Over the past few years, conversion became embroiled in a new controversy after
a senior rabbinic court led by Rabbi Avraham Sherman nullified a conversion
performed by a different court of the Israeli rabbinate, further calling into
question thousands of conversions performed in the context of the Israeli army
and other special conversion courses established by the state and overseen by
Rabbi Haim Druckman. While various lawsuits, Supreme Court rulings and
agreements with Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar have partially neutralized that
decision, it raised larger questions regarding conversion standards and the
power to nullify another court’s conversion.
Unlike a country club whose
board can revoke the rights of membership, no legislative body exists which can
declare a convert non-Jewish at whim once he has properly undergone the
conversion process. The current imbroglio stems from various definitions
regarding what it means to “properly undergo a conversion” and the potential
consequences of a conversion performed under non-ideal circumstances.
One
particularly sensitive situation is the Orthodox community’s refusal to
recognize non-Orthodox conversions because it believes those movements do not
heed basic theological and legal axioms. To help alleviate this sensitive
polemical tinderbox, the Neeman Commission established conversion schools
comprised of teachers from the various streams of Judaism, even as the formal
court remained exclusively Orthodox. This process, however, has achieved limited
support and success.
Matters have become particularly complex regarding
conversions done under Orthodox purview but with disputed standards. The Talmud
states that one should not accept a convert for the sake of marriage or when the
Jewish people enjoy superior political or economic standing, as in the times of
kings David and Solomon, since they might simply seek to enjoy the material
benefits of citizenship. For this reason, the Cutheans were rejected as Jews
since they attempted to join the Jewish people for political gain while
concomitantly remaining idol worshipers (II Kings 17:33). Commentators
questioned how Persians joined the Jewish people once Mordecai and Esther gained
the upper hand against Haman (Esther 8:17), with some asserting that these
Persians never formally converted.
The talmudic sages debate what happens
if such a conversion takes place under these non-ideal circumstances. While
Rabbi Nehemiah deems their conversion invalid; the rabbinic majority concludes
that after the fact, the conversion remains valid. Elsewhere the Talmud asserts
that even if the convert begins to regularly sin, he remains a Jew and is
treated like other sinful Jews. On this basis, Maimonides rules that Samson and
King Solomon were still married to their convert wives even as it was clear that
they had strayed from the observant path.
Nonetheless, it appears that
those who presented themselves to the judicial court under false pretenses can
have their conversion nullified because of fraud. In the 1970s, for example,
Rabbi Bezalel Zolti invalidated a conversion after the original judicial court
discovered that the converts were missionaries seeking to infiltrate into Israel
under the Law of Return in order to spread Christianity. More recently,
Rabbi Yisrael Rozen, then head of Israel’s special conversion courts, nullified
a conversion after the Interior Ministry discovered that the convert had
throughout and after the conversion process been romantically linked to a
gentile.
The most controversial conversion nullification took place in
1972. Against the previous rulings of several judicial courts, then-IDF chief
Rabbi Shlomo Goren nullified the (undocumented) conversion of a distinctly
non-observant Polish man that had allegedly taken place 30 years earlier in
order to declare his wife to have been legally unmarried when she married her
“second” husband. This ruling was celebrated by many politicians because it
allowed her children to marry without the stigma of being mamzerim (born of a
relationship that is considered illicit according to Halacha) and partially led
to Goren’s election as chief rabbi. Yet it was derided by many rabbinic
scholars, including Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv, as logically flawed and against all
norms of protocol. As such, scholars from a wide ideological spectrum believe
that at times a conversion may be nullified.
The recent controversy
relates to the standards of conversion and who has the authority to determine
them. Rabbi Sherman asserted that Israeli population registries must follow the
ruling of leading haredi (ultra-Orthodox) decisors including rabbis Elyashiv and
Eliezer Schach, who had declared that any conversion that did not entail
full-fledged mitzva observance was meaningless. He further contended that his
court had supervisory jurisdiction over all courts in the state’s system, and
that in contemporary times all declarations of fidelity to Halacha remain
subject to examination based on future observance.
This last declaration
was sharply criticized by Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky, who contended that we do not
endlessly badger converts with examinations of their behavior after their formal
conversion. Others further declared that the state’s conversion courts followed
standards acceptable to many decisors while further promoting various Zionist
interests. As such, this controversy quickly became a battle over control of the
rabbinate and its vision for the future.
The author, online editor of
Tradition, teaches at Yeshivat Hakotel. JPostRabbi@yahoo.com
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