Hmm. So if Ahamad Tibi and Mansour Abbas overcome differences and jointly introduce a law to recognize the Negev as part of “Palestine,” shall such a law be enacted? Or how about a law proposed by the opposition to recognize Evyatar . . . and Chomesh . . . and to annex the Jordan Valley . . . and to ban all sale of or profiting from pork products in Israel?
Min. Kahan wants to seize religious authority from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and to create a new framework for overseeing theological conversion to Judaism. He would hand that theological authority to a political quiltwork that includes some very honorable, religiously motivated figures like the better Knesset Members (MKs) of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ — Ashkenazic Haredi), Shas (Sephardic Haredi), and Religious Zionism (“Modern Orthodox” or “Centrist Orthodox”) parties who sit in the Knesset. Chief Rabbis and some very fine local community rabbis also would be involved.
Unfortunately, those MKs and best trained rabbonim (Orthodox rabbis) would comprise merely a few of the 120 MKs and others to whom Kahana would transfer this awesome theological authority — the power to confer Judaic halakhic status on a non-Jew.
By the way, such an act is a very serious matter, far more than anyone has noted in this entire debate and I am bringing it up now: If you really care about someone non-Jewish, and are not just a narcissist manipulating them for your own self-interested purposes, consider that a non-Jew may enjoy eternal reward in Paradise if he or she lives a righteous life on earth compatible with the Seven Noahide Laws. They may turn on the oven . . . on Yom Kippur . . . to cook pork . . . in milk . . . and it coincides with Shabbat — and they have not sinned, not done a thing wrong. They are not obligated in mikvah, in minyan, in any but the basic laws. If they live ethically, morally they go to Gan Eden (reward after life).
But the judgment they would face if Jewish exposes them to a different legal code, different requirements and more severe expectations. None of us is G-d. None of us dare judge. All of us must focus to be sure that we are living our own lives righteously. But we do no favors to refined non-Jews on whom we would thrust a Judaism by which they are not prepared to live and whose most severe Divine laws they would violate.
Problematically, Matan Kahana also would be handing the singular most central aspect of the religion of Judaism — defining who actually is a Jew — to a truly motley crew that includes anti-religious zealots in radical-left Meretz and Marxist socialist Labor, to anti-Orthodox extremists like Avigdor Liberman and Yulia Malinowsky, to amei aretz (or “amaratzim”), the Judaically ignorant who, beyond perhaps failing to tithe, are typical of a Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, and so many other Ignoranti. The mishnayot (mishnahs) of Tractate Dema’i lay out aspects of the Judaic Ignoranti.
But Kahana is still not done. He even would allocate such Judaic religious policy-making to outright non-Jews (their ethnicity irrelevant) like the 10-15 Arab Muslim MKs who sit in parliament every term, whether as representatives of all-Arab parties like Ra’am or even as Arab MKs in Likud or Labor. And thereafter, once all of them get their hands on it, the often rabidly secular Bagat"z (Israeli Supreme Court) and powerful Attorneys-General would entangle themselves in the interpretation of Judaic religious law as they did when they interfered with the Chief Rabbinate’s refusal to allow women to sit for rabbinical exams.
This is utterly outside any responsible rubric. Arab Muslims will define who is a Jew? Ahmad Tibi? Mansour Abbas? Jewish Marxists? Atheists and agnostics?
We would not allow laity unschooled in hi-tech and advanced physics to decide about the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, or Arrow 3. We would not invite those unschooled in cardiology to perform open-heart surgery. Is halakha less crucial to Matan Kahana?
Amid all other suspension of common sense, Matan Kahana further argues to adopt completely unacceptable minority viewpoints as the Judaic law of the land. This is absurd.
Every legal system generates minority opinions, often advanced by great scholars and brilliant minds. Three-judge appellate panels often split 2-1. Sometimes, a decided American appeal is deemed so important that the appellate circuit agrees to rehear the appeal “en banc” — in the presence of all dozen-or-so judges of the circuit. Invariably, thoseen bancs also result in splits. Sometimes the Supreme Court next re-hears the matter and splits 5-4 or 6-3. The minority dissenting “losing” opinion always is cogent, too, even brilliant. Nevertheless, society functions by majority.
In Judaism, there are more opinions than Jews: two Jews, three opinions. When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, initially met his American counterpart, President Truman explained his burden: “I am president of 150 million Americans.” “Yes,” replied B-G. “And I am president of 800,000 presidents.” Every Jew has an opinion.
The Talmud documents constant disagreements between Beit Hillel (the Academy of Hillel) and Beit Shammai, between Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Meir, between Rava and Abbaye.
Yet in Judaism we do not say: “Hurray for the dispute! Now we have twice as many opinions to choose from! Not only only the dominant opinions of Rava, Rabbi Yehudah, or Beit Hillel. But now we have un-earthed amazingly authoritative minority voices, too!”
No one serious says that. Judaism is not a game.
Instead, the community adopts a “psak halakhah” — an authoritative final ruling as to the course to follow. The only time Judaism authentically reverts to a minority opinion — no matter its brilliance and the authoritative identity of its author — is in discretely limited temporary emergencies that border on life-death considerations. And “temporary” means “temporary.” “Limited” means “limited.” “Emergency” means “emergency.” “Life-death” means “life-death.” Jewish religious authorities of integrity do not declare matters of major public-interest long-term consequence a “limited temporary life-death emergency.”
Israel confronts a challenging situation of 400,000 non-Jews many of whom bear “the seed of Israel.” More now enter from Ukraine. They each are 100 percent non-Jewish because their birth mothers were not Jewish, and they never converted to Judaism. Instead, they perhaps have only a Jewish father or even only one Jewish grandparent like an intermarried Jewish grandparent on the father’s side or a maternal Jewish grandfather — but no direct Jewish matrilineal ancestor by whom they can claim Judaic lineage. Under established Jewish law, such people are not Jewish unless they convert to Judaism properly.
That conversion process at its core entails accepting the truth of Torah narratives, believing in G-d and that His Torah is His Word as dictated to Moshe, and undertaking to observe Torah law as an integrated whole, not merely as a “pick-and-choose” Chinese menu where a mitzvah in Column A sounds like it would go well with one in B. A convert does not merely adopt 27 of 39 Shabbat prohibitions and further undertake maintaining a kosher kitchen while intending not to consume exclusively kosher outside. It is not his oven, stove, and dishwasher aspiring for Afterlife in Paradise. Rather, Judaism must be accepted as a package.
Minority opinions have their place. Abortion on demand is forbidden, but private situations permit abortions. Same with eating on Yom Kippur. An Ashkenazic Jew does not consume egg matzos on Passover, but emergencies allow for the elderly and infirm to be excepted from the prohibition. If a divorcing spouse — whether male or female — obstructs executing transmission of a final Gett, a rav may discover an authoritative minority opinion that, in its context and as exceptionally applied, may justify annulling the marriage retroactively. A rav encounters situations in a career where a powerful, persuasive minority opinion properly may play a critical role. However, there must be halakhic integrity. We do not say, because Beit Shammai rules we should light eight candles on Chanukah’s first night and one fewer each subsequent night, that we will do that because it sounds like fun. Rather, we adhere to the ruling of Beit Hillel that sees us increase in matters of sanctity and not decrease.
Authoritative rabbinic associations and courts of law throughout the world have united behind one single position: Israel’s conversion procedure must remain under the full authority of the Chief Rabbinate, not decentralized with community rabbis arrogating that power, and not subject to Knesset oversight or participation. The entire Orthodox rabbinic world: Agudath Israel world-wide (Ashkenazi Haredi), Shass (Sephardic Haredi), Rav Chaim Druckman and Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism and Centrist Modern Orthodoxy), the Conference of European Rabbis, Chief Rabbi of United Kingdom, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Beth Din of America (the East-coast-based main conversion court of the Rabbinical Council of America), Chicago Rabbinical Council (the Midwest and regional Middle America RCA conversion court), Rabbinical Council of California (the Western region RCA conversion court), and Igud HaRabbonim (Rabbinical Alliance of America).
Can Minister Kahana nevertheless uncover dissenting opinions? Of course. Can a dissenting view sometimes be adopted quietly for a discrete emergency matter? Of course. That approach helped determine that Ethiopian Jews should be brought to Israel from Gondar province.
That is how halakha (the Judaic legal system) works, as all honest law works. We do not “cherry-pick” minority opinions. We do not “forum shop” for lenient judges or rabbonim. To convert to Judaism, we require the basic standard: commitment to live an integrated Judaic life that includes proper Shabbat observance, kosher consumption at all venues, family purity, and belief in Torah authenticity. If someone strays occasionally, so be it. We are human.
Citizenships already attained are not revoked. An American or French citizen does not lose citizenship upon perpetrating grand larceny or murder. He may be sentenced to life imprisonment as a felon, perhaps even executed for his capital crime. Nevertheless, he dies a citizen. By contrast, the alien immigrant who is more moral and ethical than he must meet demanding standards to obtain more than a “green card” and acquire actual citizenship. It thus is expected identically that Judaism demands more of the non-Jew to convert than of the non-observant Jewish neighbor who was blessed at birth with Judaic “citizenship.”
In today’s United States, because Reform Judaism since 1983 recognizes people as “Jews” patrilineally even when they have no Jewish birth mother and never converted properly, there are two severed “Jewish people.” When approached by newcomers with no connections in the congregational community, and when asked to conduct their marriages or to “bar/bat-mitzvah” their children or to approve selling them burial plots in the shul’s cemetery section, an American rav first conducts a private investigation that may take weeks or months to determine whether that “Jew” actually is a Jew. As many as 33-40 percent of people in America now calling themselves “Jews” are non-Jewish. We find them in J Street, in Hollywood and on Broadway, all throughout Reform Judaism. Even several practicing Reform Rabbis are not Jewish. Frankly, a great many American Reform Judaism “intermarriages” are not even Judaically concerning because both “Jewish” parties actually are not Jewish.
No matter what results from Minister Kahana’s cherry-picking and forum-shopping for dissenting rabbis, we rabbonim around the world will not violate our professional obligations and oaths to uphold Torah and the millennia-old halakhic process. We stand resolutely with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, and even a heroic fighter pilot will not out-rank us in how Judaism is practiced. We don’t presume to tell him how to command air squadrons, and we will not recognize conversions that the Chief Rabbinate will not recognize.
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