JPost followup of JPost
The High Court of Justice on Monday issued a suspended injunction to the Rabbinic Court ordering it to explain within 90 days why it nullified the conversions made by special courts headed by former National Conversion Authority chief Rabbi Haim Druckman and how it the authority to do so.
The ruling came in response to a petition filed jointly by the Center for Justice for Women, other organizations and two women whose conversions were invalidated.
In addition, the High Court extended the temporary injunction so that the appellants - whose Judaism was cast into doubt by the Rabbinic Court - could be removed from its list of people forbidden from marrying until a ruling is made on the matter.
The petitioners asked the High Court to obligate the country's rabbinic courts to recognize every conversion registered by the National Conversion Authority and by the Interior Ministry, and to instruct the rabbinic registry office to marry all converts who appear before them without raising doubts about their conversions or declaring them as forbidden for marriage.
The call to cancel the conversions was made by Dayan (religious court judge) Avraham Attia, a member of the Ashdod District Rabbinical Court, and was upheld in a ruling by Dayan Avraham Sherman of the Supreme Rabbinical Court in February 2008.
The ruling stemmed from a specific case in which the Ashdod court retroactively annulled a woman's conversion that was performed by Druckman 17 years ago.
The decision to annul the conversion was made after it became known that she never adhered to Orthodox Jewish practice after her conversion. As a result, the Jewish status of the woman's four children was annulled.[...]
The Batei Din have to justify their halachic decisions to the secular courts?
ReplyDeleteFor those who did not understand why a "nationalistic secular Jewish State" would destroy Judaism, here is your answer.
Clearly, there were religious courts that converted these women first. It makes sense that the state should protect the citizens from all types of mistreatment. If the rabbinic court was justified then it will stand and if it was a power play then the lady will be protected. Either way it is a win-win. If it was justified, then she isn't really Jewish. If it was not justified then a family will be saved.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the Rabbanim that took umbrage at that particular desicision, R' Amar, R' O. Yosef, R' Yaakov Hillel, R' Eliyahu Chemad, R' Moshe Tzadaka(AKA all of the Sephardi Gedolim), I can understand why this has gone to the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteTo retroactively annul the conversions of so many people, based on a single case is problematic in the extreme. Then having a line of Gedolim saying that it is bad... well the issue really becomes that we are seeking singularity in Jewish halacha and identity when that singularity has never existed in Judaism, and the friction points are starting to show.
Judaism is busy destroying itself, it doesn't need the court's help, Jersey Girl. That being said, it's about time someone stepped in to protect people's basic human rights and civil rights against those who are determined to impose far right wing ultra-orthodoxy on all converts.
ReplyDeleteLike the other post about Rony/Tropper/Eisenstein and the RCA, this is part of the haredi onslaught on the Modern Orthodox here and the RZ in Israel.[...]
ReplyDeleteMonsey Tzadik said...
ReplyDeleteLike the other post about Rony/Tropper/Eisenstein and the RCA, this is part of the haredi onslaught on the Modern Orthodox here and the RZ in Israel.[...]
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The judges who questioned the conversions were not chareidi.
Ahavah Gayle said...
ReplyDeleteJudaism is busy destroying itself, it doesn't need the court's help, Jersey Girl. That being said, it's about time someone stepped in to protect people's basic human rights and civil rights against those who are determined to impose far right wing ultra-orthodoxy on all converts
=================
There are no rights involved here. The question is whether the conversions were valid. It is not only chareidim but also relgious zionist rabbi who declare conversion as having never been valid.
mekubal said...
ReplyDeleteTo retroactively annul the conversions of so many people, based on a single case is problematic in the extreme.
==============
There is no such thing as retroactively annulling conversions. The question is whether the conversions were ever valid. Someone who never observed mitzvos is presumed to have never accepted mitzvos. A person who was observant and then relapsed cannot have their conversion annulled according to everyone.
Daat Torah Said:
ReplyDeletethe judges who questioned the conversions were not chareidi.
====================
From the 4 people who were petitioned against to
(The High court petition)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659673011&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Avraham Attia, Avraham Sherman, Hagai Eiserer and Avraham Scheinfeld
Who is the non – haredi ?
Isn't annullment retroactive by definition?
ReplyDeleteHere is how annullment (in marriage) is defined in wikipedia.
"Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is retroactive: an annulled marriage is considered never to have existed."
The article bring a specific example:
"In the Roman Catholic Church, a marriage is considered to be a valid contract entered into between two willing parties, and ratified by Divine sanction. In simplest terms, it is necessary that it be marriage that is contracted, that it actually be contracted (i.e., a valid ceremony/contract be performed), and that both parties enter willingly into the contract. If any of these conditions lack, then the marriage is not contracted, Divine sanction is not obtained, and there is in actual fact no marriage. An annulment is a finding later that there was no actual marriage contracted in God's eyes, and therefore no marriage in reality, regardless of civil ordinance or appearance to humans.
Therefore, an annulment of a marriage is much more analogous to a finding that a contract of sale was invalid, and hence, that the property for sale must be considered to have never legally transferred possession, than analogous to a divorce, which is more like returning the property after a consummated sale."
So annullment results from one or the other party discovering that the conditions that was needed *at the time the contract was put in place* were, in fact, not there, and, as such, the contract had *never* gone into effect. (side note: also look up "void ab initio")
So annullment actually seems like a pretty good term to use in the case of what happened with the converts.
I think the main questions, rather than getting stuck in semantics, are: 1) what sort of kavanah by the convert is necessary at the time of conversion for the conversion to be valid; and 2) what is considered sufficient proof that said necessary kavanah was lacking at the time of conversion?
>>"The judges who questioned the conversions were not chareidi."
ReplyDelete>>"It is not only chareidim but also religious zionist rabbi who declare conversion as having never been valid."
Nonsense. Rabbi Eidensohn, the Religious Zionist Torah world opposes the Sherman pesak nearly wall-to-wall.
Rav Sherman is most certainly charedi in his lifestyle, his outlook, and in his devotion to promoting the agenda of Rav Elyashiv. His once having been and IDF rabbi means that he is just like many charedim a generation ago, when they took cushy IDF rabbinic jobs, but would make absolutely sure that their children would never be drafted.
The current IDF rav has put a stop to this by insisting that a rav tzvai has to take full part in the army experience and in everything that happens on the ground in his battalion.
Jonathan Rosenbloom wrote
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2008/06/05/on-halacha-no-compromises/
Rabbi Avraham Sherman, author of the Rabbinical High Court decision, served for many years as an IDF rabbi, and once spent a sabbatical at Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of modern Orthodoxy.
Another one of the judges graduated the national religious hesder system. Finally, the High Court’s decision was endorsed by the European Conference of Rabbis, hardly a haredi organization, which issued a statement that the conversions performed in Europe by Rabbi Druckman and other Israeli rabbis have shown a consistent ignorance of local realities - i.e., the likelihood of the candidates becoming mitzva observant.
Finally, the evidence that Rabbi Druckman signed conversion certificates falsely attesting to his presence at conversions - a practice which has already been the subject of a sharp censure from Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz - came from national religious rabbis within the Chief Rabbinate.
TUESDAY’S EDITORIAL in The Jerusalem Post claims that all sides of the Orthodox world agree that conversion requires acceptance of the “yoke of Torah, meaning an Orthodox lifestyle” - as if the issue in dispute were whether wearing a knitted kippa is sufficient or one must don a shtreimel and kapote on Shabbat. The distinction, the editorial argues, is between the national religious who “want to bring as many as possible into the Jewish fold” and the haredi world that does not.
One would never know from this account that Rabbi Sherman was stating the overwhelming weight of halachic opinion that a mere pro forma declaration of one’s commitment to full mitzva observance is inadequate, and that a beit din must assure itself, after searching inquiry, of the candidate’s sincere intention to take on full mitzva observance. As the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Herzog wrote, the burden on the beit din is much heavier in contemporary times, when a convert is not necessarily joining an overwhelmingly observant Jewish community.
Rabbi Druckman apparently does not share that view. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, perhaps Rabbi Druckman’s most distinguished defender, tacitly admitted as much when he said, “When did we ever hear that someone who relies on a minority opinion against the commonly held one is considered a willing heretic?” (Rabbi Lichtenstein’s father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, considered it axiomatic that conversion requires a full acceptance of mitzvot.)
If anyone is being political, it is Rabbi Druckman, not Rabbi Sherman. The evidence is overwhelming that a large majority of those converted by Rabbi Druckman were never mitzvah observant. And that is not merely an unhappy coincidence. The Conversion Authority, the special conversion track created in the IDF, the joint conversion institutes, in which students are instructed by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform instructors, and which work closely with the Conversion Authority were all new frameworks created by the Israeli government for the express purpose of solving the problem of 300-500,000 non-Jewish immigrants living among us via mass conversion.
Retroactive annulment means that the conversion was good until our pronouncement that we were canceling it and the cancellation worked backward in time to uproot the conversion.
ReplyDeleteIn fact there was no psak or active annulment - but an investigation that the conversion had never been good.
"In fact there was no psak or active annulment - but an investigation that the conversion had never been good."
ReplyDeleteBut in this case, a Dayan declared *his determination* of the facts of the case, in an official court document, that these converts did not meet the initial requirements for gerus. Just because the Dayan didn't write, "I declare that these conversions are hereby annulled" doesn't make it any less of an annullment.
Tzurah said...
ReplyDelete"In fact there was no psak or active annulment - but an investigation that the conversion had never been good."
But in this case, a Dayan declared *his determination* of the facts of the case, in an official court document, that these converts did not meet the initial requirements for gerus. Just because the Dayan didn't write, "I declare that these conversions are hereby annulled" doesn't make it any less of an annullment.
================
The issue is simply whether the annulment is an active process or that there never was a geirus.
Example - I put on tefilin everyday for 25 years with great kavana. At that point I have them checked and it is discovered that there are no parchments. My mitzva of tefilin has not been annulled - it never existed.
As I explained before - annullment, by definition, is retroactive.
ReplyDeleteAnnulment of a marriage means that the marriage never actually took place. This is in contrast to a divorce, which was a perfectly valid marriage until it was ended by the divorce proceedings.
In the case your tefillin example, the correct way to describe the case would be that your discovery of the bad parchments resulted in the *annulment* of 25 years-worth of tefillin-mitzvos.
To clarity the use of the word "annulment" more precisely-
ReplyDeleteOne can say that the sofer's *determination* that the klaf had always been pasul (let's say he discovered it was laser-printed) resulted in the *annulment* of your mitzvos for the entire 25-year span that the tefillin were used.
Tzurah said...
ReplyDeleteTo clarity the use of the word "annulment" more precisely-
====================
The main issue is simply that most people think the dayanim took away the geirus because the gerim decided to live a non religious lifestyle. Geirus can not be taken away. However a judge does have the ability to ascertain that there was never geirus because the evidence shows that the person never accepted mitzvos at the time of conversion and thus was never a ger.
"The main issue is simply that most people think the dayanim took away the geirus because the gerim decided to live a non religious lifestyle. Geirus can not be taken away."
ReplyDeleteAgreed. However, it should also be made clear that the word-choice of "annulment" (for example in the JPost article you linked to) does not imply the mistaken perception you fear many people have.
Tzurah said...
ReplyDelete"The main issue is simply that most people think the dayanim took away the geirus because the gerim decided to live a non religious lifestyle. Geirus can not be taken away."
Agreed. However, it should also be made clear that the word-choice of "annulment" (for example in the JPost article you linked to) does not imply the mistaken perception you fear many people have.
==============
agreed. But the article used the expression of cancelling or nullified the geirus. That indicated that the judges revoked something that was in existence. If it had simply said annulled there would be no problem or if had said that the judges ascertained that there had never been geirus that would have been fine.
The reason for making a big deal of this is that I have read many comments about this matter and most of the upset is based on the assumption that conversion was once good and it was taken away.
I agree that the JPost article doesn't finesse the point carefully.
ReplyDeleteStill, I think most people actually understand that the current argument is regarding a retroactive situation. However, the fact that the argument is about whether the convert had ever been a Jew at all makes the sense of loss greater, not less. If one holds that Rav Druckman's conversion was good, at least bedieved, then Rav Sherman et al. are effectively taking away a conversion even if, technically speaking, nothing is actually being taken away.
If I take your tefillin example again - let's say that at the time you bought your tefillin 25 years ago, you had it checked by sofer A from whom you bought the tefillin, and he assured you that it's kosher. Now, 25 years later, you go to sofer B, who says that it's been pasul all along. Sofer A hears about it and says Sofer B is wrong. At this point, two sofrim are arguing about your tefillin's status. True, they're arguing about the klaf's kashrus 25 years ago. Still, all the same, the argument is happening right here, right now, and you're stuck there wondering what you are to do with your old tefillin.
You're probably going to be pretty angry at one of them. Either Sofer A for being incopetent (or fraudulent) and making you have to spend another $1000 to buy a new set, never mind all those years of mitzvos lost, or at Sofer B for being such a stick-in the mud and being careless with klal Yisrael's (i.e., your) money, and taking away 25 years of mitzvos unfairly. The fact they're arguing about 25-years worth of schacharis, as opposed to, say, just the past year, makes the whole thing that much more stressful.
If a friend comes over to comfort you by saying, "Well, you never really had those mitzvos in the first place, so why the sad face? You see, you never actually lost anything, so cheer up!" you would probably consider re-evaluating your friendship.
During sefira we mourn for Rebbe Akiva's talmidim who did not show kavod for each other. The actions of Rav Sherman vs Rav Drukman results in secular courts vs batei din. Rav Drukman should have been handled with more derech eretz to avoid the current situation.The root of the problem in this year-long drama is not the conversions themselves (by now Rav Drukman's converts are only pawns in a power play), but the root cause of the present situation is the way that Rabbi Drukman was dealt with by Rav Sherman in defending Rav Attia.
ReplyDeleteRav Drukman was carrying out a mandate that was handed to him as a rov and rosh yeshiva, someone who should have ne'emanus.
Rav Shermans's ruling against Rav Drukman and the published personal attacks his ruling contained was a brutal business as we discussed many times a year ago when it unfolded.
Rav Sherman and the rabbinic high court did not just issue a ruling, they went to war, so why is anyone suprised or shocked that now the "man/woman in the street" is fighting back?
One could say, that the injured parties are sueing the bais din and asking for the simple justice they did not get. People were told they were no longer Jews after Rav Drukman had worked with them to convert them. What kind of business is that? Rabbis need to practice kavod habriyos, starting with respecting each other, especially rosh yeshivas and dayanim. This is a sign of the new combativeness and an indicator of what will happen as Israili society will split over these kind of provocations and conversion wars.
It could very well seem that Rav Sherman violated the well-worn legal principle of "justice must not only be done it must also be seen to be done" and there should be no sense of a "kangaroo court" or of summary execution in place of fairness and yashrus, so that even if Rav Sherman is 99.999% correct, the way to go about dealing with another respected Orthodox rov and rosh yeshiva like Rav Drukman should not have been by issuing a blanket denigration of "all" his conversions, because how can anybody know for a fact that each every one of the conversions performed by Rav Drukman was not valid? Maybe one or two or ten or a hundred or more of Drukman's converts are indeed sincere and their conversions valid?
Rav Sherman's treatment of Rav Drukman and his problematic converts was not following in the ways of Hashem when he acted because the Torah teaches that when Hashem wanted to destroy Sedom and kill all its KNOWN wicked people (far worse than what Rav Drukman wanted to do and the people of Sedom were far worse too), it was Avraham Avinu who stepped forth to plead with God and ask for mercy for Sedom, and Avraham's words are alesson for a Torah Jew, let alone a Jewish dayan,they are the key words in this context:
"[Braishis] 18:23...'Will You actually wipe out the innocent together with the guilty? 18:24 Suppose there are fifty innocent people in the city. Would You still destroy it, and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty good people inside it? 18:25 It would be sacrilege even to ascribe such an act to You - to kill the innocent with the guilty, letting the righteous and the wicked fare alike. It would be sacrilege to ascribe this to You! Shall the whole world's Judge not act justly?' הֲשֹׁפֵט כָּל-הָאָרֶץ, לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט"
So Rav Drukman and all those who supported him only have themselves to blame that now people are fighting back and that it is the Rabbonim who must answer, which is not such a bad thing since many rabbis act with impunity and issue decrees instead of reasoned and careful pesakim that they should know impacts real lives and real people and if people Rav Sherman would have taken a more careful and deliberate approach, instead of coming at Rav Drukman as a proverbial slasher, even though Rav Sherman may indeed have pure Halacha on his side, but he was falling into the trap of the Kotsker's famous warning that "a frummer iz a rotzeach" and when frumkeit rears its head it is no surprise that people react unpleasnatly to.
So it would be well to listen to what the judge said in this case as reported at the end of the article as he confronted the bais din's attorney:
"But the more far-reaching question was whether the rabbinical courts had the right to overrule the special conversion courts. The attorney for the rabbinical courts, Shimon Ya'acobi, said this question was a halachic matter that the secular court system was prohibited to handle. He also said that the fear that the rabbinical court decision would affect the lives of thousands of people who had been converted in Druckman's courts had not materialized.
"We are dealing with a specific matter which should be dealt with on an individual basis," said Ya'acobi. "The issue hasn't turned into a dramatic phenomenon which makes it necessary to determine an overall policy."
But the justices disagreed.
"We don't sit here looking for cases to deal with," retorted Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. "The case came to us because the [rabbinical court decisions] did exactly what you [Ya'acobi] don't want. The courts ruled without hearing the [converts] and struck a blow against thousands of converts. Now you say we shouldn't deal with this matter in public. If the rabbinical courts had wanted to deal with the matter quietly, they could easily have done so."
Typo: "So Rav Drukman and all those who supported him only have themselves to blame..." should read "So Rav Sherman and all those who supported him only have themselves to blame.."
ReplyDeleteFrom Jpost.com:
ReplyDelete"Analysis: Long-standing problems in rabbinical establishment surface over conversionsAnalysis: Long-standing problems in rabbinical establishment surface over conversions
May. 18, 2009
Dan Izenberg , THE JERUSALEM POST
The cases of the two women whose conversions by the National Conversion Authority were revoked by the Higher Rabbinical Court have brought to public attention a severe dispute between two government institutions allegedly having the same authority to convert non-Jews.
In truth, the problem has been festering for several years, but was hushed up until now by the Orthodox establishment.
It came to light when the rabbinical courts declared that two women seeking divorces who had been converted by Rabbi Haim Druckman, the former head of the National Conversion Authority, were not Jewish because after their conversion they had not observed halachic rules.
The Dayanim also maintained that the court did not observe the conversion laws and therefore both it and the Dayanim who served on it were unacceptable.
The cases outraged a large number of women's rights organizations including those specializing in the rabbinical court treatment of women.
But it appears that problems in the rabbinical establishment, specifically the haredi element, began several years ago when a number of religious councils began to reject marriage applications by men and women who had been converted in National Conversion Authority courts.
According to Rabbi Gilad Kariv, director-general of the Reform Movement, religious councils in five cities, including Ashdod, Rehovot and Tiberias, have refused to register such converts for marriage.
During a meeting of the Knesset Law Committee last year, Yoel Bin-Nun, a leader of the National Religious Movement, charged that the "conversion system has been paralyzed for four years because of internal fights. The outcome is that thousands of converts are being cheated."
Bin-Nun added that "a marriage registrar who refuses to accept a certificate from the State of Israel should be regarded as having resigned from his position."
Still, the problem was largely kept out of the public eye. Orthodox authorities made certain to steer converts who could not marry in their own cities to religious councils in more "convenient" towns.
According to Kariv, there should not be a problem between the rabbinical courts and the special conversion courts because the rabbinical courts are not authorized by law to handle conversions.
In truth, the rabbinical courts have dealt with conversion cases for many years, since there was no other Orthodox authority equipped to do so. Unlike the rabbinical courts, the special conversion courts are authorized by law to handle conversions. They were established because the government felt the rabbinical courts could not handle, for various reasons, what had become a national priority.
The only time the rabbinical courts and the special conversion courts cross each other's path is when the rabbinical courts handle a divorce case - which is their prerogative by law. In the divorce procedure, the rabbinical courts must make certain both parties are Jewish. In the two cases in the court, they used this authority to reject the special conversion court's authority. The question which the court will have to decide is whether, indeed, they have the power to do so and, if they do, what should be the process for doing so."
Things go from bad to worse. As if following in the laws of unintended consequences, the attacks against the Religious Zionist from the Haredi influenced batei din opens the doors to wholesale attacaks against all of Orthodoxy whereby the secular Israeli high court, smelling blood, seeks to take the next step and raising the spectre of the Ne'eman Commission, seeks to legitimize Reform and Conservative "conversions" that would make the entire conversion process in Israel meaningless and a joke because for the past 30+ years Reform fully, openly and officially accepts patrilineal descent and it (the Reform movement) does not require conversion at all if the father is Jewish but the mother is not, and the Conservative movement has over the past 30 years has abandoned its previous nominal adherence to Jewish law by accepting women in a "minyan" and as "rabbis" and opening the doors to accepting homosexuals and more egalitarian innovations against normative Halacha.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of at least a NOMINAL and DIPLOMATIC united front between official Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox rabbis and organizations and their Haredi/Hasidic counterparts allows the secular powers that be in Israel and America to employ and deploy not just a "divide and conquer" strategy, but a "to hell with them all" approach, in the name of "fairness and justice", against all Orthodox and Haredi Jews regardless of the their various outlooks.
Article follows, from Haaretz.com:
"High Court rules in favor of Reform conversions19/05/2009
By Tomer Zarchin, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
In a historic ruling, the High Court of Justice on Thursday ordered the state to allocate resources to organs affiliated with non-Orthodox streams of Judaism who perform conversions.
"All streams of conversion have the same purpose the cultural and spiritual incorporation of Israeli citizens and residents into the society and community in Israel," Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote in the ruling.
The panel of judges - which included Beinisch, Miriam Naor, and Edna Arbel heard a petition which was filed by the Movement for Progressive Judaism, which specializes Reform conversions.
The MPJ argued that the Absorption Ministry has discriminated against it in its stringent criteria that it uses to determine who is entitled to monetary grants. The state's grant policy is more lax when dealing with private bodies that perform Orthodox conversions, the movement told the Court.
A committee formed in 1997 by the current justice minister, Ya'akov Ne'eman, recommended that an institution for the study of Judaism be established so as to prepare would-be converts for the necessary procedures in the rabbinical courts.
The state sought to accomodate the large number of new immigrants who arrived in the country during the 1990s. Despite holding Israeli citizenship, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of olim are not considered Jewish by religious law.
The Ne'eman committee proposed that the new Judaism institute recognize the three main streams - Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative."
A ray of hope for strengthening batei din in Israel meanwhile comes from the new Israeli government as reported by theyeshivaworld.com:
ReplyDelete"Minister Ne’eman May Agree to Expand Rabbinical Court JurisdictionMay 20, 2009
Minister of Justice Prof. Yaakov Ne’eman, a Shomer Mitzvos Jew, is weighing calls to expand the jurisdiction of the Rabbinical Court system, a move that has already elicited opposition from women’s groups and others. The move to expand the rabbinical system’s authority is part of the coalition agreement between Likud and Shas. A personal request was also made of Prof. Ne’eman by HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita.
According to the minister’s spokesman, Gil Solomon, Prof. Ne’eman has yet to make up his mind on the matter. A meeting of experts was scheduled for earlier in the week to discuss the pros and cons but it was canceled for “technical reasons”.
While divorce is handled by the rabbinical system, disputed matters including custody and monetary issues often find their way to the secular family courts.
Attorney Dan Yakir, who represents ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel) expressed his organization’s opposition, adding that not only do they oppose expanding the jurisdiction of the rabbinical court, but they are seeking to further limit its authority to divorce only.
Women’s rights organizations are also opposed, sending a strong letter to the minister, explaining they fear if these matters are placed in the hands of rabbonim, it will be a tool for additional blackmail towards a woman receiving a get (divorce).
MK (Meretz) Nitzan Horowitz has submitted an urgent motion to Knesset to intercept such a process, warning it represents additional “religious coercion”.
There is also opposition among a number of Labor Party MKs with Ofir Pines explaining “Israel is not an autocracy and not a state run by halacha”.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)"
Another ray of hope that the new Israeli government is contemplating and seeking ways to curb and hopefully stop and turn back the anti-Orthodox and anti-Halachic activism of the Israeli supreme court as the new Israeli goverment's justice minister meets with Rav Eliashiv, reported by theyeshivaworld.com:
ReplyDelete"Minister Ne’eman Discusses Reform Conversions with Rav Elyashiv ShlitaMay 19, 2009
Justice Minister Prof. Yaakov Ne’eman during a Tuesday afternoon visit to the home of Maran Rav Elyashiv Shlita discussed the landmark High Court of Justice ruling demanding equal funding for Reform Movement conversions. The court ruled that national government funding for conversion programs must now be distributed equally, and the state was ordered to retroactively make payment to the Reform Movement for its last three years of conversion classes.
The Gadol Hador expressed concern and was pained over hearing of the decision, which was handed down earlier in the day in response to a petition filed by the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (Reform Movement), claiming it is discriminated against vis-à-vis government funding for its conversion program. The court agreed and stated that Israeli law, which guarantees freedom of religion, compels the state to allocate equal funding for conversion programs. Rav Elyashiv stated he was extremely troubled over hearing of the court’s decision.
A spokesman for the Reform Movement told Israel Radio following the decision that the ruling was most significant and it represented a major victory for Reform Jewry in Eretz Yisrael.
As was reported earlier by YWN, Minister Ne’eman escorted Mr. Noam Shalit to the Gadol HaDor’s home. Mr. Shalit was seeking a bracha and tefillos on behalf of Gilad’s release. Rav Elyashiv also asked Klal Yisrael to dedicate Shavuos learning to Gilad.
(Yechiel Spira - YWN Israel)"
Imagine if Israel would strip all Jewish Israeli males of their citizenship and legal rights if they dared to marry non-Jewish women? Well, that is just what a Cairo court has just ruled along those lines for Egyptian men married to Israeli women. Read on..:
ReplyDelete"Egypt to revoke citizenship from men married to IsraelisCourt explains that children of these couples join IDF, therefore posing threat to national security
Roee Nahmias
Published: 05.20.09, 20:23 / Israel News
A Cairo court has ruled that Egypt's Interior Ministry must revoke citizenship privileges from any male resident of the country who has married an Israeli woman, the daily al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday.
The report says the court accepted an appeal by a controversial lawyer and a number of opposition organizations rejecting normalized relations with Israel.
Attorney Nabiya al-Wahash's appeal said many Egyptians were infiltrating Israeli cities, where they marry Israeli women, and that this phenomenon must be stopped.
Al-Wahash says the offspring produced by these couples later become a security hazard to Egypt by enlisting in the IDF. He claims these cases must be dealt with swiftly as the phenomenon was spreading.
The court's ruling says, "Egyptian citizenship is a precious and respected title that awards its owner the right to participate in the management of public affairs in the homeland, but in addition requires full loyalty to that homeland."
The judge stressed in the ruling that a security risk to Israel exists because "children born to an Israeli mother receive the benefits of Israeli citizenship in accordance with citizenship laws in Israel, and on the other hand they are considered Egyptian citizens because they were born to an Egyptian father".
He added, "Israeli law permits a person to hold dual citizenship and enlist in the occupying army, and this has dangerous ramifications on national security. Therefore the court and the interior minister must act swiftly to revoke the citizenship of these people"."
Swords are drawn as Charedim prepare to do battle against pro-Reform and anti-Charedi moves by Israeli supreme court, as Reform spokesman fumes
ReplyDeleteSharp words and defiance from UTJ MK Gafni, as reported in jpost.com:
"May 21, 2009 3:31 | Updated May 21, 2009 9:29
"Gafni: No funds for Reform conversionsBy MATTHEW WAGNER
Knesset Finance Committee chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said Wednesday that he will block any attempt to transfer state funds to non-Orthodox institutions involved in preparing converts to Judaism.
"The Reform Movement is not a legitimate form of Judaism," Gafni said in a telephone interview. "The Reform are a bunch of treacherous backstabbers to Judaism. They are jokers who operate without hierarchy and without rules."
Gafni insisted that "MKs are not a bunch of marionettes who will do whatever the Supreme Court tells them to do. I will block any attempts to provide state funds to Reform."
The Finance Committee chairman said that in Tuesday's decision, which ordered the state to fund non-Orthodox conversion institutions along with Orthodox ones, the High Court of Justice had "blatantly interfered in matters that are solely within the jurisdiction of parliamentarians."
"These are issues that go to the very roots of defining who is a Jew and touch on the very foundation of the State of Israel as a Jewish state," Gafni said.
He added that the court's decision to compel the state to fund non-Orthodox conversion institutes was a slippery slope that was liable to undermine the Jewish character of the state.
"The Supreme Court does not care about the future of the Jewish people. They have a specific philosophy that says that everyone is entitled," he said. "Funny that while the court thinks anyone can be a rabbinic judge, it does not think that anyone can be a Supreme Court justice."
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Reform Movement in Israel, said that "Moshe Gafni is one of the prominent examples in Israeli public life of how religious faith becomes a source of hatred and prejudice, instead of a source of love for the other and respect for humankind."
"These violent attacks against Reform Judaism are evidence of who Gafni is and emphasize the embarrassing fact that this man is an elected official in Israel," Kariv said..."
(Due to new requirements by Blogger this post is being split into two parts)
ReplyDeleteRabbi Tropper declares war on the Israeli supreme court in the name of world Jewry. Part IAs reported by Deiah veDibur:
"High Court Tries to Interfere With Conversion CaseBy Yechiel Sever
27 Iyar 5769 - May 21, 2009
Once again the High Court has been involved in a bald attempt to interfere in halachic matters, trying to impose secular legal opinions on purely halachic issues. During a hearing early this week High Court judges issued an interim order affecting a psak din handed down at the Rabbinate Beis Din of Jerusalem.
The High Court was hearing a petition by a woman (T.W.) joined by several women's organizations in response to a ruling issued a year-and-a-half ago by the Rabbinate Beis Din of Ashdod.
The recent ruling by the Jerusalem Beis Din, led by Av Beis Din HaRav Avrohom Sherman, upheld the psak din of the Rabbinate Beis Din of Ashdod, where a bench led by HaRav Avraham Attia questioned the validity of a conversion, and prevented the woman in question from getting married pending clarification. During the course of the proceedings, the Beis Din found Rabbi Chaim Druckman, who subsequently resigned from his post as head of the Conversion Authority, had falsified information during the course of other conversion proceedings, including the names of the dayanim handling the case.
After maranan verabonon determined that the High Court case is a matter of public interest, the respondents were joined by Rabbi Tzvi Weinman, who has been battling false conversions for 40 years, and Rabbi Nachum Eisenstein, chairman of Vaad HaRabbonim Haolami LeInyonei Giyur.
Following this week's High Court hearing, the judges gave the respondents (i.e. the government) 90 days to submit a detailed explanation of why the conversion was annulled and in the interim ordered T.W.'s name removed from the list of psulei chittun (individuals who are halachically forbidden to marry Jews). So far the High Court has avoided issuing a clear decision on the annulment of the conversion, which is clearly outside the jurisdiction and expertise of any secular court.
Attorney Rabbi Rafael Shtub, who represented the respondents, Rabbi Eisenstein and Rabbi Weinman, said throughout the hearing and the opinion submitted by the Attorney General — which focused entirely on technical matters — "There has been a collective silence regarding Rabbi Druckman's falsification, and deceit in handling T.W.'s conversion."
"This is the first time we've encountered such a dangerous precedent of a court trying to dictate and interfere with halachic considerations and determine what constitutes conversion according to halacha," HaRav Leib Tropper, chairman of Eternal Jewish Family, told Yated Ne'eman. "And that's not to mention how the High Court is overlooking serious claims of false conversions, such as writing `before a bench of three' when no such bench was ever assembled.
"This is not merely an attempt to dictate the outcome of a particular situation, but an attempt to undermine the Beis Din's authority. As an organization with active branches around the world, we intend to bring the Jewish world and the Diaspora up in arms to keep anyone from diminishing the authority of Toras Moshe."
Rabbi Tropper declares war on the Israeli supreme court in the name of world Jewry. Part IIAs reported by Deiah veDibur:
ReplyDelete"High Court Tries to Interfere With Conversion CaseBy Yechiel Sever
27 Iyar 5769 - May 21, 2009
...According to the spokesman for Vaad Haolami LeInyonei Giyur, the interim court order has no real significance because although the court issued instructions to have T.W.'s name removed from the list of psulei chittun, no rabbi in the world would allow her to marry since two reputable botei din have cast doubt on her status and accordingly she was not issued a permit to get married.
The High Court suggested that the petitioners present the case to the Tel Aviv Beis Din asking for clarification, but they are not expected to follow the High Court's advice since the Beis Din would certainly challenge the validity of her conversion after T.W. admitted she has never kept Torah and mitzvas.
Atty. Shtub says that the fact that T.W. and the women's organizations brought the case to the High Court was highly damaging to the petitioner and her family because the falsification and deceit during the course of the conversion have now come gotten a lot of public attention. Instead the matter should have been handled in a more discreet, dignified fashion he said.
Vaad Haolami LeInyonei Giyur has reiterated its support for the stance taken by the dayanim involved in the case, "especially Av Beis Din HaRav Avrohom Sherman shlita, who put a stop to the petitioner's conversion, thereby preventing non-Jews from entering Kerem Beis Yisroel."
Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein publicly called on Rabbi Druckman on an Israeli Radio interview this week to admit that he was tricked and that there was no proper acceptance of mitzvos and therefore the conversion is null and void. This would reestablish his honor and would reinforce the principle that conversion without kabolas mitzvos is not acceptable. It should be noted that in the new coalition agreement of the Israeli Government signed last month there is an explicit provision that all conversions must include a full acceptance of mitzvos."