The everlasting tale of unrecognized American conversions

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer (צילום: PR)

The author is accessory highbrow of law during dual distinguished Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow during a Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has hold distinguished care roles in several inhabitant rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for a Hon. Danny J. Boggs in a United States Court of Appeals for a Sixth Circuit, and served for many of a past decade on a Executive Committee of a Rabbinical Council of America. His papers have seemed in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other papers are collected during www.rabbidov.com .

There now seems to have arisen a latest repeated section in a everlasting tale of situations where radical-left rabbis in America design and direct that a Israeli Chief Rabbinate commend them and their “conversions” as current Orthodox conversions. 

In a newest tweak, a minute has been constructed by that a Rabbinate did not commend a acclimatisation real by a Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld.  For some in a severe media, this is a new means celebre: Wow!  The Israeli Chief Rabbinate will not commend conversions by Akiva Herzfeld, who graduated from an “Open Orthodox” seminary!

But this is no news story value a ink. This is no scandal.  Because few, if any, normative mainstream Orthodox rabbis in a United States would commend any “conversion” conducted by that rabbi, nor would his combined attestations make a smallest disproportion to us.  If a masculine walked into my Young Israel shul during a use where there are 9 organisation during a prayers, one brief of a minyan (quorun) for reciting Kaddish (a commemorative request shouted for a defunct desired one), and it were my Dad’s essence for whom Kaddish indispensable to be shouted that day, I still would not recite that Kaddish request if that tenth masculine were to tell me that he had been “converted” to Judaism by that rabbi.  Because that still would leave me with 9 Jewish organisation in a room, and a really honeyed man who is not Jewish.

Time and again these columns have warned a Jewish open and utterly a star of non-Jews considering acclimatisation to Judaism  — in Israel, in America — that the normative mainstream American Orthodox rabbinate, no reduction than a Israeli Chief Rabbinate, does not commend a effect of “conversions” conducted by people of certain theological distortions.  It does not matter that some rabbi says “But we am a rabbi!  we have ordination!  Here, demeanour during my certificate!”

Just this past week, a handful of new Reform rabbis were consecrated in California.  At their ordination, the keynote speaker not usually pounded Jews in ubiquitous and Israel in sold — and was famous to a rabbinical establishment for his prolonged and nasty story of aggressive Israel — though he even serve pounded a Judaic theological supremacy of endogamy: that a Jew contingency marry a Jew.  Instead, he advocated — at a rabbinical ordination program — intermarriage of Jews with non-Jews. 

There are American rabbis who hatred Judaic rituals like mikvah.  There are American rabbis who are universe leaders in convincing non-Jews via Europe and on American campuses to protest Israel, to remonstrate their universities and companies to deprive shares of companies who do business with Israel, even to permit Israel.
So when a Reform rabbi comes to Israel and says “I am a rabbi,” that does not automatically meant that Israel should be rolling out a red runner during a Kotel (Western Wall) and giving Judaism’s holiest site over to her or his theological misdirection. There are American rabbis who hatred Judaic rituals like mikvah.  There are American rabbis who are universe leaders in convincing non-Jews via Europe and on American campuses to protest Israel, to remonstrate their universities and companies to deprive shares of companies who do business with Israel, even to permit Israel. Israel righteously even has refused to concede some of a haters in. A rabbi who advocates for BDS opposite Israel indeed should be kept out of Israel — usually as America, England, Canada, and other countries bar certain noxious open nuisances from entering within their borders.

Chovevei Torah began as a fascinating experiment.  Many suspicion it would turn an Orthodox flagship seminary of “Modern Orthodoxy.”  Then again, a century earlier, many of a beginning founders of a Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) were Orthodox rabbinic leaders who incorrectly suspicion JTS would turn a Orthodox flagship seminary of “Modern Orthodoxy.”  Somehow, JTS became a seminary of “Conservative Judaism,” and it now ordains people who are so distant private from a founders’ visions that heading expertise of JTS finally resigned.  Today Conservative Judaism is same to Reform Judaism, and they both are utterly of a identical mindset on probably all a pivotal hot-button theological issues of a day, with usually a final vestiges of differences.  And a story of a past century evidences that Conservative Judaism will adopt any radicalization of Jewish divinity within twenty-five years or so of Reform initial violation a standards of Judaism.

Likewise, early in a expansion Chovevei Torah’s owner and theological navigator motionless to code a divinity as a new denomination: “Open Orthodoxy.”  It was not a Israeli Chief Rabbinate that called YCT “Open Orthodox.”  It was not a Orthodox Union nor a Rabbinical Council of America nor Agudah. It was they who stepped out of normative mainstream Orthodox Judaism and denominated themselves as a new theological breakaway: “Open Orthodoxy.”  And they now decree rabbis.

Among their rabbis are rabbis who tell in Jewish publications advocacy for intermarriage with non-Jews.  Should a Israel Chief Rabbinate commend them or their conversions?  I would not.  we do not.  None of us does.  Nor do we live in a vacuum.  we live embedded in American Orthodox rabbinics.  Such a rabbi’s “conversion attestations” have positively no definition to us. 

Others among these YCT-ordained “Open Orthodox” rabbis are married to wives who publicly tell journal interviewers that they do not trust in G-d.  Does your shul’s rebbetzin trust in G-d?  Would any normative mainstream Orthodox assemblage sinecure a rabbi whose mother publicly parades that she is an non-believer and does not trust there is a G-d Who combined a world in 6 days and complacent on a seventh, Who took a Jews out of Egypt and gave us His Torah laws during Sinai?  How good contingency her chulent recipe be to get her father hired during a assemblage of such ilk?  Would we wish her training Judaism to your children?

Chovevei Torah ordains rabbis who marry non-Orthodox cantors and rabbis, and some of them even then go off with them to their temples. Chovevei Torah ordains rabbis who publicly attack the kosher food industry in a pages of non-Jewish American publications, evoking noxious images and poisonous denunciation that conjure adult a misfortune memories of a battles to save kosher protocol massacre from anti-Jewish efforts to ban shechitah (kosher slaughter) in a 1950s.

All since a man or a woman is consecrated with a square of paper to be an “Orthodox rabbi” by an “Open Orthodox” ordination seminary — namely Yeshiva Maharat or Chovevei Torah — that does not meant that her or his “conversions” will meant anything theologically to a immeasurable and strenuous infancy of American Orthodox rabbis. 

Yeshiva Maharat is a seminary that ordains “Open Orthodox” women rabbis.  Those “Open Orthodox” rabbinical students take some of their classes together with a Chovevei Torah masculine rabbinical students.  The dual “Open Orthodox” rabbi-ordination schools work out of the same address. Their graduates join “International Rabbinic Fellowship,” a organisation of “Open Orthodox” masculine and womanlike rabbis.  

The Orthodox Union will not concede a Maharat graduates into any pulpits, notwithstanding their ordination.  The Rabbinical Council of America does not acknowledge anyone whose defining credential is ordination from Chovevei Torah. The National Council of Young Israel does not commend Chovevei Torah ordination as acceptably subordinate for a Young Israel pulpit. “Open Orthodoxy” is repugnant to tangible Orthodoxy.

None of this has anything to do with a Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

In a box of Akiva Herzfeld, positively he is a good fellow. So are many other people — Jewish and non-Jewish — and “nice” is not a same as “recognized Orthodox rabbi.” His divinity speaks for itself, deputy of a really reason that normative mainstream Orthodox rabbis in America do not courtesy “Open Orthodoxy” as a current countenance of Orthodox Judaism (even if they have arrogated a tenure “Orthodox” for their possess purposes). 

Here is an Akiva Herzfeld sample, equating dual events: (i) a Maccabees’ quarrel to acquit a Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash) in Jerusalem from Greek occupation, and (ii) a domestic transformation to commend homosexual matrimony in a state of Maine:

“While a Greeks looked most stronger, a Jews had a absolute arms on their side: their hearts. . . . The Jews fought for their eremite liberty, and this encouraged them notwithstanding a contingency opposite them. . . . We light Hanukkah candles any year to remember a ancient miracle. . . . This Hanukkah, we applaud a past and a present. With my really possess eyes, we have seen a good spectacle this year right here in Maine. A tiny organisation of people, homosexuals and their supporters, stood adult for their equal rights in marriage. . . . Vast numbers of people stood opposite them.

“A few years ago, a happy rights supporters were degraded during a polls in Maine, and a dedicated belligerent of their pristine hearts was crushed. They continued to quarrel since they knew that probity was on their side. This year they overcame a odds, and finally won. My conversations with friends in Maine helped remonstrate me of a integrity of a same-sex matrimony cause. we sealed a minute in support of ‘Yes on 1’ together with other rabbis in a state, including Rabbi Jared Saks of Congregation Bet Ha’am, a Reform church in South Portland, and Conservative Rabbi Rachel Isaacs of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville. The law of their hearts helped me overcome my wall of eremite textual justification that helped clear arguments for a other side. . . .  

“This Hanukkah as we light my menorah, we consider of a complicated conflict that was won in Maine for equal rights. We have witnessed a miracle, as a tiny organisation of people of faith won feat over strongly entrenched, wrong beliefs. It is a spectacle of love. Soon, some people consecrating their adore in eremite ceremonies of matrimony will ask for God’s blessing. Our multitude has already sanctified them.”

Very nice. And no mainstream normative American Orthodox rabbi indispensably would commend any “conversion” attested to by this associate — and positively not one in that he was one of a 3 rabbis on a acclimatisation panel. we positively would not.  Hundreds of my American Orthodox rabbinical colleagues would not.

So because censure a Israeli rabbinate for not noticing American “conversions” that American Orthodox rabbis also do not recognize?