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| Rabbi Avi Weiss - photo credit: The Forward |
It’s the
right move.
While I am very critical of Rabbi Avi Weiss about his departure
from his Rebbi, Rav Soloveitchik and flirting with the outer edges of left wing
Orthodoxy, I have always maintained that he has not yet crossed any strict
lines of Halacha. And I don’t think he ever will. I do agree with his critics
however that coming ever so close to those lines is a dangerous game.
A game where
such lines may someday be crossed. If
not by him, then by successor ideologues of the left. This is after all how the Conservative
Movement started. And Rabbi Weiss will be the first one to tell you that Orthodox
Judaism and Conservative Judaism are not compatible movements.
This is why
I was critical of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate for refusing to accept his
testimony on behalf of converts seeking to get married in Israel. And I was
equally critical of certain unnamed members of the Rabbinical Council of
America (RCA) for instigating the initial animus towards Rabbi Weiss by the
Rabbinate - with misleading comments about his actual Mitzvah observance.
As I said at
the time, it is one thing for the Rabbinate to require standards of conversion
that if unmet, would disqualify a conversion. They have the right to implement
whatever standards they wish – even if it doesn’t suit others. But it is an entirely
different matter to disqualify an observant Orthodox Rabbi, no matter how
controversial, to testify about the Jewish
status of a covert.
I am happy
to report that Rabbinate now sees it my way. They have reversed their position
and will now allow Rabbi Weiss’s to testify as to the legitimacy of a convert’s
status as a Jew.
Sometimes good things do happen.
Sometimes good things do happen.
