Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Chief Rabbi Amar's committee recommends ending Army conversion course


JPost

The rabbinic committee appointed by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar recommended that he terminate the Nativ course held for potential IDF converts, since Reform and Conservative teachers are part of its staff, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.

“In this [Nativ] course about 10 of the staff of 170 teachers are Reform or Conservative. We perceive this as a severe problem, that casts a heavy shadow on all of the military conversions, and every effort should be made to cancel this course and/or to not have it as a precondition to the IDF process,” the report quoted from a letter the three-man advisory committee wrote.[...]

7 comments :

  1. Recipients and PublicityMarch 9, 2011 at 2:36 PM

    About time, because it's anti-Halachic and anti-Torah to have Reform and Conservative clergy involved in this in any way.

    In the USA up to one third of Reform clergy are known not to believe in God, and many are not Halachically Jewish themselves, so who are they to "educate" and "prepare" converts for an Orthodox conversion through the IDF or Israeli rabbanut that is Orthodox.

    Long ago Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l stated that even if they were to be "shommer shabbat" their kiddushin were invalid at marriages and certainly their participation in any types of conversions by Orthodox rabbis makes the whole endeavor posul and invalid.

    Just what was Rav Amar, or Rav Yosef for that matter, thinking?

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  2. this is the Nativ course, not the Army Rabbanut course - which is Orthodox.

    This is a good move by R' Amar, since the Haredim can no longer claim that reform etc are involved in the conversion process.

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  3. Recipients and PublicityMarch 9, 2011 at 5:51 PM

    "Eddie said...this is the Nativ course, not the Army Rabbanut course - which is Orthodox."

    RaP: Sounds like "six of one, half a dozen of another" they are the same at the end of the day. The IDF rabbanut should also not be involved in conversions as it is not their mandate. Army chaplians must take care of Jewish ssldiers and not become proslytizing missionaries to convert gentiles no matter how shiny their IDF uniforms. Conversions need to be done by more or less independent batei din outside the IDF controlled by rabbonim yerei shomoyim, such is in the USA that can range from the modern Orthodox RCA to Satmar's CRC. Likewise in Israel, conversions must be done by batei din ranging from the religious Zionist Rabbanut to the Charedi Badatz. But not in the army where all soldiers are subject to a military code with officers who range from mostly atheists to very few shomrei Torah. It cannot be that a guy like Ehud Barak should "supervise" conversions. Let him get his own house in order first since his number one female in his new "Independence" party Einat Wilf is married to a gentile German journalist who is not converted and she is defiant and proud of it. What a disgrace, and these are the guys who want to "guide" conversions to their point of view.

    "This is a good move by R' Amar, since the Haredim can no longer claim that reform etc are involved in the conversion process."

    RaP: The involvement of Reform and Conservative clergy can never be acceptable. This is not just a problem for "Haredim" who you seem to view as some sort of "enemy" but this is a problem for all of Jewry because both the non-Orthodox clergy and the secular Jewish-Zionist establishment are still intent on confronting, subverting, undermining and marginalizing the Torah world's rabbis (and by Torah world one may include all Orthodox, Haredi, Hasidic rabbis and Halachic Jews.) This is not a game, this is deadly serious. Rav Amar was playing a game and it's not clear if he was simply being naive about the Reform clergy's involvement or was he making a more calculated cynical move to "save" his intermarried Sefardi and secular flocks. Time will tell. But this time he was confronted and he blinked first. Let's see what happens next. Will he stay out of this quicksand or will he dive back in and next time he may not get off as easily as he did now. He may suffer Tropper's fate of being thrown into the ash-heap because he is playing with fire!

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  4. "RaP: Sounds like "six of one, half a dozen of another" they are the same at the end of the day. "

    Oh really? So a reform atheist is the same as a Rav with Semichah, who acepts all the tenets of Orthodox Judaism? Or is your real agenda that he serves in the IDF?


    "RAP Conversions need to be done by more or less independent batei din outside the IDF controlled by rabbonim yerei shomoyim,"

    This yorei shomoyim is a fraudulent label, which is used in publication such as yated , and was central to the EJF claims to have monopoly on the conversion market. This scam has now been exposed, and RAP himself has been instrumental in exposing it. A true Yoreh Shomoyim does not boast how much he fears heaven, and he also does not play the game of false modesty, where his appointed flock do the boasting for him.

    "RAP But not in the army where all soldiers are subject to a military code with officers who range from mostly atheists to very few shomrei Torah. It cannot be that a guy like Ehud Barak should "supervise" conversions."

    Rap, you are now displaying your sheer ignorance and foolhardiness.

    Whilst some Haredi Rabbis have tried to delegitimise Hesder Yeshivot, (also Barak tried), the Sati Leumi world is overrepresented in the IDF and in the officers corp. This is actually seen as a threat to the old Secular regime (remember Rav Goren ztl was jailed for disobeying Moshe dayan, who tried to remove G-d's name from E-l male Rachamim ).
    Ehud Barak has no place in the conversion process. You are making a fake gezerah shava. Since Brak is secular, and assoiated with the army, therefore, you claim he decides who is converted.
    It is like claiming that since NK is part of the Eda, and NK are asociated with Hamas and Ahmadinejad, therefore the Badatz hechser is decided by Iran and Gaza terrorists. This is your "rap" logic. Get a life!


    ". He may suffer Tropper's fate of being thrown into the ash-heap because he is playing with fire!"

    Tropper is still highly regarded in the Haredi world, outside of the Eda. He is sitll welcomed by the Haredi Gedolim.

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  5. "RAp: Rav Amar was playing a game and it's not clear if he was simply being naive about the Reform clergy's involvement or was he making a more calculated cynical move to "save" his intermarried Sefardi and secular flocks"

    Now this is a very serious allegation by Rap. Rap then goes on to compare Rav Amar with Tropper!

    Only someone of seriously limited intellectual ability would make such a comparison.
    Or perhaps someone of great intellectual dishonesty.

    Until Tropper was caught with his pants down (unfortunately, very literally) he was considered by all of the Lithuanian world's Gedolim - with exception of the Eda - as a good man on a Holy mission. From your perspective, I consider that you are not an Eda spokesperson. So, before Tropper was caught having sex with his potential converts, he was Glatt Kosher.

    What exactly are you accusing R' Amar of? There has never been any suggestion of moral impropriety. This idea that converts who go thru a Zionist Bet Din , eg Druckman, and IDF are all goyim who want to intermarry, whereas all the haredi Batei Din are all angles, who were yiddisher neshomos caught in gentile bodies and now wish to rejoin the Klal Yisroel - is total fiction.

    In any case, R Elyashiv, who is considered the Posek Hador, accepted the EJF and its activities.

    So, if your proposal is that converting intermarrieds is wrong, then you have to contend with the Dass Torah world.
    In any case, the IDF converts are - considering the conscription age, mostly unmarried.

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  6. Recipients and PublicityMarch 10, 2011 at 7:06 PM

    Eddie, I will try to respond to some of your points.

    It was Rabbi Eidensohn on this blog who first made the Rav Amar-Tropper comparison, see Is Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, shlita pulling a Tropper? (Wednesday, February 9, 2011) and I don't recall you lacing into him there as you are getting vitriolic now against me. So please cool it and take care with your words.

    Not all the teachers in the Nativ course were non-Orthodox, it was a mixed bag, in fact some say it was less than 10% Reform and Conservative. But no matter that's no good for teaching potential converts. This is not to compare them to IDF chaplains who are all Orthodox and male as far is known, but the point is that IDF chaplains do not have a mandate to be missionaries and to proselytize to and "convert" gentiles in the IDF no matter how many shiny medals or military rank either the chaplains or the non-Jews in the IDF wear.

    The job of IDF chaplains is to provide basic religious services, like all chaplains, they are not there to set themselves up as batei din to conduct geirus, something that must be handled by proper outside batei din, either from the Religiois Zionist world or the Charedi world, and let's not make distinctions here either.

    Sorry that you don't like the label "yerei shamayim" and that it ticked you off. Choose a word you like that indicates basic "trustworthiness" and "reliability" to conduct conversions based on Jewish law via essentially independent batei din.

    You are too deeply involved with all the Israeli-style ideological tugs-of-war. Let go of that and try to be objective if that is humanly possible. Let's for argument's sake assume that any Orthodox bais din is permitted to conduct conversions, but it cannot be done inside the army, any army, simply because the army is for WAR and it is not controlled by rabbis, every last chaplain is subject to military orders to serve the army in battle when the time comes. In peacetime the chaplains job is NOT to make Jews out of goyim (even the Yefas Toar had to wait!!!), it exceeds his already over-crowded daily jobs of ensuring daily services, food kashrut issues, teaching, counseling and tending to the sick, dead and dying. For conversions he must refer them to higher authorities, even if he is as learned as Goren, otherwise there will be HUGE problems, basically of CONFLICT OF INTEREST (aka negius), as Goren himself discovered a few times that came back to haunt him and ruined his name in the Torah world.

    Ehud Barak, as defense minister, is involved in this. He has a vested interest in seeing that over 300,000 Russian gentiles become Jews. In the best Ben Gurion traditions, it is the army that's viewed and used as the ultimate socialization tool and in this case the need of the hour is to make IDF-Israeli gentiles into instant Jews with all sorts of shtus that they are good soldiers, and he will support and work for that no matter how hard you wish to deny that.

    The other stuff about Tropper I will not get into because my record and involvement with that speaks for itself and no amount of distortions and putting words into my mouth can change that. I am surprised that you wish to reopen that whole debate and it makes me wonder under what identity you knew about all the previous discussions that you are now obviously misquoting for your own ends, and so again I call on you to talk and act rationally. Thank you.

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  7. Rap,

    i did respond to the pulling a tropper, perhaps i did not lash out at him, since i know who he is, whereas I do not know who Rap is. I did make the point that it was a very distasteful and false article.

    Ehud Barak is not a Dayan or halachic authority. The Dayanim have to make their own choices, Barak does not sit on any Beth Din. You also mentioned Einat Wilf - a secular MK who is marired to a non Jew - right, as if this is somehow connected? Yes, your logic is, wilf is in the same party ar Brak; Barak is a quasi Dayan; hence the conversions are treif. that is your allegation.

    All I said was that R' Amar wants to boot out the reformists from the Bet Din. Yo said it makes no difference. And that is why I lashed out at you.
    By the way - as far as i know, the Haredim have not opposed the conversions because of the Orthodox Dayanim, but they claim there are some reform educators. The educators teach on history of Jewish people etc.
    The Beth Din is not made up of a mix of Ortho and non ortho.

    You claim there is conflict of interest, yea, but there is also conflict of interest in every group. I have shown some examples in previous posts.
    But in any case, I find your position to be very strange -
    Haredim wanted the conversion standards to be raised a couple of notches, and they have been. So why are u still trying to cause trouble?

    ReplyDelete

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