Conversions again

[amawahibiki]

An e-mail I got today:

Dear Daniel
... One last question: if I have a Japanese friend who is interested in seeing what Rosh Hashanah is like, do you think he'll [the Chabad Rabbi] be OK with having her come to services? ... she's actually Christian,　and would like to learn more about Judaism. What do you think?...

My response:

Oh dear... I've

Comments

[hannahsarah]

I have to agree with you on this one. The High Holidays are not exactly Judiasm 101. Start her out with books and see if she has any interest on her own. The big question, is if she was NOT dating a Jew, would she still want to convert for the sake of shamyim?

[amawahibiki]

I'd say the possibility of that is sufficiently low as to be negligible. I don't know the exact reason (although I have theories), but the percentage of Japanese people who say they want to convert who actually convert and become gerei tzeddek is minute... the Rabbanut has one Japanese convert each year on average. On the other hand, the "JCC" which is the Reform club in Tokyo sells conversion documents for 200,000 yen (around 2000 dollars), which are good enough for a lot of the boyfriends

[_josh]

> the Reform club in Tokyo sells conversion documents

Seriously? There's not even an interview process?

[amawahibiki]

There may be an interview. I'm not "up to speed" on how the process goes. But the bottom line is that corrupt "Rabbis" are selling fake conversion documents to idiots and getting rich.

[_josh]

Just when I thought the reform movement couldn't possibly be any worse... And you say it's mostly women, too. At least if it were men buying them for the sake of their Jewish girlfriends the children would still be Jewish. Nebach. At this rate we'll all need conversions some day, just to be absolutely sure.

[amawahibiki]

I don't think that will happen because of chazakah, but certainly somebody who converted has a more certain yichus than the rest of us... and this may get worse. What will be inevitable, and arguably is necessary already, is to compile geneologies of all Jews so that people can get married.
Certainly I feel safer having married a giyoret, because I know she's Jewish and there won't suddenly be some document which turns up about her great great grandmother having undergone a fake conversion...
Also, we have to do more to shut down the Reform as an organized movement, at least their "conversions". I can think of few things more important than that. Never accept them as an organization under any circumstances, for example never accept their donations.

[_josh]

I'm only familiar with chazakah as it relates to property... is it another halachic concept I'm unaware of?

[amawahibiki]

It's applied a few times recently!
A chazakah is when one is allowed to assume something is the case, usually because one has seen it happen 3 times in succession. Thus for example if one sifts flour known to be clean 3 separate times and finds no bugs, one is allowed to use that brand of flour in the future without sifting. Also, if one has 2 (in this case 2 not 3) children who died as a result of a brit millah, one does not have to give a brit millah to the third.
For conversions, it's a leniency I'm not completely comfortable with, but we say that if for 3 generations there are no known questions about false conversions in the family, at generation 4 one is no longer obligated to check.
I'm going to use the concept of chazakah another way in one second on WJ2, explaining to somebody why no conservative "conversion" can ever be valid.

[newsbean]

If it were her great great grandmother, wouldn't that fall under three generations have believed they were Jewish? (Her grandmother, mother and her.) As I understand it, that *is* a valid way of determining if someone is Jewish. Or does it only apply if there is no documentation one way or the other?

[newsbean]

Ah, I see that you already answered this in the comment above. Are you only uncomfortable accepting it in the case that documents surface, or are you uncomfotable with it period?

[amawahibiki]

It only applies if there's no documentation one way or the other, and there's no obligation to search for such documentation.