One of the sadder chapters to be written about the State of Israel will be what is happening with regard to conversions.

To review the situation that led to this, the mass influx of Jews from Russia into Israel over the last few decades contained many people who were not Halachicly Jewish, even though they had been completely raised to think so. The reason for that is that they were products of an intermarriage where the mother was not Jewish, or products of a mother who was not converted according to Halacha.

There were so many of them coming into Israel and integrating with the country in every way including army service, that it was threatening to create a huge imbalance between Jews and non Jews. Not only and but of questionable lineage was actually Jewish or not. Not to mention the demographic challenge this present to maintaining Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.

The solution by the government was to set up special conversion courts to expedite conversions of Jews with this kind of problem. Rabbi Chaim Druckman was put in charge of this court and used various leniencies in converting thousands of these people.

The problem arose when the Charedi dominated Chief Rabbinate headed by Rabbi Avraham Sherman determined that all of Rabbi Druckman’s conversions were invalid because of insufficient observance of Halacha. Read the rest on: