Where do we set the bar of observance for would-be converts? The row over standards waxes and wanes, but never quite disappears. A recent article in Tradition did not make the waves it should have. In an understated manner, it placed – not threw down – a gauntlet in a simmering conflict between two approaches to halacha that just do not talk to each other. I wish the author (my friend, frequent disputant, and oftentimes writing collaborator, Rabbi Michael Broyde) had finished the job he ably began. Without consulting him, I will herewith attempt to do just that.
Rabbi Broyde (together with Shmuel Kadosh) took sharp aim at a work that has proved nettlesome to many who engage in serious halacha, although most of them have never heard of it. When Rabbi Avraham Sherman, a member of Israel’s Supreme Rabbinic Court, invalidated some of Rabbi Chaim Druckman’s converts, he touched off a firestorm of criticism that has not abated to this day. At the eye of the storm was an assumption that if it could be determined by the later behavior of a convert that he or she had never fully accepted the yoke of mitzvos, then the conversion was of no legal validity ab initio. Many not particularly learned articles appeared, decrying this “innovation” in halachah behind Rabbi Sherman’s psak – part of a plot by the mullahs of Bnei Brak to beat the long-suffering masses of the general Orthodox community with cudgels of chumros. [Note: this is not an endorsement of Rabbi Sherman’s psak. He doesn’t need my approval – I do not approach his level of competence – but if asked, I would have a hard time giving it.] Without passing judgment on the specific application of halachic principle in Rabbi Sherman’s cases, it remains arguably true that a conversion, like other important changes in legal status including marriage and divorce, can be challenged and retroactively invalidated. There is nothing novel in this at all.
Many of the articles, written by people who identify with Orthodoxy and those who do not, make liberal use of Transforming Identity: The Ritual Transition From Gentile to Jew, by Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar, two professors at Bar-Ilan. It is not a short work, and people – particularly those who are not at home with primary halachic texts – cite it as the last word, the exhaustive and definitive study of legitimate and exaggerated requirements for conversion.
Rabbi Broyde pulls no punches in his review in laying bare the serious methodological errors and simple misreadings that invalidate the work. The Conclusion section puts it simply and directly. “Its basic argument…is without precedent and includes glaring misunderstandings of the Jewish legal system.” Having read a few chapters of their work (I went straight for the halachic material), I would have been even less generous.