Conversions in Controversy: The Orthodox Patrilineal Descent

June 28, 2009 at 9:51 pm | In beliefs, dating and marriage, halacha, jewish denominations, orthodox | 6 Comments

By now you’ve all heard about Hareidi Rabbi Avraham Sherman, who heads Israel’s High Rabbinical court, and his ongoing retroactive nullifications of conversions to Judaism. This story has been building for some time, as the Hareidi establishment in Israel, which has long controlled the rabbinic arm of the government, has sought to monopolize power over the definition of who is a Jew.

There are excellent political and religious reasons for them to do so, of course. The question of who is a Jew defines who may claim the right to citizenship in Israel through the Law of Return, and with that citizenship, the basket of Aliyah benefits. From the Hareidi perspective, limiting aliyah only to Hareidi Jews, or at least Orthodox Jews, means that all the money flows to them, and that no money is spent on Russian immigrants, South American converts, or people converted by non-Orthodox clergy.

Many are rightfully tearing their hair out over the potential confusion that retroactive nullification of conversion creates. The Wolf, for example, wonders if uncertainty over conversions will lead to converts being unreliable for any kind of religious obligation, from testimony to minyan. He further speculates in a later post:

And how about things that have long-reaching consequences? What if you use a convert as a witness to your wedding? Or even worse, what if a convert serves on a bais din (or is a witness) to a divorce? Can you imagine the halachic nightmare that would result from a witness (or judge) on a divorce case (or multiple cases) being found to be not Jewish retroactively, throwing all those divorcees, their new spouses and children (and grandchildren) into some halachic purgatory from which they and their descendants may never escape? What about a convert who sits on a bais din for other conversions — you could have multiple “generations” of invalidated conversions, each wreaking havoc on countless individuals and society as a whole. And, don’t forget, this doesn’t go just for the convert, but for any descendant of a female convert as well!

I believe that this path leads to both a cleavage between Hareidi Judaism and the rest of us, but also to the complete abandonment of Judaism as a hereditary status. By performing these retroactive nullifications, Hareidi Judaism is casting into doubt conversions done by otherwise-respected institutions of MOdern Orthodoxy, like the RCA. As such, the RCA will eventually be forced to reject Hareidi hegemony over them, and will have to work against Hareidi authority over the Israeli Rabbinate. They already are in alliance with the Religious Zionists on this issue, but they will need to work with the Masroti movement and even the Reform movement to rewrite the rules. For all that, they may not even be successful.

What will be true is that between intermarriage, patrilineal descent, and Hareidi conversion nullification, the question of who is a Jew and who is not will have many answers and no clarity of any kind. For many, the only pragmatic way of dealing with this reality is to rely on people and their self-identifications. Sure, when it comes to weddings some people might ask for a bit more background on a person’s Jewish provenance, but for the gabbai at a shul, the question of Kohen, Levi, or Yisrael will remain the standard by which Judaism is defined in the day-to-day. Whether this is good for Judaism or not I don’t know, but it does represent another stage in our evolution away from a tribal religion and towards something much greater, but also more diffuse.

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25 years ago a friend of my fathers who is traditional but not frum complained about the coming split. Even back then it was a worry. So I explained: “We can’t eat in your houses, we can’t pray in your synagogues, we can’t participate in your rituals. Why are you so surprised this is happening?”

Comment by Garnel Ironheart — June 29, 2009 #

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The language of “we can’t” avoids responsibility. We have constructed a halacha of separation, and that’s part of what’s changing now. But let’s not pretend that it’s halacha l’Moshe miSinai that mixed seating is a problem, or that waling into a Conservative or Reform shul is assur, etc.

Comment by rejewvenator — June 29, 2009 #

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- I would turn it around and say it’s not because of the “we can’t” issues. By creating institutions and rituals that go against the observant understanding of halacha, it’s the non-religious who have created a culture of separation. After all, anyone can eat in my house regardless of whether or not they keep kosher. The reverse simply isn’t true. Under the guise of “freedom” or “intellectual emancipation” this is what has split us as a people.
  
  Comment by Garnel Ironheart — June 29, 2009 #
  
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  - If you want to get into a blame game, go ahead. The truth is that both sides are highly culpable. The key difference is that the non-Orthodox never brought to bear religious obligation to enforce the separation. Anyone may be able to eat in your house, but the reality is that with a few simple precautions, you can eat in a heterodox Jew’s house – and that’s the most difficult situation. Orthodoxy declared it was assur to acknowledge a non-orthodox rabbi as a rabbi, or to worship in a non-Orthodox shul, etc.
    
    You have to remember that the non-Orthodox did not invent themselves in a vacuum. They emerged from a world in which the people had voted with their feet, walking out of observant Judaism. Without the Reform, we’d have lost most of Jewery to utter assimilation. Theirs was not some korach-like rebellion against Orthodox norms and traditions, theirs was a desperate struggle to synthesize a religious expression that was relevant to a generation for whom traditional Judaism was an absurd relic of history. Appreciation, not castigation or isolation, would be appropriate. Orthodoxy, with it’s ’she’rit hapleita’ mentality that is all too willing to write off the rest of Judaism, chose its path, and reaps the bitter fruit of conflict between brothers.
    
    Comment by rejewvenator — June 29, 2009 #
    
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If you want to deal with the problem, you have two choices. A) You cut off the head, or B)you destroy the incentive. Here, the entrenched rabbinate are not in a position to be “overthrown” or “removed” except by their own constituents, because they pose no militaristic or violent threat. But, as you so aptly pointed out, they have a load of incentive. Namely, money, influence, and political power. So, you remove the incentive. You take the Ministry of the Interior, and you place its administrative capacity under the strict control of the Prime Minister’s office (so that it is under the Chief Executive’s thumb). You remove government protection from law suits, and you remove their tax exempt status. You remind these out of control whackjobs that religion follows civil society, not the other way around.

Comment by Cheese — June 29, 2009 #

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- I agree that state religion is a big problem in Israel, and we should follow the interpretive lead of the Israeli Supreme Court and understand Israel as a Jewish state at the highest level of abstraction. However, the power of these halachic decisors is sourced in their constituents.
  
  Every governing coalition in Israel in the last forty years, whether headed by the Left or the Right, has depended on religious parties to remain in power. Those religious parties extract concessions in return for their support, usually in the form of control over key ministries like education and the rabbinate that allow them to funnel both funds and ‘red meat’ to their constituents. The missing counterbalance is Arab parties. Missing not because they have no voice in Parliament, but because they have never been part of a governing coalition, and thus have never controlled any part of the executive apparatus of the state. If religious, educational, and poverty policy was set as a democratic equilibrium between those two forces, we’d be in much better shape.
  
  Comment by rejewvenator — June 29, 2009 #
  
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