[LINK] "Jewish icon's son deemed not Jewish"
This article was in the Sunday Star.
Joseph (Yossi) Fackenheim just wants to be an actor. A Shakespearean actor. Instead, the Toronto native is at the centre of a controversy over what it means to be Jewish, and he's reluctantly taking up his famous father's fight.
That's because an Israeli rabbinic court has ruled that, despite being raised Orthodox and having had a bar mitzvah, Fackenheim is not actually Jewish.
[. . .]
Because Joseph's mother was Christian at the time of his birth, he was converted to Judaism as a toddler in Toronto so he could be raised Jewish.
After the elder Fackenheim retired in 1984, the family moved to Israel.
But when Joseph was getting a divorce in Israel last summer, Orthodox Rabbi Yissachar Dov Hagar ruled that he was not Jewish.
In Israel, Orthodox rabbis have control of matters of faith and can rule that if a person is not observant enough after his or her conversion, the conversion was never sincere and is therefore invalid.
Hagar had questioned Fackenheim at length about how often he goes to synagogue, how well he keeps kosher and how he observes Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, with restrictions on food and activity.
Unsatisfied with the young man's answers, Hagar issued a retroactive ruling that Fackenheim was not Jewish and never had been.
"My parents converted me into Orthodox Judaism specifically so that I would not have these problems later on," Fackenheim says.
His case has since gained international attention, vaulting one of Judaism's biggest names into a growing controversy in Israel over what it means to be Jewish and placing Joseph with some 40,000 other disputed conversions.
"I have friends, converts in Israel, who live in fear," Fackenheim says. "It's the end of them."
Hagar refused to grant the younger Fackenheim's divorce, reasoning that because his marriage to a Jewish woman was never valid, no divorce was needed. That left Fackenheim and his ex-wife, Iris, in legal limbo: divorced civilly, but not divorced in the eyes of the faith.
The rabbi eventually relented, somewhat, by adding an attachment to the civil divorce papers referring to Fackenheim as "Yossi the convert" and stating the marriage was void.
While that allowed Fackenheim's ex-wife to get on with her life, it left him as officially a non-Jew unable to remarry within the faith. He is appealing the decision to the Israeli Supreme Court, and filed a letter of complaint to the court ombudsman.
"I don't need them to tell me I'm Jewish," he says. "I am Jewish."
1. One of the things that became clear as a result of the debate on same-sex marriage, in Canada as in other countries, is that state recognition of relationships speaks volumes about the society's acceptance of such relationships.
2. It's worth noting that Israel, a state founded by people fleeing vicious ethnic discrimination, has gone on to create a marriage regime including what amounts to anti-miscegenation marriage laws, with tinges of blood-purity principles besides.
3. Therefore, this regime seems to be fairly popular, additionally evidenced by the fact that it has survived intact since independence. Israel's certainly not alone in supporting bigoted marriage laws--South Africa did until recently, and the rest of the Middle East shares in this prejudice--but still, one would hope for better from a country that positions itself as a Western marcher state.
Joseph (Yossi) Fackenheim just wants to be an actor. A Shakespearean actor. Instead, the Toronto native is at the centre of a controversy over what it means to be Jewish, and he's reluctantly taking up his famous father's fight.
That's because an Israeli rabbinic court has ruled that, despite being raised Orthodox and having had a bar mitzvah, Fackenheim is not actually Jewish.
[. . .]
Because Joseph's mother was Christian at the time of his birth, he was converted to Judaism as a toddler in Toronto so he could be raised Jewish.
After the elder Fackenheim retired in 1984, the family moved to Israel.
But when Joseph was getting a divorce in Israel last summer, Orthodox Rabbi Yissachar Dov Hagar ruled that he was not Jewish.
In Israel, Orthodox rabbis have control of matters of faith and can rule that if a person is not observant enough after his or her conversion, the conversion was never sincere and is therefore invalid.
Hagar had questioned Fackenheim at length about how often he goes to synagogue, how well he keeps kosher and how he observes Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, with restrictions on food and activity.
Unsatisfied with the young man's answers, Hagar issued a retroactive ruling that Fackenheim was not Jewish and never had been.
"My parents converted me into Orthodox Judaism specifically so that I would not have these problems later on," Fackenheim says.
His case has since gained international attention, vaulting one of Judaism's biggest names into a growing controversy in Israel over what it means to be Jewish and placing Joseph with some 40,000 other disputed conversions.
"I have friends, converts in Israel, who live in fear," Fackenheim says. "It's the end of them."
Hagar refused to grant the younger Fackenheim's divorce, reasoning that because his marriage to a Jewish woman was never valid, no divorce was needed. That left Fackenheim and his ex-wife, Iris, in legal limbo: divorced civilly, but not divorced in the eyes of the faith.
The rabbi eventually relented, somewhat, by adding an attachment to the civil divorce papers referring to Fackenheim as "Yossi the convert" and stating the marriage was void.
While that allowed Fackenheim's ex-wife to get on with her life, it left him as officially a non-Jew unable to remarry within the faith. He is appealing the decision to the Israeli Supreme Court, and filed a letter of complaint to the court ombudsman.
"I don't need them to tell me I'm Jewish," he says. "I am Jewish."
1. One of the things that became clear as a result of the debate on same-sex marriage, in Canada as in other countries, is that state recognition of relationships speaks volumes about the society's acceptance of such relationships.
2. It's worth noting that Israel, a state founded by people fleeing vicious ethnic discrimination, has gone on to create a marriage regime including what amounts to anti-miscegenation marriage laws, with tinges of blood-purity principles besides.
3. Therefore, this regime seems to be fairly popular, additionally evidenced by the fact that it has survived intact since independence. Israel's certainly not alone in supporting bigoted marriage laws--South Africa did until recently, and the rest of the Middle East shares in this prejudice--but still, one would hope for better from a country that positions itself as a Western marcher state.