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The aftermath of the Supreme Rabbinical Court’s ruling

In the aftermath of the Supreme Rabbinical Court’s ruling that refused to certify as Jewish a convert of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, a number of misconceptions or inaccuracies have made their way into the press.
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July 19, 2016

In the aftermath of the Supreme Rabbinical Court’s ruling that refused to certify as Jewish a convert of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, a number of misconceptions or inaccuracies have made their way into the press. Though this is to be expected, I am appalled by the multiple rabbis who have cynically used the tragic story of Nicole (the convert who was forced to “reaccept” the commandments last week) to advance other agendas. Thus, I want to address three misappropriations of Nicole’s story in order to set the record straight.

In many press reports, the two chief rabbis said they supported Rabbi Lookstein’s conversions.  They even wrote letters that said they supported these conversions though they said they couldn’t be responsible for the decisions of the rabbinical courts.

The facts are that the chief rabbinate is directly responsible for the behavior of the rabbinical court. For more than two years, ITIM, the organization I direct, has petitioned the chief rabbinate to publish a list of rabbis or institutions whose conversions would be recognized. In my first meeting with Rabbi Lau, more than two years ago, we discussed the fact that Jewishness certification – particularly from North America- was in a state of chaos.

Last year, ITIM took the unusual step of suing the chief rabbinate to provide such a list. The judge in the case stated clearly that the behavior of the rabbinate was” unJewish and inhuman.”  And yet, nothing was done about rectifying the situation from the chief rabbinate.  The chief rabbis have consistently attempted to avoid this issue, rather than address it frontally.

Another misconception, ancillary to the first one and propagated by the Chief rabbis, is that once a rabbinical court got involved, there “was nothing” to do. This is unfortunately an attempt to spin the issue.  The case was originally heard in front of only one judge in the Petach Tikva regional rabbinic court.  Had the chief rabbis chosen to intervene, they could have fixed the situation by demanding that three judges hear the case on the municipal level.  Worse than that is that once ITIM filed an appeal in the Supreme Rabbinical court, the chief rabbis could have accepted the case into their docket as they both sit on that court.  Instead of spending time writing useless letters, they could have issued a ruling on the spot that would have protected Nicole from the entire ordeal. Instead, the case was directed to three temporary judges, who had no knowledge at all of the American Jewish community or the individual case.

If anything, the actions of the Chief Rabbis were wholly irresponsible. For the record, the same week that Nicole was forced to undergo a humiliating hearing, Rabbi Lau himself sat on another case of a convert who had been rejected by a regional court because the “rabbi was not on the list” and in that case, he certified the conversion without any brouhaha.

Finally, some orthodox rabbis in America have used the travesty to try to consolidate power for the GPS system – a set of regional rabbinical courts in the US that was created in 2007 by a faction of the orthodox community – to “protect” converts. According to these rabbis, Nicole's story proves that the GPS is the only way to guarantee that no one will question the authenticity of one's conversion.

These rabbis are either unaware of the facts or simply lying. First, their argument suggests that there is a “deal” between the GPS and the rabbinate that allows all converts through this national system to be recognized in Israel.  This is patently false. There is no deal.

Though it is true that many of the GPS converts are recognized, they are only recognized because the converts themselves don't approach the rabbinical courts: they approach the rabbinate who certifies them. The rabbinate has an understanding with many rabbis – including those of the GPS- that conversions will be certified.  But this understanding does not apply to the rabbinical courts, where judges are not bound to anything.

Were someone to go through the GPS for conversion, they would appear before the rabbinical court with the exact same documentation that Nicole brought with her.  Nicole had a letter from a clerk in the Chief Rabbi's office – Rabbi Itamar Tubul – and anyone with a letter from the GPS would have the same letter.  The rabbinical court in Petach Tikva, and ultimately the Supreme Rabbinical Court, didn't say they wouldn't certify Rabbi Lookstein because it wasn't a GPS conversion. In fact, in the context of the hearing, it became clear that none of the judges had ever heard of the GPS. They spoke derogatorily of American Judaism, and because of that, their tendency was not to trust anyone.

This story was never about Rabbi Lookstein: It is about the American Jewish community in general and the fact that the Israeli government is allowing its rabbinate to dismiss American rabbis.  Even if Nicole's conversion had been done through GPS, it would have been rejected. My sense is that the rabbis who are promulgating the GPS are cynically using a downtrodden convert – something that is prohibited in the Torah – and are  simply engaged in Orthodox triumphalism– something that has characterized too many segments of our community recently – rather than acknowledging the real problems facing the Jewish community in America: assimilation , intermarriage and disaffection with Israel. This is not a time to build bigger walls in an attempt to please the rabbinate, but a time to speak out and say, once and for all, that American Jews are part of the fabric of the Jewish people and have rights (and responsibilities) in Israel.

Rabbi Seth Farber is the director of ITIM: The Jewish Advocacy Center (www.itim.org.il) . He represented Nicole in the Supreme Rabbiincal Court last week.

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