Presence

This past Shabbos, R. Gottlieb addressed the RCA Conversion issue. I'm going to do my best to summarize his message.

R. Gottlieb began by discussing the blasphemer (Lev 24:13-23). The blasphemer is incarcerated while Moshe asks God what his punishment should be. The Divrei Shaul explains that the people were unsure if they should even recognize his crime, as the idea that one could in some way harm God with words is absurd; perhaps by punishing him, they would lend validity to his actions. Their hesitation and clarification with God was to ascertain if his crime was worthy of a response. God answers that in this case, a response is needed.

R. Gottlieb continued, stating that in cases of communal "scandals," it's often a very fine line, and rabbis need to decide whether or not to countenance a story by officially recognizing it and addressing it. In some cases, however, the amount of harm done, and the amount of false information, demands a response. In the case of The Jewish Week's original article, R. Gottlieb said, a response was warranted. Without going into too much detail, he told us that The Jewish Week's article contained very little in the way of actual fact, and, in particular, attributing to them motivations such as a Modern Orthodox vs. Haredi or Tendler backlash were patently false (he gave several examples, such as a conversion done by haredi batei din outside Israel that were also rejected). R. Gottlieb also related the anguish caused to many members of the community as a result of the poor research presented as fact in The Jewish Week's article. R. Gottlieb did not go into further specifics as to the details of the situation, only saying that the Rabbanut was looking to implement a universal standard for conversion.

Further information from R. Basil Herring (via Canonist) corroborates this. ADDeRabbi has done some good digging into the inner-workings of the Rabbanut, but I am hesitant to state that his findings unequivocally prove that there is a specific Modern Orthodox bias at work here. Then again, articles like this one leave one wondering.

The Jewish Week published a follow-up article in last week's edition, again by Michele Chabin, which basically contradicts statements from the original article. If it was meant as a retraction, it should have been stated more explicitly.