Who may become a Jew? What should the criteria be for proper Jewish conversion? Which rabbis should the Jewish people trust? Israel is in constant conflict over these questions, as thousands of technically non-Jewish Soviet émigrés risk their lives for the Jewish state. Indeed, Russian immigrants are highly motivated and well-represented in IDF combat units and among its officers.
And so the IDF chaplaincy has seen fit to provide Jewish instruction and conversion to those young men and women in uniform who express serious interest in becoming bona fide members of the Jewish people – by adopting Jewish culture and traditions (and undergoing, in the case of males, circumcision) in order to live and die as Jews, to be married into the Jewish people and to be buried among their comrades should they, heaven forbid, be among those who make the ultimate sacrifice.
By contrast, civilian rabbinical courts – under the control of some anti-Zionist rabbis – have striven to annul the Jewish identity of even those who have already completed the conversion process.
How such rabbis came to usurp control of courts paid for by taxpayers (i.e. everyone but their own adherents) is troubling. Even more troubling is their rejection of any conversion that does not affirm a lifestyle of strict adherence to extreme interpretations of the mitzvot bein adam l’makom (between man and God), but tolerating quite loose adherence to the mitzvot bein adam l’havero (interpersonal relationships) – specifically laws against cheating, embezzlement and gratuitous hatred, as well as laws mandating responsibility for defense and public service.
Are these rabbis motivated by spiritual idealism, or is their posture just part of an escalating haredi power grab? When it comes to conversion, the written Torah offers little information. We do know a mixed multitude (eirev rav) accompanied the Israelites out of Egypt, and were ultimately amalgamated under the greater Jewish tent.
The Torah also teaches that a gentile woman captured in battle by an Israelite soldier may become the bride of her captor. A non-Jewish slave, too, becomes Jewish by virtue of his manumission.
RABBINIC LAWS governing Jewish conversion are based on the Book of Ruth – which we read on Shavuot – specifically Ruth’s declaration to her former mother-in-law Naomi: “For where you go I will go, where you will sleep I will sleep, your people are my people, and your God is my God” (Ruth 1:16).
The utterance of a Moabite widow once married to a Jew who had abandoned his land and people, serves as the basis for what constitutes halachic conversion. Her unwitnessed declaration to Naomi is definitive, and she becomes a progenitor of the Davidic/Messianic dynasty.
Ruth’s declaration could be made sincerely by any IDF soldier wishing to cast his lot with the Jewish people.
Now, while the Torah is vague about conversion, it is very clear about which Jews may be counted as members of the community: “every male… 20 years old and upward, all that are able to go out to the army” (Numbers 1:3-4). In order to be included in the Israelite census, a man must be over 20 and eligible for military service. Conversely anyone who is not simply doesn’t count.
If these are the criteria for being numbered among the Israelite community, then soldiers serving on the front lines who go where Jewish soldiers must go, who sleep where Jewish soldiers sleep, who consider the Jewish people their people and the Jewish God their God must surely be counted as members of our people.
By contrast, haredim, whose Jewishness is with respect only to God but not the Jewish people, should certainly have no voice in determining who is a Jew.
Clearly Ruth converted to the Jewish people primarily and to the Jewish faith secondarily. By her reasoning, it is understandable why a young soldier whose parents hail from Russia or Belarus or the Ukraine, one who has Jewish DNA, who serves in the Jewish army and who wishes to be part of the greater society in which he lives and with which he identifies, should wish to become a Jew – and why he should be welcomed as such.
These young men and women who are defending the State of Israel (and its masses of haredim) both meet and exceed the criteria set by Ruth herself – not only because these soldiers would qualify as Jews under the Nuremberg laws, but because they prove their Jewish identity through their actions, their uniforms, their sacrifices, their language and their adopted culture. Israel dares not cynically exclude them as a way to feed a haredi craving power. Israel dares not exclude them, for the sake of its own soul.
The writer is an advertising creative director who made aliya in March. His son, who preceded him, is a lieutenant in the IDF.
Anti-conversion group to soldiers: Don’t convert
excerpt:
“…non-Jewish soldiers will demand their right to have a military clergymen installed according to their various denominations.
‘We have to adapt to this new reality, where Israel is a multi-national country and respect each other’s way of life,’ he [Shriver] said.”
“That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing whereof it is said: ‘See, this is new’?–it hath been already, in the ages which were before us.”
ellen I think the above ref. [comment # 1 and reply’s] were about the Haredim.
Since there seems to be a machlochit, I go with my instinct. Any doubtful convert should not be allowed into Israel until 3 generation have passed. They should all experience what it is to be a Jew in the Galut.
I’m reading these comments with interest. I think it’s important to remember that conscription exists in large parts of the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and South America and that’s where many of the non-Jewish new olim came from. Conditions in the Israeli army are far more favorable than in the countries of their origins. So fighting for the Jewish state should not necessarily be part of the conversion equation because, like Shy Guy said,
Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren has this to say
“In an attempt to escape Soviet communism Oren said, ‘Literally hundreds of thousands of Soviet people who were not Jewish, came into Israel and became Israeli citizens. So much so that at one point the Israeli army was printing out the New Testament in Hebrew so that soldiers could use it to swear in because they were practicing Christians serving in the Israeli army. We now have a great number.’ He included in those numbers Russian Messianics, Pentecostals, Baptists and a significant Russian Orthodox population.”
Conversion to Judaism and becoming a part of the Jewish people is not akin to the type of denominational hopping or switching of church affiliation which is common among adherents to Christianity. A change of souls is required.
The very concept of a mass conversion runs contrary to accepted Jewish tradition. Surely the process of conversion to another faith is a very intimate and individual journey. An article by Rabbi Berel Wein touches upon the historic aspects of this problem.
And speaking of history, I just read in Artscroll’s commentary on the Book of Ruth that according to Rambam “during the reigns of Solomon and David converts were not accepted because the lures of conversion were too great to insure that sincerity was present. Despite this ban many non-Jews did join Israel thanks to conversions performed by uninformed, unsophisticated, makeshift courts. Those converts were ignored by the legitimate courts – not ostracized and not embraced – until time and experience showed whether or not they were truly sincere.”
Times don’t change much, do they? I’m not sure where I stand on the issue, but it is quite complex and should be recognized as such.
With regards to the Yeshiva/conscription argument. A number of my sons have either served or are currently serving in the IDF and they all attended Yeshiva. One served as a commando in the paratroopers, another as a commander in an elite combat unit, At present one is in a special unit in the air force, and one has just started a commander course in his tank unit. I imagine my youngest son like many, many other young religious men will also attend Yeshiva before entering his service.
The writer has been in the country for three months. Guess what? It shows!
His mischaracterization of rabbis and observance and validity of conversions is appalling. We could excuse his ignorance, if only he had kept it witin the confines of his home and didn’t blast us with his lack of knowledge.
I glanced at Rabbi Angel’s article. I understand where Rav Uziel’s desperation was coming from in a mixed relationship. However, Ezra and Nechemia seemed to have preferred to compiling Sifrei Yuchsin and not to cowtow to pseudo-converts with blatant ulterior motives. The article does explain why Rav Uziel thought differently than our prophets and national leaders of the past, who had similar circumstances – perhaps worse.
Ulterior motives are what these mass conversions – like the ones in the IDF – and many of the intermarriage conversions are all about.
As for driving sincere converts nuts to know all of SHAS and Poskim by heart, that’s a sickening horse of a different color.
Stay tuned for the numerous African, South American, Indian, Asian, N. American groups claiming to be lost this and that and wanting to come to Israel, so many of them with ulterior economic and/or political motives and many more who are christians looking to infiltrate our nation and our country.
Both Ted’s and Shy Guy are correct and can base their POV on Halacha and Talmudic sources.
Read the following article for insight.
Conversion to Judaism: Halakha, Hashkafa, and Historic Challenge
By Rabbi Marc D. Angel
http://www.jewishideas.org/min-hamuvhar/conversion-judaism-halakha-hashkafa-and-histori
Rabbi Marc D. Angel is Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel. Author and editor of 26 books, he wrote "Choosing to Be Jewish: The Orthodox Road to Conversion," available through the online store of our website jewishideas.org. This article is reprinted with permission from Hakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought, Volume 7, Winter 2009.
Arnold pls accept my sincere apology. I was was much too harsh in my reply to you #8. There is little difference BTW our views. It rubs me when Jews of any stripe criticize those who live here and that includes most on the left from those who sit safely on the side while we here do the heavy lifting. My instinct is to defend even those whom I myself criticize and even dislike. my reply was in this context.
The importance of defending the nation in Judaism:
the Torah also makes clear that serving to protect and defend the people of Israel is equated with loyalty to G-d. For example, when the tribes of Gad, Reuven and half of Menashe wanted to settle east of the Jordan river, Moshe rebukes them because he thinks they are trying to avoid military service:
Moshe answered the descendants of Gad and Reuven saying: shall your brothers go to war while you remain here? (Numbers 32:6).
He goes on to equate the possible avoidance of military service with turning against G-d. He accuses them of being no better than the spies who forced the people to wander for 40 years in the desert:
Now behold you have risen up in the place of your fathers, a brood of transgressors, to bring even more of God’s wrath upon Israel. If you turn away from Him, He will leave us in the wilderness and you will have destroyed this whole people (Numbers 32: 15)
Moshe is not satisfied until he extracts a promise from the tribes of Gad, Reuven and half of Menashe that they will serve in war against Israel’s enemies.
Unfortunately, many of our current scholars have remembered the lesson that Israel needs scholars, and have forgotten the lesson that failing to defend our nation is equal to the sin of the spies.
Right now there are far too many young men studying in yeshiva in lieu of serving in the IDF, and I don’t believe that all of them are needed in that capacity. Right now, over 50,000 students are exempt from military service—an unprecedented number and one clearly out of sync with the importance of military service in the history of our Nation.
Service in the IDF while noble and praiseworthy does not a Jew make. We honor righteous gentiles who help jews and identify with the jewish people but they are not jews even when there is the ultimate self sacrifice.
Remember the lesson of Balaam! Even when our enemies try to curse us, they will bless us!
Why not just place a propeller beanie on gentiles’ heads and mumble some incantation?!
/sarc
Read Jewish history. Mass conversions led to some of the worst in “bad for the Jews” Jews.
If you want to play Craps, Las Vegas should be your venue.
I support easy conversions. I don’t see the harm to the Jewish people. There is every possibility that their children will be more Jewish.
Such converts will be little different from secular Jews. Look how many leftist Jews hate Judaism or Israel. They can’t be worse. At least they made a decision to join the Jewish people.
The people least likely to enlist in the IDF should not be the ones to decide.
Hi, Yamit.
I’ve got no war stories to tell. Stefi and I were both in Jerusalem in October 1973, where some of us foreigners with cars volunteered to deliver telegrams, driving at night with our lights covered by washable blue paint. I suppose that was more dangerous than anything in which I got involved in the service of Uncle Sam. And when you were on the Korea DMZ line, that too was probably more potentially lethal than anything I ever experienced.
I wanted to join the Illinois National Guard when I was 17. My father, himself a veteran of the National Army that went to France in 1917-1918 as the American Expeditionary Force under General John “Blackjack” Pershing, said absolutely “no” to me joining the National Guard or any other military unit while I was still a high school student. Next year, after finishing high school, I joined a US Army Reserve tank battalion of the 85th “Custer” Division in Chicago. The following year I was called to active duty and was assigned to a training unit, the 31st “Dixie” Division at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. In early winter 1953-1954, we were all shipped overland to Fort Carson, Colorado, where I spent the rest of my active duty hitch. Then I completed the rest of my US Army Reserve duty in 1955 and that was the end of my military experience. As you probably know, in the peacetime army in this country, you don’t do much more than find ways to get laid at little expense, try to stay out of trouble with the officers, and as the time approaches, countdown until ETS day.
On reflection, I guess it would be a dumb idea for Israel to train and arm 100,000 Arabs. Just like it was a dumb-ass mistake to have issued an officer’s commission to Major Alahu Akhbar and station him at Fort Hood, Texas with easy access to any kind of firearm. Israel never will have peace with those Arabs, and you guys should act accordingly and stop fooling yourselves.
As for where I live, one nice thing I can say for life around here in the neighborhood of mainly Norwegian-American Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Nobody is threatening to bulldoze my house and tell me where I can or cannot live. That’s part of the reason Americans keep more than 200 million weapons. I feel sort of sorry for the Israel’s pioneers regularly victimized by your Judenrat in Judea and Samaria, which always seems more anxious to lick American asses than to assert their independence.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Since you are there and not here and not a citizen of Israel your opinion is of no consequence.
Tell you what I think: I think all put a certain number of Yeshiva students should do national service and ea. year more are opting to serve. It’s happening but slowly. I will say this. What ever you think of them, they are here and in their own ways do contribute to Israel. Eveything is not valued in $$$$$.
Every Haredi who lives here shares the same risks as every secular Jew, in some ways even more because they shop in the open air markets frequently targeted and public transportation more so than secular Jews. They have as many victims of terror as anyone else maybe more. They don’t emigrate. They lead the country in charitable services to all, religious and non. Yad Sarah and Zakah are two of the better known services they provide.
In short I value the kid who sits in religious studies 15 hours a day but is here with us than a big mouth ignoramus who sits safely in Mt. Horeb WI who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk and is very brave on Else’s dime.
Reading it and understanding what you are reading is not the same.
Your views on Judaism are known to us, you have said this all before. know this, killing Arabs and Jewish studies are not mutually exclusive. You haven’t studied nor killed Arabs, so according to what you have said from your POV you have no redeeming qualities.
That’s what we are missing here. 50-100,000 Arabs trained by us and armed by us. You are very trusting, but then it ain’t your back that you need worry about.
I too served in Korea but much later than you and I guess we served in different armies. I spent 18 months on the DMZ, in the 2nd recon squadron 10th Cav, 7th inf div. Want to exchange war stories?
Moreover, I sure as hell would draft the Arabs as well as Jews. If they don’t want to serve the State of Israel against their Arab “brothers”, then cancel their citizenship and let them live in the Jewish state only as resident aliens.
When I had to serve in the United States Army back in the Korean War years, nobody was interested in whether I was Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. They only wanted to know if I had two each of eyes, ears, arms, hands and legs. And there were times when a lot of our guys found out whether or not they had balls as well.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
SG & Yamit,
If these Russians who serve as officers or enlisted men in Zahal are Jewish enough to risk their lives in service of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation, then they sure as hell are Jewish enough for me. And more so then any and all of the black-hats who live in Israel as citizens but evade military service using as an excuse their need to study Talmud or whatever in some yeshiva. As far as I’m concerned, the belly of a Merkava, or its equivalent in the infantry, the air force or the navy, is all the yeshiva any real Jew needs. If you folks are seriously picky about who’s a Jew, and you don’t like the idea of Russians in Israel’s army, then get the Knesset to pass a law requiring active national service for EVERYONE in the country, including the yeshiva bocherim. Their yeshiva studies can wait a couple of years.
In any case, I understand they are getting orthodox conversions. So what exactly are you complaining about?
I will be the first to admit that my Judaism extends to having read the Soncino Chumash from end to end quite a few cycles over the years. Especially when the local Lubavitcher stiebl needed someone like me to make a shabat minyam, And I didn’t just sing that stuff while standing up at the bima. I actually read it.
But I couldn’t care less about the seemingly endless disputations over the Talmud for the sake of which so many young Jewish minds have been wasted over the centuries. And under modern conditions of the Jewish state and nation, learning how to kill enemy Arabs in cold blood is more important than studying just about anything else.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Why play around with the fiction of them being Jews. We can call them what they are mercenaries. Most are ardent Jew haters. Serving in the IDF does not render anyone Jewish. We got Arabs, Druze and Christian sects who serve in IDF.
Quickie conversion too much for fake Jews
Israel grants the right of return to people with Jewish blood and to Jewish converts. Faced with Reformist conversions as easy as saying Allah Akbar, secular Israel has to decide on purely religious matters of conversion. The current preference given to Orthodox Judaism in unsupportable in secular framework.
Israeli Interior Ministry drafted its own rules of conversion: the study (of whatever quality) must be at least nine months long. The convert has to reside in the community the conversion takes place in. That should exclude the converts popping up to the more permissive rabbis. The draft rules sensibly try to limit reformist conversion for the sake of Israeli citizenship. That would prevent a few hundred fake converts from entering Israel – a mere drop on the background of 1.4 million Arabs already here.
Nativ is the most simple giyur program. Run by the IDF rabbinate, it offers conversion to Judaism in less than half a year—which is below even Reformist “Allah Akbar” standards. Not that the idea is entirely bad: presumably, the people who serve in the IDF come really close to joining the Jewish nation.
Nativ published some shocking figures. In its seven years of operation, about 7,000 soldiers entered the program…but only 3,100 passed the most simple conversion imaginable. Indeed, after the government dropped nationality and religion from all the official documents, Israeli Slavs have little reason to become Jewish.
Government officials routinely slam the Orthodox Rabbinate for its “inability” to convert the hundreds of thousands of Slavs the government allowed into Israel.
You’re confusing the qualifications for sincere converts to Judaism with the hiring requirements for drone workers and temp employees.
Completely agree.
I have never been an admirer of Russia with or without communism.
Being of Russian-Jewish ancestry myself, and a lifelong admirer of Russia with and without Communism, I think these sturdy Slavs will make the best, brightest and toughest of all Jews and all Israelis. The same applies to the Jugoslavs who have made their way to Israel over the past two generations. My own wife Stefi Harris (Stefanija Prasnjak Harris) is a Hrvatica from Zagreb whom I met when we were studying Hebrew language together in Chicago in 1969. She formally studied Judaism with an Orthodox rav and converted to Judaism. The Hrvati who live in the mountainous region of Gorski Kotar tend to be closed-mouth and tough as nails, for which I admire them all the more.
Israel has the makings to be a very great nation, what with its variegated strains of Jews from Russia, Poland, Germany, France, the UK, North and South America, the Arab and other Moslem states, and the equally-fine immigrants from Ethiopia. The only ones who ever got on my nerves when Stefi and I lived and studied there in 1973-1974 were some of the drip-shit liberal Jews from the USA and Britain. I think that if I had another 40 years to live — which I surely do not, because I’m now 77 — I would be able to see a much Greater Israel that would encompass not only united Jerusalem, Golan, Judea and Samaria, but also a retaken, annexed and settled Jewish Sinai, and with lands east of the Jordan River retaken by the Jewish nation. In short, a Jewish national population of some 12 million on the soil of the Aretz-Yisrael, with a developed base of energy, industry and agriculture, the finest and most deadly armed forces in the entire Middle East, and trading with a world that would show Jews respect for the first time because they shall have earned it by conquering and populating the lands of their enemy neighbors. Remember this always: Only power gets you respect.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI