“Going off the deep end” is one of the things we say when people act differently from what we want. We also say they’re “sick” or “evil” or that they have “betrayed” us.
In reality, different people have different interests. “Betrayal” is simply a hyperbolic way of noting that someone has acted differently what we expected.
If an Israeli religious court rejects my Orthodox conversion, it’s not because they’ve gone off the deep end. It’s because they are acting out their own values and their own understanding of Torah.
In Jewish and Muslim history, the rigorists usually win out.
I didn’t convert to Judaism expecting the easy way. If somebody wants an easy life, they should not convert to Judaism. Stiff requirements for conversion are warranted as it seems like half the people who convert to Orthodox Judaism end up leaving it and why should Jews accept people with a 50% batting average?
All religions different from your own will likely seem crazy at best and evil at worst. Haredi Judaism is very different from live and let live Sephardic Judaism. Modern Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism are like different religions. Chabad and mainline Orthodox Judaism are like different religions. The other guy will usually look like someone going off the deep end.
In the end, “crazy” is not a useful explanation. It’s better to delve into the other side’s values and learn why they act as they do.
Why would a rabbinic court in the world’s only Jewish state do something that would blatantly turn off most of the world’s Jews?
That’s what I asked myself today when I read that Israel’s top religious court rejected the validity of a woman’s conversion from one of the leading lights of American Orthodoxy, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City.
This is taking chutzpah and arrogance to another level.
It’s one thing when Charedi rabbinic courts routinely offend and reject non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, which is bad enough. But to go against a hard-core, bona fide and beloved Orthodox rabbinic leader?
How could they be so tone deaf?
But wait, it gets worse. This latest decision was on appeal, which means it’s the second time the court has rejected this woman’s conversion. Apparently, they weren’t too moved by the outrage that followed the initial decision.
After that first decision, the Jewish Federations of North America released a statement saying that the “denial of the legitimacy of this convert, who has embraced the Jewish People and undertaken to live a full Jewish life, undermines that fundamental principle (of accepting the convert). Moreover, the Bet Din’s rejection of one of America’s leading Orthodox rabbis is an affront to the country’s entire Jewish community.”
Meanwhile, the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest U.S. group of Orthodox rabbis, expressed “regret [at] the angst caused to this righteous convert, as well as the vulnerability felt by many righteous converts who feel that their legitimate status as Jews remains always subject to scrutiny.”
After the latest decision, Rabbi Seth Farber, who runs the activist group ITIM, released a statement saying that “the rabbinical court has humiliated Nicole, cast a shadow over tens of thousands of conversions around the world, and has created a crisis of confidence between diaspora Jewry and Israel’s government.”
