Head of conversion courts slams conversion annulment
Responding to recent decision of rabbinical judge to revoke conversion of woman during a divorce process, Rabbi Druckman says ruling was outrageous, states each convert remains Jewish regardless of mitzvot observance
Head of the rabbinical conversion courts in Israel, Rabbi Haim Druckman, slammed on Sunday a rabbinical judge from Ashdod for his decision to annul the conversion of a woman who converted 15 years ago.
Ruling
You're not Jewish anymore / Rivkah Lubitch
Rabbinical judge rules that woman who converted to Judaism 15 years ago is no longer Jewish because she failed to observe mitzvot; her children also declared non-Jews
Druckman criticized the judge, Rabbi Avraham Atiya, for his harsh statements regarding the conversion courts in Israel, and spoke against "the closed haredi clique."
The Ashdod rabbinical court recently announced that the convert and her children were no longer Jewish, after the woman admitted to Rabbi Atiya that she never observed the mitzvot. After declaring the woman's conversion invalid, Atiya also stated that the conversion courts were run by "heretics and criminals who annihilate the Jewish people and push it toward assimilation."
In response, Druckman said, "How can a judge speak like this about dozens of learned scholars? Can such a man even serve as a judge? This is outrageous!"
'Every convert remains a Jew'
Druckman also referred to Atiya's claim that the woman confessed she had never been observant, saying, "I don't trust this man who says she admitted it." Druckman explained that while every convert must accept the burden of mitzvot, according to the Halacha even a convert who failed to do so remains Jewish, and will be punished for his actions.
"Nowhere in the Halacha does it say that the converts should be followed in order to check if they practice the mitzvot. They study 10 months for the conversion, the teachers know them well, they are later assigned an adoptive religious family, and the rabbinical judges themselves examine them. Was this honorable judge with the converts in the mikvah?," Druckman rhetorically asked.
The haredi newspaper Yated Ne'eman published a scathing attack on Rabbi Druckman in its weekend edition, in which Rabbi Atiya's statements were widely quoted. According to the article, Druckman's conversions were "fictitious," and only five percent of conversion were "true conversions," but could only be made valid after being given the approval of a haredi rabbinical court.
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