by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Seems there’s no level too low to which certain groups can sink. Ynet reports that certain rabbis Hadana and Tsadok are scamming Ethiopian couples by finding their conversions problematic, at the last minute so that they can’t get married, offering to do a “fake” wedding for them since they can’t cancel at the last minute… of course, not forgetting to charge them an arm and a leg for the favor… and then after the “fake” wedding and the “proper” conversion are over, Hadana will then do a “real” wedding for them in his office… for another fee, of course.
A Yedioth Ahronoth reporter approached Rabbi Shalom Tsadok with a “similar case,” in a bid to verify the couples’ complaints.
“Rabbi Shilo is introduced when it’s necessary and conducts the wedding; he is popular but must be paid what he asks for,” Rabbi Shalom Tsadok told him, adding he was “not involved with setting the price.”
When asked by the reporter whether he could ask Rabbi Hadana about Rabbi Shilo, or tell him that the wedding was not a real one, Rabbi Tsadok said: “You can, but no one should know it was make-believe… Rabbi Hadana probably knows everything…it’s for your own good.”
The Rabbinate, added Rabbi Tsadok, will not recognize the marriage. “It’s not binding. It’s just a little ceremony.”
The reporter than asked the rabbi whether NIS 3,000 ($900) would be enough. “He will only want cash,” said Rabbi Tsadok. “When you get to the wedding hall, you meet him before you go in, give it to him personally and then enter the hall with him.”
The wedding, explained the rabbi, is invalid: “It doesn’t count, just a make-believe… It’s artistry. There will be a wedding and everything, a ring too.”
Unsurprisingly, the couples mentioned in the article decided not to continue the conversion process, and did not get legally married. SO: in sum: chillul hashem, in making these people - who opted to go jump through every hareidi hoop so that they could be married, had someone deliberately screw them over for money (I wonder whether in fact there really was a problem with their conversion, given that halachically, it doesn’t actually take much to convert someone and have it stick) offer to fix it for more money, and then try to get - what, yes more money out of them… and they don’t want to consider continuing their journey towards joining the Jewish people? Astonishing.
FOlks, just go to the Masorti movement, already. They’ll do a proper conversion, they’ll marry you, and they won’t try to con you because you’re brown.
by feygele · Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
More, still, from the conversion files.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is crying. No, sorry, his Torah is crying. While I found his Jerusalem Post opinion piece a bit much, he did make some great points.
WHAT HAS happened to our Torah of late? An entirely different narrative is being written, the very antithesis of the love and compassion of the Scroll of Ruth. My Torah has been stolen away, hijacked, by false and misguided interpreters. My Torah is crying because of rabbinical court judges who have forgotten that the major message of the Exodus from Egypt is for us to love the stranger and the proselyte.
They have forgotten the 11 prohibitions against insensitive words and actions toward converts - and the talmudic stricture that we are not to be too overbearing or exacting toward a would-be proselyte (Yebamot 47). They have forgotten Maimonides’s ruling that even regarding a convert who merely went to the mikve (and became circumcised if male) - even if the conversion was for a personal romantic or venal reason, and even if the convert has returned to former idolatrous ways - he or she remains Jewish (albeit a Jewish renegade); her or his religious marriage remains intact, and lost objects must be restored to him or her. (Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Relationships 13,14).
MY TORAH is crying because these judges have, in the name of Torah, disrupted and possibly destroyed hundreds if not thousands of families of converts, whose children and even children’s children were brought up and accepted as Jews - only now to learn that their forbears’ conversions have been retroactively nullified.
With a tip o’the hat to several blogs, including DovBear.
by feygele · Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Previously in the High Rabbinic Court: WTF file, we talked of revoking conversions. Today’s story is about Deaf conversions.
Many years ago a deaf woman appeared before the Conversions Court and declared her desire to become a Jew so she could marry her Jewish love. The court ruled in the majority that there was no point in converting her, since the Halacha exempts the deaf from performing mitzvahs; and since the conversion would be rendered insignificant, there was no way to perform it.
The court’s reasoning was that since the Halacha says that “one who is deaf, one who is young and one who is a simpleton shall be exempt form ordinance,” the woman in deemed incapable of observing mitzvahs, thus incapable of accepting the burden of ordinance, which is the cornerstone of conversion.
I’m saddened that they’ve taken such a position. Especially when their logic does not hold: “one who is young” is “exempt,” but children are converted all the time (when adopted, when their parents convert, etc). Exempt does not mean forbidden. They also could have looked at this from the point of view of her potential husband (and future children) - by allowing her to convert, he could have Jewish offspring. Without her conversion, most communities will not consider her children to be Jewish.
Are people who are Deaf from birth lesser Jews? Of course not. Until a century ago (and, sadly, even more recently), it was believed that “deaf = dumb.” We know now that it’s not the case - individuals just have a more difficult time learning in a hearing/aural/oral environment when they’re Deaf (big surprise, eh?). There are schools for the Deaf, universities, different sign languages around the world. In the Jewish world, there’s an international Orthodox yeshiva for Deaf students; Chabbad regularly hosts events for Deaf Jews; Our Way offers resources for religious Deaf Jews to participate more fully in their home religious communities (and is funded by NCSY and/or OU, I think); and more. There are even Orthodox Deaf rabbis. Why would they be ordained if they were forbidden, err exempt from mitzvot?
With our updated understanding of the intelligence of Deaf people, shouldn’t this exemption be reexamined? Shouldn’t this woman have been allowed to convert?
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 5th, 2008
Haaretz offers an interesting response by Asher Maoz to the ridiculous attempt by the High Rabbinical Court to invalidate, retroactively, all of the conversions performed by (Orthodox) Rabbi Chaim Druckman, posted here by Josh Frankel a few days ago.
Will this finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
Well, I doubt it. Although as Maoz -correctly- points out, such retroactive annulments are contrary to halakha, this is by no means the first ruling contrary to (or at the very least, irrelevant to) halakha made by those leading the charge to make (Ultra-) Orthodox Judaism more stringent, more separate, and more isolated. As a matter of fact, aside from a number of “halakhic” rulings which are simply stringent for their own sake, or the retroactive post-mortem re-ruling of those gedolei hador who ruled more leniently to make their actual rulings seem like they weren’t practices that the gedolim themselves actually followed or to at least try to hide the fact that they made such rulings at all, or out and out questionable practices (many of these have been covered in the Jewschool archives, but I won’t list them here) in general this tendency is in itself problematic as a matter of “al tifrosh” -do not separate yourselves - which is, in fact, the entire point, not simply a side effect, of many of the rulings of these types.
Just for one example of many, several of the halakhic solutions established by the Conservative/ Masorti movement in order to free agunot had actually been under consideration -or being used- by the Orthodox mainstream - until the Conservativim started using them, which them made them treif by association, with the current preferred mode to be to say that all weddings not performed by an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi are not valid, completely in contradiction to Jewish law, and running a real and actual risk of make mamzerut more common, because people are then “free” to remarry when in fact their first marriages are halakhically legitimate (all it takes are a Jewish man, an unmarried Jewish woman and two Jewish witnesses, rabbi not required), making their remarriages halakhically invalid. Oy, what a mess. The only humor to be had being that if it became common for women to get unchained by going to the Ultra-Orthodox and having their first marriage declared void, Masorti rabbis would almost certainly have to start insisting that anyone who had been remarried by the ultra-orthodox get a get retroactively… the entanglements could be legion…okay, not really that funny.
So what’s going to change now? Well, almost certainly nothing. At least not until the Orthodox who aren’t complete loons (most of them, but unfortunately, not speaking up) start saying that it’s not okay to trash moderation, that halakhah isn’t a means to make yourself politically powerful or to control your community’s every move, to oppress certain segments of your population, or to drive your neighbors nuts; when the normal majority start telling their leaders that they won’t follow them when they make stringencies for stringency’s sake, well, then, maybe then something will change.
by Josh Frankel · Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Just when you thought the conversion mess couldn’t get any worse - the good folk in Israel drop another bomb. The Jerusalem Post reports that the High Rabbinical Court has ruled to invalidate, retroactively, all of the conversions performed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman since 1999.
Get this straight, Rabbi Chaim Druckman isn’t a reform, conservative, or heck even some strange liberal YCT guy. Rabbi Chaim Druckman is a major Rosh Yeshiva, a recognized halakhic scholar, and at times has been in charge of the national religious education system in Israel. His only offense apparently - he wears a knitted yarmulke. 
This isn’t a little thing. Rabbi Druckman isn’t just a private rabbi in a little synagogue. He was the head of the official, government conversion authority. This means that thousands of people’s conversions have been effectively invalidated. Also, this isn’t just a question of whether your local synagogue will let you enroll your kids in day school. This means that thousands of people are no longer Jewish, their kids are no longer Jewish, they are no longer married, they can not get married, they can no longer be buried in ordinary cemetaries, and can no longer go to religious schools. They have been placed as second class citizens. All apparently because one woman, more than fifteen years after she converted was no longer shomeret shabbat - according to the ideals of this rabbinic court. Do you understand how inane that is? This ruling basically says, that if one day, decades, marriages, and children after you convert, you happen to tear a piece of toilet paper on shabbat once not only are you no longer Jewish, but everyone your rabbi ever converted is no longer Jewish!
This is beyond absurd. Such a position threatens every conversion. Hey, why stop there? Perhaps your misbehavior could undermine your mother’s or your grandmother’s conversion. That fundamental principle of, “A Jew, even if he sins, is still a Jew” - gone. Hey, Moshe got angry and hit that rock. He sinned. Guess he never converted at Mount Sinai either. And if he didn’t, well I’ll let you figure that one out.
Perhaps I should stop here, but one last little fear. Ever since the RCA kowtowed to the Israel establishment, they’ve been promising that everything they do will only affect the future, and past conversions will not be doubted. Good luck with that now. If Rabbi Druckman’s sruggy invalidated his conversions, there are plenty of Orthodox rabbis who don’t wear velvet either.
Update: I found a copy of the original teshuva here. (Hat tip to Rabbi Jeff Fox) I plan on posting some more details soon, but it is important to realize that the original reporters did get one thing wrong. Her husband is not being forbidden to marry. Quite to the contrary, the previous beit din had issued an injunction on his getting married until this mess was settled. But, since the court decided he was never married in the first place, he is now free to do as he wills.
