The Conservative movement continues to descend rapidly into a non-Halachic movement. There is no greater evidence of this than their policy of allowing children of Jewish patrilineal descent to attend their religious schools. As most people know, only the child of a Jewish mother can be considered Jewish. The father has no jurisdiction over this. He is a non-entity with respect to determining the Jewishness of the child.
So it would seem that the policy now adopted by the Solomon Schechter school system is a huge break from Halacha. True, they require conversion at some point, and the media have recently taken notice of yet a further leniency in this policy by extending the deadline a conversion, it is hardly a foregone conclusion that the child will ever sincerely convert.
That anyone in the movement continues to consider it to still be Halachic is a real wonder.
On the other hand let’s examine the actual situation at hand with respect to the admission of non-Jewish children to a religious schol. There is much intermarriage in the world today. Record numbers in fact. If there is any conversion at all, it is most likely not an Orthodox Halachic one. And often there is no conversion at all. But the child is still brought up as Jewish being led to believe that he or she is. Now let us transfer this situation to a Orthodox day school, with the following scenario.
A family named Steinberg with high school aged children moves into the community. The mother was converted in a Conservative Bet Din. Although nominally Conservative they have always wanted to raise their children as Jews and realize the value of a formal Jewish education. In most communities the only day school is an Orthodox one. Having gone to an Orthodox day school out if town, they now enroll their child in a Yeshiva high school. He is totally in sync with his peers religiously. After being in the school for awhile it is discovered that the mother isn’t really Jewish.
What is that school supposed to do? What if he is a good kid, with good Midos, learns well, is totally Shomer Mitzvos, believes he is Jewish, and wants to continue? Do we allow him to continue and tell him he must convert? Or do we throw him out? If we allow him to continue, how much time does he have to convert?
I don’t think the answer is to throw him out. I believe that the proper approach is to ask him if he is sincere and wants to convert and if so, we continue to educate him until he is ready to do so.
And this problem is multiplied manifold in Kiruv organizations like NCSY. They draw teens from public highs schools whose non-Jewish mothers in many cases had undergone non-Halachic conversions. Young people believing they are Jewish with names like Goldberg, Schwartz, Cohen, and Friedman believing for all the world that they are Jewish. And because of the successful Kiruv efforts of NCSY have been turned on to Yiddishkeit. They are now suddenly faced with the reality that they are not even Jewish. This is a tragic, but unfortunately not that uncommon situation. If they are sincere, of course we continue to educate them and convert them.
Is the Conservative movement in any less of a position than NCSY? I think they are in exactly that situation. So the fact that they have a policy of accepting children whose mothers are not Jewish may not be such an incorrect one. The policy of continuing their Jewish education with the condition that they convert may not be as bad as it looks.
There are increasing numbers of intermarriages and there is a simultaneous popular phenomenon of people becoming more spiritual. It is not so far-fetched that there would be many halachicly non-Jewish children in our day schools and Yeshivos, without them even knowing it. True Orthodoxy wouldn’t accept these non Jewish children at the outset. But they could easily already be there, especially in communities where there is no Solomon Schechter… and we wouldn’t even know it. The only difference between the Orthodox and the Conservative movements on this issue is whether we should accept them L’chatchila or not. And though it will never be Orthodox policy to accept such children, I can hear their argument.
