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| Rav Gedaia Dov Schwartz |
Israel needs a Chief Rabbinate. If we are going to have a
Jewish country, it has to be Jewish in more than name only - or even as a culture.
It has to based on the very thing that makes the Jewish people a distinct
nation, the Torah. Without which we are not a distinct people at all. It is the
Torah that separates us from the rest of the world and gives us the right to
exist as an independent nation in the land of Israel. As I often heard Rav Ahron Soloveichik say, ‘Without the Torah, the Arabs would be right’. We have no more right to that land than the Arabs.
But there is a Torah that gave us the land of Israel.We therefore have every right to be there – as a Jewish State. And defining that is
key. Without a body that can interpret what does and does not make us Jewish, we may as well just give up the title
‘Jewish State’.
So when the issue of conversion to Judaism came up, I supported the idea of a central governing authority that would assure that all conversions to
Judaism are legitimate. To an Orthodox Jew there is no other legitimate expression of Judaism than
Orthodoxy. Which is defined as full acceptance of fundamental principles of our faith and uncompromising fealty to Halacha as interpreted by the most learned rabbis of each generation.
In furtherance of that goal the Chief Rabbinate has strengthened its
control over what is and is not an acceptable conversion and has fought all
non Orthodox movements attempts to have their conversions recognized. They have further
coordinated their efforts with the North American rabbis in both the right wing
and Centrist camp. The latter of which is represented by the RCA.
The RCA for
its part tightened up its own conversions by certifying which of their
conversion courts’ converts would be
considered legitimate. This needed to be done. I am personally aware of wholesale
conversions in the past by certain Orthodox members of the American rabbinate that by most standards
were sham conversions – done to satisfy parents who could not face the fact that
their child was marrying out. This move has for the most part ended that practice.
Unfortunately the Chief Rabbinate has apparently not been the honest
broker that these steps should have made them. There has been more than one
instance where legitimate Orthodox converts have been rejected by them. In some cases there
was some back-pedaling where those that had been rejected had later been deemed
legitimate after all.
But that problem has
not been solved. I don’t know what it is, but I suspect that there is a lot of incompetence
in the rabbinate. Because in my view the unthinkable happened. If the story in Ha’aretz
as reported in the Forward is true, one
of America’s most Torah knowledgeable and ethical elder rabbis has been
dishonored. Not just any rabbi, but the sitting head of the RCA Beis Din, Rabbi Gedalia
Dov Schwartz:
The haredi Orthodox-dominated rabbinate rejected the conversions approved by Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, according to documents obtained by Haaretz…
Itamar Tubul, who heads the rabbinate’s conversion department, rejected three conversions approved by Schwartz. He accepted a fourth, but it was turned down by the rabbinate.
Ultimately, the four converts in question were not recognized as Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate, according to Haaretz.
All of the converts had approval letters signed by Schwartz, according to Itim, an organization that helps Israelis navigate religious bureaucracy.
I could not agree more with the reaction of the RCA:
Rabbi Shalom Bau, president of the RCA, said, “We have already begun an investigation into this latest disgrace and we demand a thorough report of how this could happen.”
To call this a disgrace is an understatement. In my view
this casts the entire current enterprise of the Chief Rabbinate into question. They
either have no clue what they are doing, or have let power go to their heads.
Or both. I have been defending them albeit with some reservation because I
believed they were acting in the best interests of the Jewish people. Even when
they made some mistakes – which they clearly did. Some of which were corrected. Mistakes happen and as long as
there is a good faith effort to correct them, I stood behind them. But this
goes too far.
I hate to admit it, but all of the critics of the Rabbinate
as currently constructed and empowered seem to have been right all along! If this is not
corrected… if their decision is not reversed with a public apology to Rav
Schwartz, they have lost all legitimacy in my eyes.
That said, I am still a strong believer in the need for a Chief
Rabbinate for the reasons I mentioned above. But not this one. They are an embarrassment to the Jewish
people! If they don’t change their ways, I call upon them to disband and be
replaced by a new Chief Rabbinate - or at the very least I call for the
resignation of those in leadership positions responsible for this kind of behavior to be replaced by rabbis
that have a lot more integrity than they appear to have.
