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As some of you may be aware, there has been some tumult recently in the world of Orthodox conversions – specifically in regards to the acceptance of American conversions in Israel. (This issue is really just focused on Orthodox conversions – I’ll get into other movements’ conversions another time). While I try to stay out of politics on this blog as much as possible, this issue is directly related to Jewish Adoptive parents, most of whom do convert or consider converting their children to Judaism.
I was waiting to post about this issue until there had been some kind of resolution to the matter to some degree. This has come today in the form of an agreement reached today between the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). Background on the issue can be found at Reb Barry’s blog, Rabbi Lazer Brody’s blog, and Ra’anana Ramblings.
The in-a-nutshell version on the background is that the Rabbinate of Israel came out and said that they would no longer accept Diaspora conversions – even Orthodox conversions – unless the Rabbis involved were approved by the Rabbinate. The issue really here is for people planning on making aliyah - people who are planning to move to Israel and need to make sure that their conversion conducted outside of Israel would be recognized if they moved.
As is the case when weird news breaks, the story was not entirely clear, the facts a bit fuzzy and many, many rumors circulating. I bring you now a link to the Jerusalem Post article discussing the agreement reached today as well as a link to the press release put out by the RCA.
The brief version of where things stand today is that any Orthodox conversion that has already been performed or that is scheduled to happen in the near future that would have in the past been accepted by the Rabbinate will continue to be accepted. Moving forward into the future, the RCA will be working with the Rabbinate to form a list of mutually agreed-upon rabbinic courts authorized to perform conversions.
All clear? Sigh.
