UTJ Viewpoints

“Lies my rabbi told”, Masorati Matters, Jerusalem Post, 12/15/2009

The Facts of the Case

1. Gai ben David was converted to Judaism by a Conservative rabbi.
2. The Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Solomon Amar, responded to the Chief Rabbi of Spain who ruled that the now deceased young man, should not be buried in a Jewish cemetery, because he is not Jewish according to Jewish law.
3. When confronted, Rabbi Amar denied his role in the matter
4. The Conservative Rabbi Andrew Sacks tugs on heartstrings of his readers by misrepresenting Orthodoxy in order to plead for sympathy for his Conservative Movement because Orthodoxy does not recognize Conservative Judaism as religiously authentic.

The claims of Rabbis Sacks and Amar are similarly and wrongly misplaced. The two positions, that the Orthodox rejection of the Jewishness of a dying boy, and the willingness of Amar to lie about it, are both examples of the sad fact that pseudo-religious dishonesty, where politics parades as piety, is a pluralistic phenomenon that appears both in Orthodox and non-Orthodox Judaisms.

The Position of Rabbi Andrew Sacks

As a Conservative rabbi in today’s world, R. Sacks does not believe in or accept Halakha, Jewish law, however understood and applied, to be the will and word of God. I concede that there indeed might be Conservative affiliating rabbis who are personally committed to Jewish law, and I respect them for their commitment. But R. Sacks appeals to the emotions of the uninformed with the implicit claim that all conversions to Judaism are to be equally regarded.

I was confronted with a “conversion” by the Conservative Rabbi Steven Lerner of the New Jersey Conservative Movement conversion program. He is an ideological egalitarian, meaning that he rejects those aspects of Jewish law regarding women that he believes to be immoral and therefore theologically inauthentic. Rabbi Lerner has an existential right to his view, which is today accepted as Conservative Movement policy. This policy disposition not only violates Jewish law as recorded in its classical, canonical library, it undermines the religious bona fides of those who implement the policy, because they are well aware that the policy violates the intent as well as content of the classical Torah canon. [Hoshen Mishpat 34]

The Conservative Movement will not censure those members who break its own rules, like driving to and from the nearest synagogue on holy days. The Torah forbids the burning of fire on Shabbat. An argument has been made by Rabbis Y. Epstein [Aruch ha-Shulhan], Shelomo Goren and Shelomo Auerbach that electricity is not fire. However, the claim that the hydrocarbon fuel oxidation that takes place in the automobile engine is not fire is unbecoming a “religious” movement that studies Judaism “scientifically.” Before studying Judaism “scientifically,”–an enterprise that I personally endorse–

it would be proper to study science scientifically. Conservative Judaism could have, should have, but did not invoke Maimonides, Mamrim, 2:4, that wisely stipulates that Jewish law may be suspended–but not abrogated–“to return the multitude to religion.” To this view, it is better that the not-yet committed Jews, using Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein’s felicitous alliteration penned in precisely this context, “from Dallas and Dubuque,” ride to Temple and not to assimilate further. When Reform rabbis use the automobile on Shabbat, they rightly claim that Jewish law is for them not binding; when Conservative rabbis choose residences not in walking distance to their synagogue, without a protest–not to mention expulsion–from the Movement, the Movement’s internal integrity may be called into question.

On one hand, Conservative claims that its conversions adhere to Jewish law. For ritual matters and for adjudication testimony, women do not serve as witness and judges. Conservative Judaism rejects this law; canonical Jewish law does not. Jewish law requires that there be immersion in a miqva, circumcision when appropriate, and the “acceptance of the commandments,” i.e., the legal system of Jewish law. To this day, Conservative Judaism accepts after the fact Reform conversions, without miqva, and without a rabbinical court of rabbis who are themselves committed to Jewish law by any definition, including the Conservative definition. This policy shows that Conservative Judaism’s institutional commitment to Jewish law is rhetorical and not substantive; its institutions are not committed in practice to the standards that it proclaims in public.

Pluralism comes with a price. I have a right to think you to be wrong, and I have a right to act upon my thoughts and my conscience if I think that you are wrong. Israeli law accepts canonical Jewish law as civil law in personal status issues. Conservative Judaism [a] has as noted above an existential right to its view [b] but the Movement has zero right to demand that others to concede it is both right and immune to review, evaluation, and criticism. Judaism has does gatekeeper rules of entry. The Conservative movement, even if understood generously, neither accepts nor practices those gatekeeper rules.

The feelings of Orthodox Jews, who Israeli citizens, who are committed to the classical gatekeeper rules of Jewish identity, also count. If Orthodox rules apply in Israeli cemeteries, then R. Sacks’s complaint that these rules be waived is intolerant. Israel now allows for secular cemeteries. Bury the Conservative convert in a Conservative cemetery.

If a cemetery’s charter is Orthodox, then Orthodox rules apply. Conservative Judaism was not particularly pluralist when its more traditional members wanted a non-egalitarian accommodation. By exploiting the sad and tragic death of a misled young man to bash other Jews who adhere to other frames of reference, Sacks appeals to the uninformed as if he and Gadi were both victims when, in fact, he engaged in rabbinic malpractice, presenting himself as an aggrieved when he shares in the giving of grief to others.

The Case of the Haredi Misdeed

The Conservative self-perception–and demand that the world see it–[a] as Halakhic and [b] as the moral equivalent of Orthodoxy because of the proclamations of its virtuosi professional elite, is as argued above, patently absurd. However, Rabbi Amar’s response reveals that Haredi Orthodoxy is ironically sadly the mirror image of the Conservative Judaism that it loves to hate.

If by denying/lying about the case, claiming that he was unaware of Gadi’s situation if he in fact was aware–assuming that the reports are accurate–Amar would then under those circumstances be pasul le-edut, ineligible to be a witness or serve on a rabbinical court, because he did not tell the truth. [bShavuot 30b-31a] Following Beit Yitshaq [Scmelkes], it was taught at Yeshiva University by the late R. Melech Schachter, that we may do hafqaat giyyur, abrogate conversions after the fact, against all previous precedent R. Amar believed that we may undo conversions. One colleague recently called the late Rav M.S. Feldblum, one of my favorite Yeshiva University rabbis, who argued that we may do hafqaat qeddushin, [nullification of marriages to free ‘agunot, women whose husbands refuse to allow a Jewish divorce] “pseudo Orthodox.” Ironically, there is precedent for nullifying marriages, but there is no pre-Schmelkes precedent for nullifying conversions, even if done by [a] three [b] observant [c] men [d] even if they are not even rabbis. Rabbis Amar and Sacks both reject Jewish law and, ironically, have more in common with each other than at first meets eye. They both regard Torah as a franchise and not a faith, a convention and not a covenant, a social phenomenon and not an ultimate concern. And both rabbis fail to view Torah as an autonomous exoteric law the human, rabbinic application of which is subject to conversation and review and instead act as if God’s will is revealed in the intuitions of its own partisan elite, which is answerable to no one, even against the benchmarks of the public rabbinic canon.

Consider the irony of Leib Tropper of the “Eternal Jewish Family,” who had to step down from his position of invaliding Orthodox conversions when he was putting his hands on the anatomy of others where hands are not to be put, an offense that for all views of Judaism, is “unorthodox.” This group posits that only Haredi rabbis may formalize and officiate at conversions. To insure the unity of the Jewish people, Haredi religion demands a default veto from the Jewish people. Abraham Sherman, the Israeli Haredi cleric who retroactively invalidated the conversions of Rabbi Haim Drukman and, at the same time, demeaned Rabbi Drukman’s bona fides, also conceded that there exists in the Halakhic literature a lenient letter of the law approach to conversion, but this approach has been deemed to be deficient in our time by the Haredi rabbinic elite. The demeaning of Rabbi Drukman, now a matter of public record, requires the denial of Sherman’s bona fides and rabbinic credentials, just as Amar’s public behavior in general, and his lying–should it be proven–would negate his bona fides. Rabbi Abraham Karelitz railed against women serving in the Israeli army, [Lettters 1:111] even though Rabbinic law explicitly requires both men and women to serve in a defense Jewish war. [bSota 44b] In Haredi Judaism, authority resides in the intuition of the sacred, charismatic person; in Orthodox Judaism, authority resides in the most reasoned reading of the canonical Book.

This Haredi version of Judaism, like Rabbi Andrew Sacks’ Conservative version, actually conflicts with the Judaism of the covenantal canon, albeit in polar opposite ways. While main stream Orthodoxy feels “safe” in rejecting the Judaism of the “Left,” it fears and therefore fails to address the non-Halakhah of the Haredi parochials.

The teshuva/repentance that is required is that we return to the Religion of the Book, in order to recover–not reconstruct or reform–the Judaism of the oral Torah canon, critically parsed and properly applied, as [a] code–to instruct us how to act and as [b] map, –identifying the pretenders to the faith, because if we [a] believe in God and [b] that God Authored the Torah (however this was done ), and [c] the Torah is not in heaven but in words, then we apply God’s words equally to, for, and on behalf of all Israel.

Last 10 posts by Rabbi Alan Yuter

• The December 2009 Mosque Incident - August 1st, 2010
• What is the Relationship between Torah narrative and Torah law? - Parashat Miqqets - July 30th, 2010
• The Hanukka Confict - July 27th, 2010
• Why Rabbis are Not Trusted - July 25th, 2010
• The Piety Polemic and its Implications for Orthodox Judaism: Identifying the Real Religion of Jewish Extremism - July 22nd, 2010
• The Barzilai Hospital Crisis - July 18th, 2010
• Why Middle East Peace is Not at this Time Attainable - July 11th, 2010
• Avot 1:16 Sages’ advice should be sagacious - July 6th, 2010
• The Quest for the Original Torah - July 4th, 2010
• Avot 1:17 The Attentive Disposition - June 30th, 2010

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