Is the Conversion Process Abusive? Part I

Is the Conversion Process Abusive? Part I

Rabbi Freundel, the RCA, and GPS

I am no therapist, nor do I serve on any court that performs conversions. Someone with both qualifications would be better suited to this task. But perhaps a few ‘inexpert’ observations, ‘circling the target’ as it were, will lead to expert ones that ‘hit the mark.'

I know a lot of converts. Also, being happily married to a convert, I am quite partial to the view that conversion is good for the Jews. However if there is one thing that I am also certain of, it is that Jews have not been good to converts. I know this because converts tell me so. Stories of lengthy and indefinite wait times, overbearing rabbis or excessively demanding rabbinic courts, unwelcoming communities, the challenge of finding a shidduch after conversion, and the constant anxiety that one’s conversion will be questioned or rejected…have caused a great many tears to flow.  Rarely do converts’ experiences of harassment, abuse, or discrimination come to public light. But there has been quite an exception recently.

Since late October 2014, allegations of ‘mikvah voyeurism’ by Rabbi Barry Freundel have garnered a great deal of media attention. If even half the stories are true of hidden video cameras and ‘practice mikvah dunks,’ the matter is truly shocking. However, in the aftermath of Freundel’s arrest by D.C. police, a host of additional accusations surfaced among Freundel’s female converts that they were conscripted into secretarial duties, as well as contentions that Freundel conducted less than appropriate financial dealings with his converts.

Most strange was the piece of news that in 2012 some women reported Rabbi Freundel to the Rabbinical Council of America. They brought forward their contentions about being compelled to perform clerical work and claimed that R. Freundel was soliciting them for suspiciously large donations to his conversion court. The RCA investigated Freundel, confronted him, and apparently settled the matter satisfactorily, at least in their own minds.

What is so remarkable about this event is the fact that R. Freundel served on the executive committee of the RCA at the time and continued to do so afterward. (He was only suspended recently.) And while I am aware of no evidence that the RCA acted dishonorably, if it is assumed that the investigation was conducted by close colleagues and friends, one does wonder at the impartiality of the process. Can one rabbinic court truly be trusted with overseeing the workings of another (friendly) rabbinic court? What if it is really just the same court or system of courts?

One must consider Rabbi Freundel’s central role on the RCA’s conversion committee. In 2007, the RCA set about to completely standardize and restructure on a national level its policies and procedures for conversion. The system, still in place, was titled “Gerus Policies and Standards,” or “GPS.” The Chairman of the GPS committee and its presumptive chief architect was none other than Rabbi Barry Freundel himself. In his role, Rabbi Freundel defended GPS against criticism from rabbis such as Marc Angel and Avraham Weiss. It behooves us to ask how diligently the RCA’s executive committee or conversion committee investigated its own chairman of GPS?

One of GPS’s stated aims is “avoiding unnecessary confusion and anguish” but what is there to say or do when one of its key draftsman is found, then and now, to be a central cause for “confusion and anguish” among converts?

And here I would like to suggest a much bigger question. Perhaps there is something awry about the entire conversion process. Perhaps the ordeal of the conversion lends itself to exploitation and abuse. Most rabbis are decent and honest, and many, may they be blessed, are a lot better than decent and honest, so it is easy therefore to dismiss the small minority who twist the upright path. But the pursuit of sin can only occur when there is ample opportunity.

I wonder if the creation of GPS implemented a system conducive to exploitation by the devious or deviant? And here is the thrust of my contention, perhaps Rabbi Freundel should be held responsible, along with those who assisted him, for crafting a system that puts converts in just the sort of nebulous position where they can easily be manipulated, preyed upon, and abused.

To be continued in a day or two….

Parashat Vayera: Living with Pardon

Sodom and Gomorroh - John Martin (1852)

A genocide here, a massacre there. Somewhere a theocrat falls, elsewhere a despot rises. Tent cities spring up like grass. Shantytowns and refugee camps sprout forth like fields of wheat.  

Who by poison gas, who by machete, who by bullets and who by bombs? Who shall expire quickly, whose soul will languish in a dark cell of hell? How terrifying was this week’s news of men cut down like weeds, women and children butchered like sheep? But was last week’s news less cruel? In Africa, or Asia, or the Middle East, the bloodshed is endless.

“And the Lord said, the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, their sin grave indeed” (Genesis 18:20). 

Great evil is nothing new under the sun. Before the flood we read, “The Lord saw how great was man’s evil upon earth” (Genesis 6:5).  And there is nothing novel about a victim’s cry either, as God said to Cain, ‘Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground’ ” (Genesis 4:10). 

When murder and massacre are as commonplace as sunshine and rain, the essential question is: How are we allowed to remain? Why are more cities not overturned like Sodom? Why is the earth not drowned as it was in Noah’s day?

The prophet Ezekiel’s writings about evil complicate matters even further: “This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had power, an abundance of food and untroubled tranquility, yet she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).  

A remarkable description, as it casts a wide net of blame. God judges those who perpetrate death and destruction, as well as those who have the power to stop the violence and cruelty yet fail to lift a hand. We are told that it was only in Abraham’s merit that Lot and his daughters were saved by angels from Sodom’s fate (Genesis 19:29). Perhaps the fact that we still stand here indicates that we, too, have been gifted with divine grace. 

Two stories in Parashat Vayera that speak to this idea are remarkably similar in substance and plot. The first is the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, and the second is the binding of Isaac. 

To review briefly, on the day Hagar and her son were driven away, we read that “Abraham awoke early in the morning” (Genesis 21:14). He placed food, a skin of water and the boy on her back and sent them off. Hagar wanders in the wilderness till the water runs out. Out of despair, she throws the boy beneath one of the bushes. 

Throughout, Ishmael is repeatedly referred to as “the boy” or “the lad.”  Eventually, mother and child are saved by an angelic messenger of the Lord, who hears “the cry of the lad where he lies” (Genesis 21:17). As Hagar lifts Ishmael up, she sees beside him a watering hole. (Fascinatingly, medieval Rabbi David Kimchi points out that these green bushes where Ishmael had been lying all along were themselves an indication of water.) Afterward, “The boy grew and became a bowman” (Genesis 21:20). He settles in Paran, and his mother finds him a wife. 

The binding of Isaac follows a similar pattern. “Abraham awoke early in the morning” (Genesis 22:3). He saddles his donkey with provisions as he had earlier “saddled” Hagar. A few verses later, he saddles Isaac with wood for sacrifice. Like Ishmael, Isaac is repeatedly referred to as “the lad.” Here, too, an angel cries out from heaven, saving Isaac and promising Abraham that his seed shall number as the stars, a promise similar to that made to Hagar and her son. Shrubbery also has a role in Isaac’s rescue: “And Abraham lifted his eyes and afterward saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket” (Genesis 22:13). The ram’s neck was substituted for Isaac. A short time later, Abraham tasks his steward to find a wife for his son.

As both lads were saved from near death by divine intervention in a strikingly similar fashion, one must look to places of divergence for a parting lesson. The most salient difference between the sparing of Ishmael and the sparing of Isaac is in what they do afterward, who these children become. Ishmael becomes an archer, he settles in the area of Paran, which is a pun on perah adam — “a wild-ass of a man” — an earlier prophetic description of Ishmael (Rashbam citing Genesis 16:12). In contrast, the next time we observe Isaac, he is “meditating in the field,” having returned from a godly place named “The Well-of-the-Living-One-Who-Sees-Me” (Genesis 24:62). Ishmael turns to the sword, Isaac to a contemplative life of the spirit. 

I have always found it fitting that the story of Ishmael and Hagar is read on Day 1 of Rosh Hashanah, while the story of Isaac and Abraham is read on Day 2. Undoubtedly, the two lads were hardly deserving of death. But on the Day of Judgment, a day in which the entire world is judged, we wonder aloud if this has been another year in which humanity has been spared its due judgment. 

There is so much hate and so much violence, and far too much averting of our eyes. These readings suggest that it is only by the mercy of God that we are spared the flood of Noah or the fire of Sodom. Perhaps the real lesson is that we are always being pardoned, and the true test of character is in what we do with this knowledge. 

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman is the spiritual leader of the The Shul on Duxbury, an independent Orthodox minyan. He is a teacher at the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA, and a lecturer at American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies. He writes about the weekly parasha on his blog, rabbihausman.com.