I have to admit that I never really thought I'd see this. A Dayyan in Israel retroactively revoked a conversion that was done 15 YEARS AGO!!!! As a result, her children were deemed not Jewish, and she and they were blacklisted. Who did the conversion? Rabbi Haim Druckman, a talmid hakham and Rosh Yeshiva.
But never mind that. Who appointed this so-called Dayyan? Well, whoever it was, this incompentent never learned Halakhah. The law is absolutely clear. If a Bes Din converts someone, even if they go out and worship idols (never mind if he maintains a less than Orthodox lifestyle), that person is still Jewish. Period. Otherwise, as the posqim say: אם כן, במה מצינו כח בית דין יפה? And why did this מתלבש באיצטלא דאינו שלו do so? According to the Rabbinical Pleader involved in the case:
The judge in fact ruled that all conversions signed by the special conversion court were invalid, because the court was headed by "heretics" and "criminals". This ruling implies that the thousands of conversions conducted by such courts were unacceptable.
(And people were surprised that the Rabbanut backtracked on its agreement with the RCA.)
Want to hear about hypocrisy? When Rav Goren זצ"ל tried to resolve the Langer case by voiding the conversio of the mother's first husband, based on the consideration that the man never stopped goingto Church, the Haredim railed in protest. None other than Rav Elyashiv resigned from the Supreme rabbinical court in protest.
Now, conversion is a very serious matter. It should only be undertaken by those qualified to do so. We cannot let it become a farce. At the same time, it is absolutely forbidden to call the acts of an established, legitimate Bes Din into question!
תורה תורה חיגרי שק! And Erev Shavuot, to boot.
(Thanks to Yael for the heads up.)
There's no doubt in my mind that had Geveret Lubitch been reresenting the same woman in the same divorce, but instead of an amicable situation she was an "agunah", Lubitch would have demanded that the dayanim issue such a ruling (which would allow dispensing with a get) and would have written a column as to why the dayanim are "insensitive" to the needs of women by holding them chained to dead marriages instead of finding creative solutions such as cancelling the conversion so as to release the agunah.
ReplyDeleteEverything is relative when one has an agenda to attack the Rabbinical establishment.
while i agree in general with your post- perhaps the admission that she never intended to follow halacha differentiates this case from the standard psak that conversions are permanent
ReplyDeleteRav Druckman gave the Geirus.Isn't that enough?Can anyone really know now what she actually said then.This judgment now is unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteI frankly blame the current RCA leadership for not pointing out that the agreement for decades has been that local Rabbonim who know the facts on the ground handle the geirus-they then send in a copy of tghe document that the 3 Rabbonim signed to the RCA office which kept them on file. Theywere pr9obably the most reliable geirus-often no funds even accepted by the Rabbis andeven those who would accept it was not thier business. As a clsoe friend of mine stated look I do a couple of geirus a year and refuse to accept anything even expenses-and yet the Chief Rabbinate accepts this person X-a well known aggressive hashgacha allower-major business hashgacha. It doesn't smell right.
ReplyDeletemycroft
In all sincerity, I believe 99.8% of all giyurim done after WWII are fake, phoney frauds. There are many reasons for this, but IMHO the bottom line is when there are ulterior motives the giyur is invalid. So it's a good thing courts don't recognize each other's giyurs. At least the eidah giyurs aren't recognized by the mediah, so when someone from the soviet bloc is migayer thorough them at least it can be surmised that they didn't do it for the new oleh freebies. MAYBE.
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