Levi Horowitz
LEVI HOROWITZ Until now there has been a working compromise regarding the definition of who is a Jew, a kind of tacit agreement to leave the definition vague. Now, rather suddenly, it has become a...
...a kosher yid cannot eat treif...
...When people started coming to Israel from Vienna, from Rome, where blank checks were given to those who said they were Jews, without any type of investigation, at times even with the knowledge that the people were not, in fact, Jewish—but happened to be spouses of Jews, or children, or friends—we became concerned...
...How can you ask the convert to have an understanding of the concept of Shabbos when you yourself are out on the golf course on Shabbos...
...Genuine smicha requires that you know your halachah very thoroughly, that you go through a very rigid test on it...
...for that you need a brain surgeon...
...We never expected that the definition would be compromised by any movement...
...How do we know that it's any different from three people off the street...
...That's a very serious thing...
...That's the oath you take when you become a citizen...
...the issue was Jew or non-Jew...
...They understand better...
...It was then, and then only, that the traditional community realized that we couldn't continue to assume that the definition that had applied for thousands of years was still accepted...
...The question would be, is he a Conservative rabbi with a qualified smicha, is he a shomer Shabbos, what happened that he became a Conservative rabbi...
...When my son grows up, can I kiss him, can I hug him, or is he considered, since we're both new people, no different from another male, from a stranger...
...And it's not just a matter of Orthodoxy...
...You can say, "Look, let's relax, let's twist a little here, a little there," but that would be corrupt, that would be doing that which is opposite of the law...
...we just take out the books that appeared in print 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago...
...In Eretz Yisroel it's a mechayeh (delight...
...The assumption by Orthodox religious bodies of exclusive validity on their point of view represents spiritual arrogance...
...What is that status...
...We plead, but we don't interfere...
...I plead, in the name of Orthodoxy, of the Agudah, innocent to that charge...
...Should we imply that it is a good conversion when we know that it's not a good conversion, that we're only complying because we're all part of one community, and we feel that there's no alternative, that we can't do anything about it...
...As a matter of fact, I'm not even happy with the term "conversion according to halachah," because halachah itself is a vague term today...
...OK, we're in good company...
...every detail of it is studied, and is within the halachah...
...Now what constitutes a bes dinl Should the people on the bes din be asking the convert questions about things they themselves don't care about...
...The concept that we had lived with, that we had understood to be true, was fast disappearing because of the laxity of the people involved...
...From our point of view, the issue is similar to a problem that may be confronted by a Conservative or Reform rabbi...
...It's not a question of Conservative or Reform or Orthodox, it's a question of a qualified rabbi doing a qualified conversion, one that would satisfy the future generations...
...The term "hala-chch" doesn't cover what we need...
...I'm sure that if the other movements would sit down with Reb Moshe Feinstein, and would say, "What are the minimum standards that we have to comply with to make a conversion kosher, so that it would be recognized...
...Your wedding should satisfy all the participants...
...Maybe he was out of a job, he took a job with a Conservative congregation because there was an opening and he needed a job...
...But to open up the doors to Israel to a convert who wasn't converted halachically...
...outside, the Conservative movement compromises...
...In Israel, they won't accept the conversion of just any Orthodox rabbi...
...But in Eretz Yisroel, there is a way to define who is a member of our community...
...Our hands are tied, because of the separation of church and state...
...I'm confronted with all kinds of problems, among them parents who want my help in getting their children into college...
...If the Conservative rabbi has smicha (ordination), that's okay...
...And this brings us to the crux of the issue...
...Why can't there be an agreement among rabbis...
...We cannot take the liberty of saying, "I don't care about the future generations, I don't care about how others are going to view my Jewishness...
...The parents come to their spiritual leader to complain...
...matter on the other...
...If all this is so very important, how can the Knesset determine...
...Why should each movement be tied to its whims, and more than that, to the whims of each rabbi...
...By sanctioning a bes din that's not observant, even according to their laws...
...it's got to be done the right way...
...We would rather have our own judges and our own ways of enforcing the law, but we don't...
...The notion that we are anti-Zionist has its roots in the idea that frume yidn, observant Jews, did not want a secular state...
...Would you comment on that...
...Now you can ask whether the Knesset, the established government, shall employ the police to enforce a Jewish divorce...
...Mamzerus (illegitimacy) is not a term that applies to children born out of wedlock...
...The term applies where there hasn't been a Jewish divorce...
...Can we sanction that as a halachic conversion to be accepted by the Jewish community...
...We joined the first government as a party...
...They are the only ones who interpret Jewish law...
...What would be so terrible if the other movement told people, "Look, we don't believe in this, but if you want to make sure, just in case 50 years from now your child is going to become meshugge and /rum, you ought to go to the Orthodox rabbi...
...It's not...
...She has a ten-year-old son who converted with her...
...My heart bleeds when I confront a human problem and the law cannot be bent...
...So there has to be an understanding that the person knows what the responsibilities are...
...How do you explain ail the innovations that Orthodoxy has introduced for handling a whole host of problems that didn't confront the writers of those books...
...And this is where the other world just doesn't understand us...
...Absolutely not...
...Medical School...
...We're dealing with generations...
...And she wanted to know what her relationship to her son was because the Talmud says that a convert is a new person...
...We simply wanted a Jewish state...
...And sometimes, I'm able to convince the school to give the^stu-dent a chance, and they put him on hold, and then, after a while, he gets in, weak grades and all...
...This could be a very serious issue...
...What does kabolas ol mitzvos mean then...
...Does the Knesset—the inherently political parliament of Israel—have the authority to make definitions here...
...Reform rabbis can deliver good sermons, maybe better ones than Orthodox rabbis...
...A convert herself cannot marry a Kohen...
...I'll tell you what my analogy is...
...I don't see the desire to live up to the law as being arrogant...
...Mind you, neither the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (the Council of Torah Sages), nor any frum (observant) Jew in Israel or in the Diaspora is out to stop the non-practicing Jew from continuing in his way...
...As much as a Jew is a part of the whole House of Israel, as much as we're all connected, people have privacy, their own personal interaction with their religion, and we don't interfere...
...You don't like the other, you go to a Justice of the Peace...
...They have no monopoly on the interpretation of Jewish law...
...Never can you find authority in the texts for converting a non-Jew without a mikvah, without t'viloh, without immersion...
...What do we do when there's a Jewish divorce somewhere in Nebraska...
...Acceptance of the yoke of commandment means a true understanding and acceptance of what mitzvos are...
...Ignoring it causes disaster...
...You can't ask the courts to intervene and to require a religious divorce...
...If you would consult them with a personal problem, on conversion or anything else, they would be the first ones to crusade and see to it that if it's at all possible, something would be done to help...
...A Conservative rabbi would not say to a Reform rabbi, "You're qualified," so we're not alone in our approach...
...You cannot insist that the Jewish community accept your own private definition about what it means to be a Jew...
...But we don't have that control...
...Now, how can we ever sanction the conversion of a Reform Jew...
...But of someone who wants to become a Jew, we have serious criteria for admission...
...Obviously, any reasonable Conservative or Reform rabbi would say to them, "A treifer yid (a Jew who does not observe kashrut) can eat kosher...
...But if you have a student who is already in Tufts Dental or in B.U...
...As a progress—or regression—took place, and we tried to define who is truly a Jew, the other movements began to take our stand as a personal attack on their Rabbi Levi Horowitz, the Bostoner Rebbe, is a member of the World Executive Committee of the Agudat Yisrael...
...Then you take the stubborn fellow in and you lay him down on a table, give him a few slaps, tell him he has to free the woman, and that's it...
...The Conservative movement declares its smicha to be a watered-down version...
...they think their children have gone crazy...
...But isn't it the case that no Conservative or Reform rabbi would be regarded as qualified...
...Each shul is by itself, each temple is by itself: you don't like one, you go to another...
...Do we accept just a piece of paper...
...They would never argue that it's the same smicha their parents and grandparents received...
...The question was just too serious...
...And you cannot have any mental reservations, you cannot say "I don't agree to the 12th amendment...
...What would happen if the Conservatives came and said, "Look, we'll show you right here, after the conference of our halachic authorities, aliyahs can be given to women"—boom, finished...
...I have here a few letters on the "who is a Jew" question that have appeared in the New York Times...
...You cannot become a citizen of the United States unless you promise to abide by the Constitution of the United States...
...If the government in Israel would define a Jew differently from the way we define it, we'd be in the same position we're in here in the United States...
...There are three things: The most important is kabolas ol mitzvos (acceptance of the yoke of the commandments)— understanding mitzvos and accepting them...
...There are limits...
...We want the Shulchan Aruch...
...You can't pick three people off the street as witnesses, and say to them, "Hey, come in, you'll be a bes din to the mikvah...
...No circumcision, no mikvah, no kabolas ol mitzvos...
...Now he got in only because of pull...
...They ignored our existence...
...I don't think we have ever instituted an attack against the so-called opposition...
...When a Reform rabbi allows a couple to be separated without a Jewish divorce, that Reform rabbi ignores the future relationship of the family with their Conservative brethren...
...They ask the question, "How could our parents not understand what they're doing to the future generations, to us...
...A Jew born a Jew is always a Jew, no matter how low his grades are...
...What kind of acceptance of mitzvos is that...
...Would the Conservative movement compromise on that and say, "We accept this idea of conversion...
...With regard to conversion, the tradition is absolutely clear...
...Marriage, divorce, and especially conversion, affect the future generations...
...How do we know who the bes din is...
...But once the state was established, we immediately joined...
...How could they ignore the possibility that we might not be Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, irreligious Jews, Jews for J...
...It would depend on what kind of smicha it is...
...The fact is that the image that is represented of us in the press isn't accurate...
...Then there has to be t'viloh (ritual immersion) for both male and female, and for the male there's also circumcision, or, if he's already cir-cumcized, hatofas dom bris—the taking of a drop of blood...
...So if you go back to find out whether the original conversion was valid, and you discover that the rabbi who did the conversion was a Conservative rabbi, what would be the question...
...Who is at fault...
...We don't interpret...
...When confronted with this problem, I'm petrified, because lives are literally at stake...
...If someone comes and says that the mikvah that he used was in Tulsa, and that mikvah was founded in 1935, and we heard that in 1945 it had some problems, and the conversion happened later—well, maybe you can make it all right...
...That's true, because their criterion for smicha is not the one that has been the accepted norm...
...But the law is the law...
...And the problem is due to the fact that these people who, 20, 30 years back, when they had the opportunity to tell the parents that the divorce they were issuing or the marriage they were performing might create problems for the children, that the children would suffer in case they wanted to become Orthodox, didn't tell...
...It's not an "Orthodox" point of view...
...I wonder how...
...His grades are weak, but maybe you could help...
...A person married religiously should be divorced religiously...
...I'll tell you how serious it is: I had a call from Pittsburg the other day from a woman who converted to Judaism...
...As far as recognizing the State of Israel as the state that we were hoping for, absolutely not...
...Even though the people who are giving the advice may not care about kushrus, they would understand that when it affects other people, you go along...
...If anybody could come up with an interpretation that would permit us to make a Jew who is a mamzer into a non-mamzer, we'd jump for it...
...the Reform movement does not...
...But we don't interpret Jewish law...
...Why the change...
...If the rabbinate in Israel has a convert who has children, and the children want to marry a Kohen, whether they can or not depends on whether the mother's conversion was kosher...
...The traditional community feels that when the law states that a person, for whatever purposes, has to be Jewish, then he has to be Jewish...
...Here in America, there is no organized institution...
...In Eretz Yisroel it's a mechayeh...
...They don't want a kosher wedding...
...It provides us a basic understanding of how we guide ourselves towards a non-Jew who enters the Jewish faith...
...Now the question is: who is a Jew, what should be the criterion for being a Jew...
...What does it mean when a person is about to become Jewish and you know that the person is not going to do anything more Jewish the day after his conversion than he did the day before...
...We signed on the Declaration of Independence, which disproves the contention that we are anti-Zionist...
...The Conservative movement requires a get (a bill of religious divorce...
...it was the universal Jewish point of view, with no disagreement, for 2000 years...
...So a person is converted, and the bes din signs the papers...
...It must be done according to the Shulchan Aruch, as it's been done for generations and generations, or else we'll get into a hassle in interpreting what halachah really means...
...Here's a person who is about to change completely, to become a new person...
...So since the change is so fundamental, we need three people at the mikvah to be a bes din...
...These youngsters don't ask "How come the Jewish religion is taking it out on us...
...Of course we'd prefer a system, the way it was onqe, where the Jewish community is in control of its own...
...It's not only our problem...
...we haven't made any new interpretations...
...Is the Chofetz Chaim, or the Vilna Gaon, arrogant...
...But these people have compassion, they are the finest people, they know the tzores (troubles) of k'lal Yisroel, of our people, they carry those tzores on their shoulders, and they are the first ones to bend backwards...
...No, we'll fly to Chicago, we'll meet the people, we'll do the thing right...
...do with the conversion of a Reform rabbi, one who comes to him and says "Hey buddy, they've just gone through a conversion, I want you to marry them off...
...It can be done with a dreidel (a twist), but it has to be part of the structure...
...When you have a couple that is getting a divorce, and wants to make the break religiously, just as they were married religiously, and one of the parties involved is stubborn, and refuses to do it, or demands a ransom for doing it, here in the United States you can't force the issue...
...They think that a Shabbos elevator is a way of getting around the halachah...
...Is my son still actually my son...
...It always came when the opposition forced their views, attempted to change the status quo...
...it isn't...
...A woman who hasn't had a Jewish divorce and then remarries commits an adulterous act, and children born as a result are mamzerim...
...The problem is not what the Conservative or Reform rabbi is individually...
...Can they or can they not marry a Jewess...
...What makes a Jew a Jew...
...So, let's say I have a parent who calls and says, "Get my kid into Tufts Dental School, or B.U...
...Here we have no recourse...
...Do you think we want that people should have to live with the stigma of mamzerusl Reb Moshe Feinstein, the leader of the Council of Torah Sages in America, would use every type of logic that's used in the halachah to come up with a way of doing that—but he would never do it by saying "Take my word for If you need a brain tumor operated on, you need a brain surgeon...
...If they would, we'd end up with a mishmash of people claiming to be Jewish because they did one little thing or another little thing...
...If the rabbi does that, it's a farce...
...They have to bring the fine print, the source for their decision...
...We hope to be able to talk to the government and say to them, "Help us...
...We apply, within the halachic structure...
...Medical, one who got in with the best grades, and he's doing very badly, he's really in academic trouble, they won't throw him out...
...The Agudah was described in this morning's New York Times as an anti-Zionist party...
...I don't know what that means...
...You can't compromise just because you're afraid you'll hurt somebody's feelings...
...The state we hoped for would be governed by Torah—not clerically, we never had clerics, we never had ayatollahs...
...But as time went on, things changed...
...A bes din has to be a bes din...
...the child of a "valid" convert can...
...It has to be done by a bes din (a religious court...
...At worst, they'll give him a warning...
...So the Conservative rabbi says, "A conversion...
...Now, if a person comes in, and that person has smicha, and he believes in Torah min Hashomayim (divine revelation), in the 13 Articles of Faith of the Rambam, if he lives a mitzvah life, the question of whether he considers himself Conservative is not crucial...
...Reb Yitzchak Meir Levin was the Minister of Social Welfare, and throughout Israel's history, we've been very involved in every aspect of government...
...They make it seem as if the Council of Torah Sages consisted of 15 ayatollahs...
...So we turn to the institution that can help us enforce reasonable standards of living...
...A secular state was not our aim...
...And the Reform rabbi answers, "Yeah, they came in, and they attended classes, and then they went before the oron kodesh (the Ark) and took an oath, and said they're Jews...
...The issue is what the Conservative and Reform movements themselves declare...
...But it's got to be within the framework of the halachah...
...there aren't two definitions of what it means to be Jewish...
...Maybe, if an observant Jew—that's what you need to be a mohel, to do the ritual circumcision—if such a person forgot to say the brocho, maybe you can find a technicality in the halachah which will still make the conversion valid...
...how could they do it...
...Or shall we accept the Conservative idea that Judaism can be done in a more relaxed way...
...To us, the definition of who is Jewish goes to the heart of all that Judaism is...
...I'm sure that it could be worked out...
...But by definition, the smicha provided by the Jewish Theological Seminary is not a qualified smicha...
...If you have any type of reservation, you will not be granted citizenship...
...The second problem is the mikvah, the ritual immersion...
...Inside, the JTS has a mechitzah (a partition in the synagogue separating men and women...
...What does a Conservative rabbi Here in the United States you can't force the issue...
...But the answer would inevitably strike at the self-respect of those movements, wouldn't it...
...But the issue of who is a Jew is a different story...
...The Labor party would surely agree with that...
...There would be a different approach, because we want to work it out, we have no quarrel with him...
...But we see a distinction between Shabbos and kashrus, on the one hand, and the "who is a Jew...
...Ten Reb Moshes would not be able to do that...
...Take a family whose children have become observant, and are getting married, and they want to have a kosher wedding...
...But the fact of the matter is that any person can get up on the pulpit and deliver a sermon...
...The smicha is a compromise smicha, just as much as with the other institution, the Reform one...
...There's a Talmudic saying, for example, that a person who desecrates the Shabbos is as if he had desecrated the entire Torah...
...Now, rather suddenly, it has become a matter of high priority to the traditional community, which seeks a precise and rigorous definition...
...I face the problem at least weekly...
...The Reform movement can have its self-respect for other reasons...
...It's not possible...
...Should we accept the halachic (traditional legal) point of view regarding who is a Jew, the traditional point of view that we have lived with for 2000 years...
...Is that arrogant...
...When young people come to see me regarding their identity as Jews, wanting to know more about Judaism, the greatest fear I have, the greatest problem I face, is being confronted with a young person who suddenly, at age 24 or 26, discovers that he or she is considered a mamzer—illegitimate— according to Jewish law...
...Would you say something about the quality of vituperation that has entered the ongoing debate between the Orthodox community and the other movements...
...it, it's ok...
...The issue then was not Reform or Conservative...
...We couldn't rely any longer on those who administered the law to administer it properly...
...We in the Conservative movement," one reads, "have undertaken to interpret Jewish law in the spirit and mode of the tradition in order to respond to ongoing daily issues...
...If he has a qualified smicha...
...she wanted to know...
...The bes din consists of reasonable people, they come up with a reasonable settlement, and if people don't live up to it, they go to jail...
...How shall the whole House of Israel, k'lal Yisroel, guide itself in accepting a person who was not born Jewish...
...We don't interpret...
...But in Eretz Yisroel, we have a recourse...
...So we try to get binding arbitration and that way, through the side door, receive some sort of support from the government...
...So you need a rabbi who is not only an understanding person, but also a shomer Shabbos (a Sabbath observer...
...Are they saying that the Rambam is arrogant...
...Divorce falls within the jurisdiction of a bes din...
...The heart surgeon might be a great heart surgeon, but if you need a brain tumor operated on, that's not for him to do...
...The fact that the Conservative movement has instituted things like riding to shul on Shabbos pains us very much, but we didn't launch a campaign against it, because it's a very personal issue...
...Who is arrogant, those who live by the law, by the Constitution of the United States, or those who say that this amendment or that doesn't mean anything...
...If he comes to us with the best of intentions of observing Judaism, and a month later he announces that he can't, there'll be no gendarmes, no police to say that he's not Jewish any longer...
...approach to Judaism...
...They understand that when there is a gene of insanity in a member of a family, that gene may be carried through to the next generation, and therefore people who have the gene should be careful...
...What are we supposed to do...
...Would they sanction Reform conversions...
...There's so much more expected of a convert than of a person born a Jew...
Vol. 6 • September 1981 • No. 8
