Conversion: The Next Phase

'The times spat at me, so I spat back at the times,” said Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky, who wrestled with Soviet censors by reciting in packed stadiums his lines of inspiration, defiance, and hope. Something of that two-way spitting happened with his former countrymen's journey to the Jewish state. The Russian-speaking immigration was spat on by the ultra-Orthodox establishment that awaited it here. An estimated one-third of the immigrants were children of Jewish mothers, as Jewish law demands. The rest were mostly wives, children or grandchildren of Jewish men, and thus non-Jews according to Jewish law, but eligible immigrants according to Israeli law. The result was a typically Israeli absurdity, whereby the largest immigration in Zionist history was pulled in by the Israeli establishment's one part, and actively rejected by its other part, the Chief Rabbinate, which made conversion difficult and civil marriage impossible; and by ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, who derailed attempts to let these Israelis marry here, or ease their conversion process. This weekend, while the Jewish people salutes biblical convert Ruth, as it does every Shavuot, and as the post-Soviet immigration turns 30 – three conclusions beg to be drawn. FIRST, THE Talmud was right to rule that “a decree should not be imposed on the public if the public cannot abide by it” (Avoda Zara 36a). As has happened repeatedly over the last two centuries, ultra-Orthodox rabbis' ignoring of reality has resulted in reality ignoring them. In the 19th century millions ignored rabbinical bans on immigration to America. In the 20th century millions of Jews built the state that ultra-Orthodox rabbis deemed profane. And this century mainstream Israel embraced the Russian-speaking immigration that ultra-Orthodox rabbis harassed. The second conclusion is that the public's embrace is not enough. With hundreds of thousands unable to legally marry here, we have a problem on multiple levels: legally, it means civic inequality; strategically, it hurts the national interest, since this population's contribution to Israel's economy, defense and culture is priceless; and morally, the wholesale humiliation of IDF veterans by the engineers of draft dodging is appalling. The third conclusion is that the change all this begs must come from below, because the politicians who should deliver it from above are too cowardly to do what must be done. Fortunately, there is a lot happening below, and it is what will shape the future. ONE IDEA, formulated by Hebrew University jurist Ruth Gavison and Rabbi Yaakov Medan, head of Yeshivat Har Etzion, is that Israel allow and register marriages between any unwed man and woman who are not related in a way that would constitute incest. Also on the civic front, former justice minister Dr. Yossi Beilin suggests that the Law of Return's acceptance of a Jew's relatives be taken a step forward. Looking to the post-Soviet immigration's children, the ones who were born here, received Hebrew education and served in the IDF, Beilin suggests that Israeli law should recognize that second generation as Jews. While Beilin's idea is secular, there has been equally creative religious thinking about conversion. Modern Orthodox rabbis like Shlomo Riskin and Haim Druckman say partially Jewish immigrants, as products of Jewish history's tragedies, should undergo an easier conversion. Unlike ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who don't care that a semi-Jewish immigrant may be such because he is a product of Soviet and czarist antisemitism, these rabbis (Riskin et al.) distinguish between converts without Jewish backgrounds and those who are from “zera Yisrael,” a halachic term that means Jewish lineage. The latter's conversion process, they argue, should be different. Meanwhile, the Chief Rabbinate's rigidity has produced alternative conversion forums, from the IDF's Military Conversion Court to the rabbinical courts of Giyur K'Halacha (proper conversion), an organization established by the late Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch. Deploying the kind of inventiveness that the situation demands, this organization offers a special conversion track for children. Jewish law does not require a converting child to declare that he or she will be an observant Jew. That deprives ultra-Orthodoxy of its most potent ammunition, which is to hassle converts with knowledge tests of Orthodoxy's numerous rules and norms, and with vows to observe them. Added up with the Russian-speaking immigration's social acceptance, the anti-Rabbinate initiatives surrounding their conversion mean that mainstream Israel is overruling ultra-Orthodoxy, and embracing the immigrants the way biblical Bethlehem embraced Ruth, the Moabite immigrant who, like so many of our own immigrants, arrived here after marrying an Israelite, ready to endure the hardships of dislocation while declaring wholeheartedly “your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The 30-year war within Israel is between those who realize reality's complexities and those who deny them, and between those who possess historical knowledge and those who refuse to obtain it. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of non-Jews and partial Jews have arrived here, and the fact is that they arrived here as products of Jewish history's worst agonies, and also as part of those agonies' cure. The causes, size, and suddenness of this groundswell are unprecedented in Jewish history. It follows, that Jewish law's precedents are irrelevant for our situation, because all the conversion dilemmas rabbis tackled over the centuries were personal affairs, while what we now face is a national affair; all of Jewish law's precedents, that is, except one. It happened the morning after Rome destroyed Jerusalem. With the Temple gone, gone was also the ability to convert, because Halacha required that the convert bring an offering to the Temple. Refusing to allow conversion's disappearance, and understanding the historic permanence of the Temple's absence, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai ruled that conversion will take place without the offering. In other words, that reformist sage understood that the law must respect history's transitions rather than deny them. Unfortunately, ultra-Orthodoxy and the Rabbinate that it controls don't understand this. Fortunately, the rest of us do. www.MiddleIsrael.net The writer's best-selling Mitz'ad Ha'ivelet Hayehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sfarim, 2019) is a revisionist history of the Jewish people's leadership from antiquity to modernity.

Conversion: The Next Phase

The largest immigration in Zionist history was pulled in by the Israeli establishment’s one part, and actively rejected by its other part, the Chief Rabbinate.

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Conversion: The Next Phase

The largest immigration in Zionist history was pulled in by the Israeli establishment’s one part, and actively rejected by its other part, the Chief Rabbinate.

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