Once a Jew, always a Jew

By Debbie Israel

June 6, 2008

When I'm in my car, I usually listen to music. But occasionally, I get in the mood to listen to a "Torah tape".

One lesson I really like is one from Rabbi Akiva Tatz about avodah zarah (idol worship). Rabbi Tatz asks how it is that the world went from Adam and Eve believing in God and only God to worshiping idols. What happened was the people decided that they didn't want to "bother" God with their small everyday problems, so they started praying to God's servants in nature, like the sun and the moon, for example.

When God took the Children of Israel out of Egypt, they were accustomed to avodah zarah. And God realized that if the laws of the Torah and worship were too different from what they were used to in Egypt, the Children of Israel would go back to their comfortable avodah zarah. So God made small changes to recreate the rituals of avodah zarah into avodat Hashem (worship of God).

God included these tweaked laws very specifically so that God could maintain strict rules for what constitutes avodat Hashem.

As time passed, we forgot our idol worshiping past but have maintained the Torah, including the carefully tweaked laws. This is why the Torah says not to add to the laws -- we might inadvertently violate the Torah by committing avodah zarah. In an effort to be as observant as possible, we are often drawn to more restrictive interpretations of the Torah.

However, those restrictive interpretations often involve adding to the laws of the Torah, but since they don't know what the avodah zarah customs were, we don't know where to "draw the line". An example of such a stringency is the recent decision by the Israeli High Rabbinical Court to nullify 9 years worth of conversions by Rabbi Druckman (the head of the Conversion Authority in Israel).

Now the Conference of European Rabbis, while a small organization, has "jumped on the bandwagon" by determining to refuse to recognize the conversions performed by Rabbi Druckman. This shows that the decision of the Israeli Rabbinate is spreading. And, according to the Haredi periodical Mishpacha Magazine and Radio Kol Chai, Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Shteinman, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, and, despite promises to the contrary, current Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar will support the original decision revoking all the conversions performed by Rabbi Druckman since 1999. Add to this the recent decision by Rabbi Sherman, as reported on Ynet News, that rules that hearing- and speech-impaired people may not convert (and now, therefore, all hearing and speech impaired converts are having their conversions revoked also). I guess Rabbi Sherman would have turned down Moshe had he been up for conversion!

By revoking these conversions, the Rabbinates (in both Israel and Europe) are forgetting a number of things:

• If the Rabbis are revoking people's conversions because when they converted they were sincere but now they are "off the derech (path of righteousness)" they are taking away the converts' opportunity to do teshuvah (repentance) in the future. God allows for teshuvah up until the moment of death -- this is one reason suicide is prohibited, and by revoking the conversions the rabbis are removing that opportunity.
• By revoking anyone's conversion, the rabbis set up an anti-Torah precedent that creates a de facto second-class status for converts -- people (especially men) will be worried about marrying converts for fear that one day their children will some day be declared un-Jewish.
• Maimonides says (in his laws of prohibited marriages) that once someone converts, that person is Jewish in perpetuity -- if a convert "falls off the derech" then that convert is an apostate Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. And, as long as people are still Jewish, they can always do teshuvah.
• These Rabbis need to keep in mind, humrot are not halakhot (stringencies are not Jewish law). I read of one woman who was dealing with this revocation issue whose "sin" so to speak was wearing pants and walking outside without a head covering.
• This is a chillul Hashem -- the Torah says you can't treat a convert differently from a born Jew. This policy is doing just that -- treating converts differently. Conversion isn't like a driver's license -- you don't (and shouldn't) have to renew it every four years.
• Jews are commanded: "dan l'kav z'hut" -- judge everyone favorably. By revoking all these conversions they are judging everyone, converts and rabbis who performed their conversions, unfavorably.
• None of us can know for sure that we have no converts in our past. Abraham, Sara, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah were all converts, as were Moses' wife Tzipporah, and Ruth (from whom King David is descended, as will be the messiah one day), Rabbi Akiva's parents and Onkolus, to mention a few.
• Because a non-Jew may not observe the Shabbat as Jews do (potential converts are instructed to violate the Shabbat in at least one small way until they are Jewish) on penalty of death, by declaring that all these people are no longer Jewish that now calls into play the penalties for a gentile keeping Shabbat, no small punishment.Those of us who are born Jewish may not know this, but converting costs money, often a substantial amount of money. To require converts to reconvert afflicts them financially as well as emotionally.

Once a person converts, they should be "stuck." Once a Jew, always a Jew. That's the rule for born Jews, it should be for converts, too.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.