From the Canonist Blog May 2006
In trying to get deeper intothe story from last week, I spoke to Rabbi Leib Tropper of Eternal Jewish Family.
EJF is an ultra-Orthodox-led group that is trying to ensure the proper conversion of non-Jewish spouses to Jews. Essentially, the effort is to attack the growth of intermarriage by putting it in reverse. This strategy is quite new to an ultra-Orthodox world that used to respond to intermarried Jews by simply cutting them off; there are likely echoes here of the new ultra-Orthodox attitude to kiruv.
So, what does this have to do with the conversion issue of the Chief Rabbinate? For one thing, they held a conference in March including such figures as Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and one of the leading lights of the RCA, Rabbi Hershel Schachter. For another, this organization isn’t having the same problems as the RCA with its converts.
One common speculation among rabbis I’ve spoken to is that Amar made all the issues we’re now talking about quite clear back at the conference. Tropper danced around that question a few times, and I couldn’t get a real answer out of him.
What I did get is what follows.
EJF is endeavoring to create, adopt and apply more uniform standards for conversion, Tropper said. He explained that this is derived in part from the concern that average rabbis not especially expert in conversion may be conducting them “amongst the Orthodox, even,” and that it’s not just Modern Orthodox who might be doing it: “I know people who are Chasidic rabbis who are not well-versed.”
Of Amar’s move, Tropper said “He’s very fair, very honest, very fair,” opining that the issue at hand is “not about Modern Orthodox – they don’t compromise on halacha, on Jewish law…they’re just as careful about Jewish law as everyone else is.” The real problem, he said “is different standards” across the spectrum of American Orthodoxy that doesn’t gibe with Israel’s way of doing conversions.
Inasmuch, the Chief Rabbinate’s move “comes from the fact that they’re just frustrated that there’s no uniformity of standards…and I think that his call is just a wake-up call.”
“It’s been a problem for a long time, but it came to be a problem more specifically” of late, when “he came to America, heard nightmares about how conversions are being performed…in a fashion that’s embarrassing to the Torah.”
This came from the fact that “a regular rabbi’s conversions are not accepted in Israel…[t]hen they found out that Rabbi [Gedalia Dov] Schwartz [head of the RCA Beit Din] that he did not know what’s going on,” which is to say that their opinion of Schwartz’s signing off on conversions by signing off on the specific rabbi involved wasn’t sufficient for them. “It’s not about bureaucracy; the only credibility they [those conversions] had was because they used the head of the RCA to get their thing accepted.”
The Chief Rabbinate’s not concerned about EJF’s converts, “because we started a program…to get intermarried couples to do things in a manner that’s acceptable to the Rabbinate.”
That’s why they held their conference, with “216 rabbis from all over the world.” And there’s agreement that “the issue is not having a uniformity in conversions.”
Direction comes from above, from Rabbi Reuven Feinstein and Rabbi Sholom Yosef Elyashiv, “and everybody’s invited to participate.”
The standards they’re looking to implement include “That the rabbis who are performing conversion have to be versed and tested in the laws of conversion…we don’t allow, for example, rabbis who are the leaders, the one who inspired them to be a Jewish couple, to be on the rabbinic court [that oversees their conversion]…we also don’t allow people to extort money,” meaning that they place a limit for compensation of $1000 to the entire court handling a conversion, or roughly $330 apiece.
A practice that the EJF is seeking to cut down on is “Rabbinic courts that issue conversions, but don’t release the certificate until after 6 months or 2 years, in case he goes back.” This is a problem, Tropper said, because “you can’t revert a conversion.”
Towards establishing these standards, “We set up rabbinic courts – six of them we have in America…hopefully we’ll have more in Europe and England.