Getting pluralism back on track: conversion and the challenge of Jewish peoplehood

WHAT HAPPENED TO PLURALISM IN THE JEWISH community? Twenty years ago, when Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg wrote his influential essays, "Will there be one Jewish people by the year 2000?" (1) and "Towards a Principled Pluralism," (2) he wrote with a sense of fear that the Jewish community would not be able to overcome the impending split between its different ideological streams.

In many ways, his worst fears have been borne out. Rabbi Greenberg correctly perceived that "the balance of power within each movement has shifted toward those who would solve social and religious problems in a manner preferred by and most acceptable for the individual group while, in effect, writing off the concerns or the needs of the other denominations." (3)

Rabbi Greenberg also recognized that the central division in the Jewish community would revolve around the defining issue of status. Conversion, patrilineal descent and mamzerut (4) were identified as the three issues that, without some meaningful solution, would result in the reality that 15 percent-20 percent of American Jewry will be "socially and halachically separated from traditional Jews." (5)

Today, the four branches that categorize much of Jewish life in America have ultimately seen fit to make policy decisions independently of each other and without primary concern for the Jewish community as a whole. As Rabbi Greenberg predicted, the issue of status is at the center of what divides us.

For example, each of the three largest movements has recently made major policy decisions with regard to the issue of conversion. The Reform and Conservative movements have each put the issue of conversion at the center of their platforms during recent national conventions.

At the Union of Reform Judaism's 68th biennial convention, held at the end of 2005, that organization launched an initiative that, as its title states, focuses on "Inviting Conversion." In remarks he delivered to the convention, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the URJ, stated that "it is a mitzvah to help a potential Jew become a Jew-by-choice ...; we want families to function as Jewish families, and while intermarried families can surely do this, we recognize the advantages of an intermarried family becoming a fully Jewish family, with two adult Jewish partners." (6) (Emphasis added)

Less than a month later, at the biennial convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Jerome Epstein, its executive vice president, launched that movement's "Keruv/Edud Initiative." Said he, "Our Edud Initiative must carefully craft a language that will encourage conversion. Understanding that non-Jewish spouses are potential Jews, we must learn how to inspire them so they will choose to become Jews." (7)

In the year following these initiatives, the Orthodox community also was forced to address the issue of conversion, in light of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate's further curtailing its acceptance of conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis in North America. (8) Many Orthodox rabbis from the center to the left already had been referring all conversions to the Rabbinical Council of America's beit din because the Chief Rabbinate would not accept their conversions, at least not readily or easily. Now it appears that even the RCA's beit din is no longer automatically accepted.

Adding to the pressure, the Jewish Agency for Israel in mid-June 2007 joined the fray when its chairman, Ze'ev Bielski, called for the State of Israel to recognize Conservative and Reform conversions. That call came even as controversy raged among Orthodox groups over the appointment of judges to the state's conversion courts who were seen as being anti-conversion. Meanwhile, the Orthodox head of the state-sponsored Institute for Jewish Studies called for the conversion courts to be disbanded and new courts constituted. (9)

At a time when so much attention is being given to the issue of conversion, the Jewish community as a whole has seen its streams waste an opportunity to work together to try to address some of the divisions that have developed in the past decades over precisely this issue.

These divisions, however, have moved far beyond the large defining issues such as status. Over the past decades, even the seemingly simple issue of rabbis from different denominations joining to discuss local communal issues or to simply gather in a collegial fashion seems to be beyond the reach of some.

For example, in cities across the United States it is the policy of some local Orthodox rabbinic groups to bar their members from participating in the community's cross-denominational Board of Rabbis for fear that to do so will, in some way, give the non-Orthodox legitimacy. Some rely on responsa from noted halachic decisors that actually forbid such participation.

To be sure, there have been some positive developments. As individuals, a majority of rabbis in the field accept that interaction and cooperation across the streams is an absolute necessity. (10) Of course, this does not include the vast majority of Orthodox rabbis, but they constitute only a minority of the total American rabbinate.