahkic arguments too–as an armchair student of halakhah, that’s always sort of baffled me.
I was at a minyan at the Germantown Jewish Center in Philly this weekend where I got into a nice discussion with a gentleman my host later informed me was a former head of the Reconstructionist’s seminary in the city who argued that this was going to be "the last straw" in breaking the state Rabbinate as it currently exists. I don’t know. I hope so, but I don’t know–if it will be, I don’t think it will be for our sake. I still think we’re usually mostly a symbolic arguing point in a greater fight that’s not really about converts. Perhaps the symbolic affront will be productive.
My boyfriend agreed with him: he thinks that the risk of having large numbers of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren–children of female converts–not recognized as Jewish would be what it would take to push the greater Orthodox community in Israel and here in America into action on the subject. I suppose we will shortly see if he is right.