American Conversions In Jeopardy, Rabbi Claims

"If a marriage registrar does not feel beholden to recognize an Orthodox conversion certificate issued by the government of Israel, there is no reason to think they will not scrutinize a conversion performed overseas, even if it has approval from the chief rabbi.” 

Chief Rabbi Versus Chief Rabbi On Conversions
Michele Chabin • NY Jewish Week Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — An apparent power struggle between members of Israel’s centrist Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox establishment has left thousands of Israeli converts in religious limbo. 

Although the standoff is so far centered on Israel-based conversions, it could ultimately affect overseas conversions as well, according to some observers. 

The disagreement — which cuts to the very heart of who is a Jew — pits Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the country’s Ashkenazi [sic] chief rabbi and the man officially in charge of conversions in Israel, against haredi, or fervently Orthodox rabbis, including, it appears, Sephardic [sic] Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. [The rabbis' titles are reversed.]

Speaking at a Jerusalem-based rabbinical conference last week Metzger gave his wholehearted support to Rabbi Avraham Sherman, who has twice announced that thousands of Orthodox conversions approved by the government’s official Conversion Authority (and, by extension, Chief Rabbi Amar) are not kosher until proven otherwise. 

Rabbi Sherman, the most influential judge on the Rabbinical High Court, has instructed religious authorities in local municipalities to scrutinize every conversion authorized by the Conversion Authority of the Prime Minister’s Office to either approve or deny a marriage certificate or burial in a Jewish cemetery, for example, on a case-by-case basis.  

Just this week Rabbi Sherman annulled a woman’s conversion and ordered her to divorce her husband, who said his wife had never fully committed to an Orthodox lifestyle. 

By invalidating the conversion, Rabbi Sherman also rendered the couple’s children not Jewish.  

Despite the fact that local rabbinic officials must, by law, automatically accept the conversion certificates signed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman, the rabbi who formerly headed the Conversion Authority, some officials as well as local chief rabbis are blatantly defying these orders. 

At the conference, which was dedicated to “Strengthening the Walls of Conversion,” Rabbi Metzger was videotaped calling Rabbi Sherman “an honest man, a God-fearing man whose ways are religious.” The chief rabbi also said Rabbi Sherman’s actions “against conversions that are not genuine is the right thing … at the right time and [in] the right generation.” 

Rabbi Sherman also told his fellow rabbis to beware of foreigners wishing to convert, asserting that “the vast majority of gentiles who want to convert do so out of self-interest.” 

Rabbi Sherman, Metzger noted, is a follower of haredi Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, an ultra-conservative rabbi whose views on everything from fertility treatments to the shmitta year often put him on a collision course with the Chief Rabbinate as well as more moderate rabbis.

The controversy has resulted in calls for a clarification from the Chief Rabbinate and especially Rabbi Amar, who is, at least on paper, Rabbi Sherman’s boss.

“It is unacceptable that politicians and others seek to compromise the status of the conversions, seeking to harm their status and acceptability,” Knesset Member Sofa Landver, the minister of absorption, said before calling on Rabbi Amar to answer those “seeking to harm the converts.” 

Knesset Member Uri Orbach of the Jewish Home party said Rabbi Metzger should be fired. 

“The honor of the converts supersedes that of the chief rabbi, who does not recognize the conversions of his own system. If the chief rabbi believes his job is to obey and flatter his haredi sponsors, it would be best to find him employment outside of the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel.” 

Rabbi Metzger sidestepped the issue by telling The Jewish Week, “conversion matters fall under the auspices of Rabbi Amar.” Rabbi Amar’s spokesman did not return several phone queries.  

In a statement to journalists, Rabbi David Stav, co-founder of the national-religious Zohar Rabbinical Organization, which works with rabbinical courts to help new immigrants authenticate their Jewish roots, said it is “inconceivable that the chief rabbi of Israel can be speaking in front of a privately run conference and expressing complete distrust in the system of judges that he is meant to be heading.”

A Conversion Authority spokesman asserted that the conversion certificates issued by the Conversion Authority “of the Prime Minister’s Office” are “valid and recognized by the Chief Rabbinate and government offices.” The spokesman then provided a phone number for those encountering difficulties. 

Rabbi Seth Farber, founder of ITIM, which helps converts and others overcome hurdles related to personal status, said his organization has received several calls in recent days from worried Conversion Authority “graduates.”

“Until now a conversion certificate from the State of Israel was an unassailable certification of one’s Jewishness. Now the chief rabbi has intimated that no convert can feel secure in his or her Jewishness,” Farber said, explaining the disquiet. 

While acknowledging that there have always been “a minority” of marriage registrars who have refused to automatically recognize a convert’s Jewishness in cities like Petach Tikva and Rehovot, “now this radical trend has been given momentum and legitimacy,” Farber said. 

Farber warned that even those American converts whose Jewishness is supposed to be automatically recognized in Israel through an agreement between the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) and the Chief Rabbinate could ultimately find themselves persona non grata in the eyes of Israeli clerks. 

“If a marriage registrar does not feel beholden to recognize an Orthodox conversion certificate issued by the government of Israel, there is no reason to think they will not scrutinize a conversion performed overseas, even if it has approval from the chief rabbi.” 

Shaney Gilbert, who converted via the Conversion Authority in 2003, said she is hurt by comments made by Rabbis Sherman and Metzger. 

“It’s lashon hora,” she said, using the Hebrew term for gossip. “Rabbi Sherman is attacking me, slandering me, without any justification.”

Gilbert, whose father is Jewish, maintains a strictly Orthodox lifestyle. She gravitated to Judaism, she said, as a teenager.

“When I converted I didn’t have a boyfriend and I certainly didn’t have any financial motivation for converting. I was already a citizen under the Law of Return and frankly would have had a better life financially in America. I converted simply because I wanted to be Jewish.”

Gilbert said she is putting her faith in God to resolve the conversion crisis once and for all. 

“I truly believe that what Rabbi Sherman is saying is not true and that his policy will not stand,” Gilbert said.

My Comments (at the bottom of the post). 

Chief Rabbis Demand Haredi Control Of Conversions.

High Rabbinic Court Revokes Another Conversion.

Chief Rabbi Backs Rabbi Sherman.

Rabbi Sherman: Converts Are Liars.

A Few Modern Orthodox Rabbis Fight Back

The New Conversion Scandal Part 1.

The New Conversion Scandal Part 2

Comments

[Hyman Rosen]

Having watched American Orthodox rabbis demean and refuse to accept Conservative and Reform conversions, we get to have the schadenfreude of seeing their conversions denied as well.

My prediction is that in a few years, it will be standard to have couples who wish to marry under Orthodox auspices (and perhaps for other denominations as well) undergo a proforma conversion to Judaism prior to the wedding.

[Dr. Dave]

And the same beit din that converts them can witness the consumation of the marriage - just to be sure everything is halachic of course.

[MisterApikoros]

I don't believe these idiots should be fired. It should not be the state which has the power to fire clergy, except, of course, in cases such as the outrage at the Tombs jail in Manhattan. In that case, the rabbi worked for the City of New York.

What I believe is that the State of Israel should become secular, so the Chief Sephardic Rabbi and the Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi have temporal power and temporal power alone. Israel must recognize any marriage between two consenting adults (OK, adults of opposite sex; I'm uncomfortable about same-sex marriages). If the rabbis want to give a rabbinical seal, OK, but it would have no legal force or standing.

Same for conversions. Any rabbi, Medieval Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist, should be able to perform conversions, and all should be recognized by the State. Whether one is Jewish shouldn't depend on whether the convert bathed in a bathhouse after having her period.

As for these excreable rabbis, they should pay close attention to what's going on in Iran, where the bell is starting to toll for the Islamofascists. The Judeofascists are next.

[Ben]

Rav Amar's silence speaks volumes.

He does not look any better then this despicable gang of Judeonazis with Elyashiv at the helm and Herr Shermann at the bloody knife edge.

[Ahavah]

I second that motion, MisterApikorus.

But what will really happen is that Israel will start turning away the educated, productive and intelligent people wanting to make aliyah and only accept the ignorant sheep approved by the UO. At that point, the State of Israel goes bankrupt under the weight of unemployable ignoramuses, the Arabs invade (killing all the chereidi and other innocent bystanders as well, since the useless chereidi won't defend the state) and that's the end of the State of Israel - presuming Hashem doesn't return to Jerusalem and start swinging His favorite 2x4 at their arrogant chereidi heads.

[docwimz]

Mk writes: I don't think they should be fired..
Yes they should, and as soon possible. They do work for ths State and receive a state salery. They enact laws and control marriage and divorce, and we pay for it ( I use to live in Israel) They work for State Agencies, like the beis din.
We also pay them Kollel saleries which guarentees them a monthy check whether their congregants are happy with their rulings or not. We pay additional money to them with every child they reproduce.
What we are seeing with American Jewry is that Judaism is changing based on the needs and beliefs of paying congregants. With out a guarenteed state salery they'de change fairly quickly.

[mordecai]

Yeah it is true. When you have a religious State it is like going back centuries when the Roman Catholic Church could bring Dukes and Princes, if not kings, to their knees.

The entire flow of post-enlightenment western history has been one of stripping religious institutions of their Theocratic powers and putting religion where it belongs -- in the houses of worhsip and not in the halls of government.

Everywhere there is a Theocracy their is growing oppression -- be it the Taliba, the mullahs in Iran, or the Heredi fanatics in Israel.

[Ben]

I was on another side, but now I have to agree with you Mordecai.

[nobody]

"Israel must recognize any marriage between two consenting adults (OK, adults of opposite sex; I'm uncomfortable about same-sex marriages). "

So because it's your opinion it should be so? A religious person has exactly the same justification for saying, "Israel must recognize only the marriages the rabbis recognize; I'm uncomfortable with civil unions or non-halachic marriages amongst non observant Jews."

Completely arbitrary and without any real basis except you think it should be true. And the religious think their opinion should be/is true and/or should be implemented. But at least they base it on something. You can't argue against them by flashing rhetoric about "judeofascists" across the screen and saying 'my opinion trumps all.' Give some rationale or some logic why the marriages you're speaking of are a good thing. This can be weighed against the negatives (and we know what they are).

[Ben]

Nobody, the civil marriage is not a wish, it is a necessity. Currently state of Israel recognizes and allows to perform only religious marriages. There is a big group of people, most of whom are patrelineal members of Jewish families, who don't belong to Moslem or Christian fath. This people also are not recognized by Rabbinate as Jews. As a result they don't belong to any faith. These hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens are not afforded a most basic human right - to marry. This is a discrimination and outrage.

If you don't see it you are trully immoral Nobody.

[Ben]

It is not American or Israeli conversions. All conversions regardless of time or place or record are now in jeopardy.

Unless this Elyashiv and his gang are rejected and excomminicated forever, there will not be a single conversion that is safe, whether it was done 100 years before or 100 past our times.