A certain woman once came to Rav Avraham Yaffe-Schlessinger, shlit”a, the Av Beis Din of Geneva. She had received a divorce and had heard from friends that sometimes people in Israel have trouble remarrying unless their divorce is one hundred percent in order. Since she was moving to Israel, she wanted to make sure that she would not be troubled.
When Rav Schlessinger looked over the divorce he noticed that one witness was a notorious Shabbos violator. He explained to the disappointed woman that the divorce was indeed invalid. She would have to contact her husband and procure a kosher writ of divorce if she wised to remarry.
As they were speaking, the Rav noticed that the husband in question was named “ben Avraham.”
“Is your husband then a convert?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
After the Rav asked a few questions it became readily apparent that the man’s conversion had been completely invalid at the outset. For one thing, the husband hadn’t really been Torah observant. In addition, the beis din had been questionable, to say the least.
Rav Schlessinger told the surprised woman, “Since this is the case, you need not get a divorce since there was never a halachic marriage to begin with!”
Rav Schlessinger wrote a document to this effect, and she moved to Israel. But the beis din in Tel Aviv refused to honor his testament unless it was affirmed by Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l.
When Rav Schlessinger went to see Rav Shlomo Zalman regarding this matter, the gadol was happy to issue his agreement in writing. He also expressed some surprise.
“You mean to say that the authorities refuse to annul her original marriage to such a convert? It is unfortunate that most converts under their own supervision do not accept Torah and mitzvos at all and are completely invalid!”
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Invalid Conversions
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5 comments:
I don't understand what R. Auerbach meant??
Sorry if it was not clear in the piece.
Rav Aurebach writes in Minchas Shlomo that most people converting under these authorities,had no intention whatsoever of keeping mitzvos. Sadly,the aware dayanim converted them despite this.
Such conversions are halachicaly invalid.
To use Rav Aurebach's strong language, "These people are absolutely qualified to act as Shabbos goyim..."
Okay thanks for the clarification.
I suppose the issue of using them as Shabbos goyim may be delicate in situations where it would cause resentment and strife??
Excellent point! I was thinking about addressing such issues in a second post.
Of course one must show sensitivity and should never use a convert--even if misguided--as a Shabbos goy.
Rav Shlomo Zalman was explaining forcefully that he had no question about the status of such converts.
Truth is that people who converted without kabalas mitzvos etc, often take such words as insulting since they feel that this invalidates all their often hard efforts to draw nearer to Judaism even though they have not converted halachically.
As should be apparent by now, (with all the chizuk we have discussed in the past,) this is completely false.
Quite the contrary. The holy Zohar states that no good desire is ever lost. Rabi Nachman clearly applies this to non Jews as well as to Jews (the sources for this are brought in the notes to the first tefilah of the Sason V'Simcha section of Kochvei Ohr.)
As we have already discussed, Hashem doesn't want us to do more than we comfortably can. This definitely includes conversion. Although we often have no way to determine whether another is truly unable to convert orthodox, the potential convert must search deep into his or her heart to determine what Hashem wants their next step to be. (But if they cannot bring themselves to even consider Orthodox etc this kind of clues us in...)
Yes we need to do our utmost to grow ever higher, but we also must be happy with who we are even as we strive for more. Sometimes a person honestly cannot convert Orthodox for whatever reason. Does this mean that doing what they can is valueless? Heaven forbid! Every effort and even desire to draw closer is very very precious. And sometimes that is the path they need to take to merit to eventually convert while truly accepting Torah and mitzvos. But even though every little bit is very precious, a convert without kabalas mitzvos--even if preformed by a misguided Orthodox Rabbi\dayan--is not yet Jewish.
I really appreciate your decisive comments. Please write if anything seems unclear and I will try and clarify.
(By the way, "misguided" is how Rav Aurebach describes these Rabbis\dayanim.)
Beautiful, thank you. Very helpful.
It's interesting, I imagine you are aware of the group of Heredim in Israel that stopped accepting conversions (retroactively as well) from many established American Orthodox rabbis, because of certainly laxities they discovered. This had the effect of causing much confusion for existing converts (including offspring!). But it would seem that for any serious converts who truly had Kabalas Mitvot, there wouldn't be any issues...
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