Opinion

December 16, 2009

A Shandah in Spain

by Joel Rembaum

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This past Monday I sadly learned that last week 13-year-old Gai Ben-David died in Madrid, Spain, from the brain cancer he had been fighting for a quarter of his young life. Gai was born of a non-Jewish mother and halachically converted by a Conservative rabbi. His family’s pain was compounded by the shocking news that he would not be granted the right to be buried as a Jew. The authority behind this decision is Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the current rishon l’tziyyon — Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel — whose opinion was sought by the Orthodox chief rabbi of Madrid. Rabbi Amar ruled that because of Gai’s non-Orthodox conversion, he had to be buried in a section of the Madrid cemetery reserved for those whose Judaism is questionable.

Rabbi Amar is a major player in the Israeli religious establishment. Appointed rishon l’tziyyon in 2003, he is a close associate of the influential former Sephardic chief rabbi, Ovadiah Yosef. Amar was chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, and, for a number of years, has fought to change the “Law of Return” so that converts from outside Israel would not automatically be granted Israeli citizenship. In many matters of consequence, Rabbi Amar reflects the point of view of most rabbis in the upper echelons of Israel’s now dominant ultra-Orthodox community. 

In response to the news of the rabbi’s refusal to allow Gai to be buried as a Jew, the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), the worldwide association of Conservative/Masorti rabbis, who stand in solidarity with the Ben-David family at this painful time, issued the following statement:

“As rabbis of the Conservative/Masorti movement, we are honored that the family of Gai Ben-David found a home within our community. Converted as a young child by Rabbi Baruch Zeilicovich, Gai Ben-David celebrated his bar mitzvah this past June at Congregation Ahavath Shalom in Fort Worth, Texas — Rabbi Zeilicovich’s synagogue…. We are dismayed that this exemplary Jewish boy, a student of the Colegio Estrella Ibn Gabirol in Madrid, was not permitted a burial in the main section of Madrid’s Jewish cemetery…. Gai’s conversion — which included brit leshem gerut and mikveh (ritual circumcision and immersion in a ritual bath) — is as unimpeachably kosher and halachic as any conversion offered in the world, including those supervised by Orthodox rabbis, such as Rabbi Amar. In Gai’s memory, we remind ourselves that the Jewish People are one people bound together by common history and practice. We therefore not only take great offense at Rabbi Amar’s incorrect and inhumane interpretation of Jewish law; we also abhor this misuse of power that has increased the suffering of a Jewish family grieving the loss of a child.”

Kudos to the RA for these words. Masorti Rabbi David Golinkin, president of Machon Schechter in Jerusalem and among the leading posekim (deciders of Jewish law) in the world, responding to an Israeli charedi rabbinical court’s retroactive annulment of conversions supervised by another Orthodox rabbinical court in Israel, argued that Jewish law has, for centuries, operated with flexibility in regard to conversions, establishing standards but allowing leeway as to how they are to be implemented. Rabbi Golinkin noted that, especially today, when there are many valid reasons for assisting people seeking or needing to become Jews, rabbinic authorities should be finding ways, within the framework of halachah, to be enablers, not inhibitors, of conversion.

As the RA statement emphasizes, Gai Ben-David’s conversion was done according to the standards of Jewish law. For Rabbi Amar, however, that is irrelevant, because Gai’s supervising rabbi and his beit din (Jewish court of law) are not recognized by the Orthodox rabbinate of Israel. In fact, there are many American Orthodox rabbis whose conversions are not recognized in Israel. Ironically, the ruling of the charedi court, noted above, turned this principle of non-recognition against the chief rabbinate of Israel’s own conversion beit din. Not only do converts, like Gai Ben-David, z”l, and his family, suffer from this unnecessarily strict reading of the law, but, because of it, thousands of Israeli Jews-by-choice from the Former Soviet Union and converts to Judaism around the world are made to endure painful indignities that prove to be disincentives to conversion.

The Jewish people also suffer. We are a tiny people. When non-Jews come to us and seek to join our ranks, they are expressing their intent to cast their lot with a people that is under severe pressure from so many quarters. It is a given that potential converts should have to study, practice Judaism in a manner that expresses their commitments to God, Torah and Am Yisrael and present themselves to a beit din to validate the sincerity and strength of their convictions through the prescribed rituals of conversion. But that some rabbis should heap stringency upon stringency in an area of Jewish law that allows flexibility and, thereby, deny the legitimacy of other rabbis’ conversions, weakens our people and drives wedges between our communities. How much better it would be if we took advantage of the kulot (leniencies) of conversion halachah, opened our doors wider for converts seeking to join our ranks and, in the process, built bridges of tolerance and unity within Am Yisrael.

Joel Rembaum is rabbi emeritus at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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And yet here we are with far more “non-orthodox” in Israel but we let the haredei have the determent hand.  As a long-time convert and member (VP) of a Conservative shul, I applaud our support of this family; yet we need to do more.  Does each and every would-be convert have to have an “orthodox” conversion to even be part of a reform or new-age synagogue? [Of course the haredei would question any member thereof anyway…]

Comment by Yisrael (aka James) on 12/25/09 at 7:59 pm

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