Audio Shiur: Parshat Naso - Uncomfortable Situations

Audio Shiur:
Parshat Naso - Uncomfortable Situations

We begin with the claim that some women make that having male judges in the room when a female convert dunks in the mikvah is inappropriate, because it makes her uncomfortable. Then we turn to Sotah, and study some of the details of the process, which all agreed, are far, far worse.

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Conversion Standards, and the Debate about Private Conversion Courts in Israel Today

Over the past several months, the media in Israel has made a great deal of noise about the private conversion court convened by Rav Nachum Rabinovitch. It seems clear to me that there's a great misconception about how gerut takes place here, and the standards for conversion. Truth be told, I myself did not really understand the full picture until I heard a talk from Rav Yisrael Rosen of Tzomet during a Yom Iyyun at my son's yeshiva. Rav Rosen has been intimately involved in the Rabbanut Conversion Courts for many years.

Rav Rosen speaking at the Yom Iyyun in Ma'aleh Adumim

First we must ask ourselves: why is there such a thing as a conversion court at all? Why not just go to the regular Beit Din? With the first waves of aliyah from the former Soviet Union, it became clear that the normal batei din were not equipped or willing to handle the kinds of cases that were coming before them. Applying the regularly accepted (and rather stringent) standards that are common in Chutz L'aretz made the process impossible, and a dayyan who wished to be lenient would be criticized by his colleagues. Ask a dayyan today from the "regular" battei din - from any stripe - RZ, Chareidi, etc - about the giyyurim and they'll immediately say: "I don't have anything to do with giyyur." These battei din are a separate entity, not related to the Beit Din structure. The only official connection that they have is that they require the Chief Rabbi's signature to be acceptable in the secular context of the State of Israel.

Rav Rosen explained that in the early 90's, Rav Bakshi Doron approached a number of leading RZ rabbis asking them to deal with the giyyur issue. They established a beit din system as well as a framework of machonei giyyur - essentially giyyur seminaries - aimed at training potential candidates for conversion. These rabbis explicitly view these conversions not only in a halachic framework, but also in an ideological framework, hand in hand with the Religious Zionist view of the State itself. He quoted one explanation that the אובדים מארץ מצרים would be non-Jews who were lost to their ancestry over time, and would one day return the Land.

For this reason, these Batei Din do not see their role as adversarial to the potential convert. They never ask any "gotcha" questions, and see themselves as guides, looking to help people who wish to join the Jewish nation. A very high percentage - well over 90 percent - of the candidates who apply to convert are in fact converted in the framework of the conversion courts. He explained that they're not looking to "catch" anyone, and if someone declares the intention to keep the mitzvot, then they take them at their word. 

This is the basis for most of the conversions taking place in the framework of the rabbinate. The situation is even more "lenient" (for lack of a better word) in the IDF, where candidates in the Netiv program study a three-month program about Judiasm before conversion. It is common knowledge that a very significant percentage of these converts do not keep Shabbat or kashrut in any normative manner. This is not to say that they don't keep mitzvot. But we would not consider them Orthodox. Rav Rosen actually lamented that not enough people convert in Netiv, where they're easy to target as candidates for giyyur, as they're stuck in the army anyway.

Let me be clear: the current standards already in place for decades are far, far below the standards of any Beit Din in the United States that I am familiar with - and intentionally so. The entire network of Batei Din for giyyur was created specifically to encourage as many Russians as possible to convert. This also explains the entirely legitimate criticism of Rav Sherman (from the regular battei din) and many of his chareidi and non-chareidi colleagues, who disagree entirely with the methodology and ideology that created the batei din l'giyyur, and question their validity. The only reason these many thousands of conversions are accepted today is because Rav Ovadya Yosef accepted them and was willing to sign the conversion certificates.

The new conversion court in session

When Rav Rabinovitch ruled that in his opinion a beit din can convert a minor child despite the fact that his mother is not a Jew nor converting herself, he wasn't deviating from accepted halachic norms in the Beit Din system. The issue isn't that controversial, ironically. Even Rav Moshe allowed the practice. (In an interesting twist, Rav Kook explicitly forbade such conversions.) But Rav Rabinovitch is deviating from the Rabbanut policy, one that Rav Yitzchak Yosef doesn't accept. Rav Rosen and Rav Druckman actually agree halachically with Rav Rabinovitch's psak. They just don't think that he should attempt to implement it with a private Beit Din because of the legal ramifications here in Israel. Essentially they're afraid that if the Israeli Supreme Court allows Rav Rabinovitch's (and Rav Riskin's) unlicensed conversions, what's to stop a Conservative Beit Din from doing its own conversions that would then have to be accepted by the State? (Good question. Answer: nothing.) 

To sum up: The new private Beit Din isn't a geirut of a different standard than the current rabbinate standard. That ship sailed long ago. It's a political fight about power and control (as is almost always the case), with the current Chief Rabbi (Rav Yosef) unwilling to sign on giyyurim that Rav Rabinovitch feel's are a critical and relatively simple tool - giyyur kattan - for addressing an ongoing demographic problem in the Jewish State.

On the Convert's Bill of Rights

Bethany Mandel has written a fascinating piece demanding a convert's Bill of Rights in which she lists ten points that she feels converts deserve as they undergo the process of conversion. Generally, her article is courageous and important, if only to give "outsiders" (non-converts) perspective into the ordeal and challenge of conversion. I agree with almost all of her points, but have a few caveats.

She writes:

1. Converts are in a state of persistent limbo. During the process we are never told how long it can or should take. We cannot get married if we are dating, we cannot date if we are single. We lose control over the most important choices in our lives and hand them over to men with whom we are unfamiliar for an indeterminate amount of time. I was unable to give a new job a start date, to give my former job proper notice, sign a lease on a new apartment or set a wedding date because I was kept in the dark about how much longer my conversion could possibly take. Days? Weeks? Months? A year? Several? This is psychological torture. A rough estimate and a clear plan for how to move forward to get to the finish line, the mikvah, is the least that a convert deserves.

While this point seems to make sense, it doesn't really address the process of conversion. Conversion is not a course that one takes and then passes the test in a linear fashion (although in Israel it is precisely that, which is one of the primary criticisms about the process of conversion here). Rather, conversion represents a a process of spiritual growth and change that is not linear, but dependent totally upon the progression of the candidate. How is it possible to know when the candidate is "ready"? True conversion represents the inculcation of values, spirituality, passion and commitment. How do you demonstrate those in a written exam? How much time does that take? For some it can be weeks. For others, much, much longer. Imagine being given a clear timeline, and the rabbi feels that the person just isn't ready. Should he convert her anyways, because he needs to adhere to the schedule he gave her? And if he ignored the schedule, wouldn't that be worse? The limbo must indeed be painful, but I imagine that the entire process is painful as well, and sometimes that pain is a sign of growth.

3. The reasonable costs associated with conversion should be clearly laid out from the outset.

Right on. I have heard too many horror stories about people undergoing private conversions and being told, late in the process, about unexpected costs that they'd have to pay to "finish".

4. Communities have welcoming committees for Jews who move to the area but nothing in place for converts in the process.
5. Converts are constantly asked to discuss extremely personal questions by strangers in social settings.
6. Help us with matters of Jewish ritual. This falls on rabbis and community members alike.

These are, to my mind, common sense. Sadly, there's often not enough common sense in our communities.

7. If converts are expected to provide their “papers” proving their Jewishness for a school, synagogue, or wedding ask born Jews for the same.

This already happens in Israel to anyone wishing to get married. It probably also happens in many Diaspora schools and shuls.

8. The conversion process for those of Jewish heritage should be accelerated and unique.

This is a subject of great debate among contemporary poskim and one of the primary reasons for the ongoing debate about the proposed conversion law in Israel. While the concept of zera yisrael can be justified halachically, it's far from agreed upon by the vast majority of poskim. This isn't a common sense issue or a mentchlechkeit issue, but a halachic one that doesn't belong in this article.

9. Converts deserve to be treated with the same love and care as Jewish orphans from the moment we become Jewish.
10. We should not have to live in fear about the status of our conversions in perpetuity.

Also both true, and should be obvious.

Ironically, I believe that the effort to unify conversion standards was all about alleviating that fear: if rabbis adhered to a standard, then no one could come afterwards and question whether they were properly converted or not. This effort stemmed from decades of shady practices of rabbis from Orthodox communities who converted too many converts without requiring proper kabalat hamitzvot. Rather than blaming the rabbis who worked (and continue to work) tirelessly to uphold the honor of geirim, we need to point that finger at rabbis who perform personal conversions knowing all the while that they're following a da'at yachid not accepted by the broader community. When this type of conversion is called into question (and it will be), people will write angry editorials at the Times of Israel blaming the RCA and the Beth Din of America, when they should really blame the rabbi who converted them in a questionable manner.

While I can try and appreciate the anxiety of converts who now fear that their conversions will somehow be questioned due to the troubling allegations about Rabbi Freundel, in truth, the thought never entered my mind. It's good, I guess, that the RCA just issued a statement affirming the validity of past conversions, but I doubt that the issue was ever in doubt. (This was probably one of the easier statements for the RCA to publish in recent memory).
Rabbi Barry Freundel was the head of the Conversion Committee. But there was an entire committee committed to ensuring that each and every Beit Din adhered to the mutually agreed standards. The whole idea of the GPS is to take the individual rav (and his reputation - for better or for worse) out of the equation, so that we would never question the validity of the giyyur. Had Rabbi Freundel performed the conversions alone with a Beit Din of his own construction, people might be doing just that. But because he acted within the framework of a unified system, anyone who questions the validity of the conversions is doing so either to stir the pot, or to promote their own personal agenda.
I don't think that we could ever have imagined these circumstances, but to my mind, the GPS worked exactly as it was designed, protecting the Jewish status of converts even when a major representative from within the GPS is called into question.

It's now clear that opponents of universal standards will use the recent news as proof that unifying standards is a bad idea. Tragically, if they get their way, they will ultimately be harming the very converts they claim to defend.