Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar overturned this week a decision by a regional rabbinical court to annul a conversion, and approved the man's conversion – and Jewishness - on the eve of his wedding.
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Amar recently announced that from now on he will oversee personally, as president of the Great Rabbinical Court of Appeals, every case related to the validity of a conversion.
The chief rabbi's decision came following yet another conversion annulment by
Rabbi Avrhama Sherman, and is meant to prevent stringent judges like him from dealing with the subject.
In the case in question, Rabbi Amar, along with Rabbis Ezra Bar Shalom and Zion Boaron, heard the case of a couple who have registered to marry with a northern religious council. However, the local rabbis doubted the validity of the conversion process the groom-to-be underwent as a child, and ordered him to secure a permit from the regional rabbinical court.
The court's judges ruled that since the man did not lead led a religious lifestyle upon turning 13, his Jewishness cannot be verified. The man then appealed to the High Court of Justice, which referred him to the Rabbinical Court of Appeals.
The court, led by Rabbi Amar, ruled that the man was a Jew for all intent and purposes, because he did not protest his conversion when turning 13. "The plaintiff is a Jew according to Halacha… and is allowed to marry in accordance with Jewish law," the judges wrote.
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