Shoham, Israel – The Shoham police force will increase patrols close to and around the home of Rabbi David Stav, the town’s municipal chief rabbi, due to a concern for his safety following the launch of a new network of conversion courts last week which Stav helped found.
The launch of the new conversion courts, called Giur K’halacha, created a fierce media storm in the haredi press, with advocates of a strict, centralized system under the chief rabbinate heavily criticizing Stav for what they perceive to be a an overly lenient approach to conversion which would create false converts who could then intermarry with Jewish Israelis.
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Proponents of the new courts argue that their conversions will comply with Jewish law but make use of leniencies for conversion outlined by various rabbinic authorities in the past to convert minors, with parental consent, from the immigrant community from the former Soviet Union.
In reaction to the new courts, the haredi weekly newspaper Ba’kehillah on its front page last week labelled Stav “a danger to Judaism, a danger to the rabbinate, a danger to the Torah,” and said that he threatened “the walls of religion.”
Last week’s edition of the Yom L’Yomweekly newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Shas party, called the new conversion system “the rabbinical courts of the Reform with a yarmulke.”
On Thursday last week at a Bar Mitzvah celebration, Rabbi David Yosef, a member of the Shas Council of Torah Sages made the same comment.
Speaking to the Post last week, Stav spoke out against the tone of the criticism against him and the other founders of Giur K’halacha, accusing the haredi media of “incitement” and saying that they had “thrown off any and all restraint.”
On Saturday night, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, a brother of David Yosef, referenced the controversy for the first time, and claimed that the approach of the new courts was not in accordance with Jewish law.
“A person whose mother and father go to church every Sunday,” said Yosef in reference to the immigrant community from the former USSR who would not give their converted children any Jewish education or life.
Rabbi Seth Farber of the ITIM organization which helped create Giur K’halacha, labelled Yitzhak Yosef’s characterization of the immigrant community as a “populist stereotype,” and said that the new courts would not convert a child if there was not a commitment by the parents that the child would not practice any other religion and would provide him with some form of Jewish education.
“Most immigrant families see themselves as Jewish, they don’t go to church, and are simply looking to certify their Jewishness and become full members of the Jewish community, for which there is an available halachic solution,” said Farber.
Speaking to the Post last week, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky criticized the Chief Rabbinate for its stance on conversion, its apparent opposition to Giur K’halacha, and its opposition to a government resolution passed in the last government but repealed by the current coalition to liberalize the state conversion system.
“They want to keep a monopoly and to preserve their own importance but it’s not control which gives power,” said Sharansky, arguing that rabbinic attitudes to conversion had changed in accordance with Jewish political realities throughout history.
Sharansky said that the chief rabbinate “would have more influence” if it recognized this principle and allowed rabbis with ordination from the Chief Rabbinate, such as those who established Giur K’halacha, to adopt this position.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post last week, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, another of the founders of Giur K’halacha also insisted that all conversions would conform strictly with Jewish law and called for the Chief Rabbinate to support the new system
“We care about halacha [Jewish law] desperately, and what we are doing is in accordance with halacha, and are commensurate with the rulings of former chief rabbis of Israel,” said Riskin. “We are a strong Orthodox voice, and we cannot only have a haredi Orthodox voice on such issues, in light of the circumstances and fabric of Jewish society here in Israel,” the rabbi argued.
The Rambam would cry at this…what are the Haredim doing? Anyone with access to even basic sources can singly see that there’s no mesorah for such a strict and harsh control of the conversion process. First they attempted to posul RCA conversions…and now this!
Enough of these despotic Yosefs! The Chief Rabbinate is vital in Israel. Last round we saw police criminal investigations of both Chief Rabbis yielding one awful result. This Yosef Kanaus will end the popular acceptability of the institution.
Yonasan,
Vosizneias is no place to have a halachic discussion but your comment makes you appear to be arrogant and ignorant. This issue is much more complicated than your superficial comment makes it out to be. Besides the halacha (which you grossly simplify and misinterpret ) there are ramifications for the future that requires broader shoulders than yours – or mine. Leave it up to the bigger minds to make these decisions
This has been going on for years in the U.S. I know of people in their fifties who were converted as children by RCA rabbis whose parents did not keep Shabbos or kashrus, even though they belonged to an orthodox shul. Others were converted for marriage. There needs to be a world-wide standard for converting people to Judaism, especially concerning adoptions and marriages.
Putting this issue itself aside, when we agree or disagree with someone, it is a sick mentality that threaten their lives.
While I disagree with Rav Stav, he does have a rational for his opinion and truly believes he is doing the right thing for the greater good. Debate him, prove him wrong, but there is no excuse to threaten him. We are not savages, or at least, most of us aren’t.