13 senior Lithuanian haredi rabbis sign letter protesting against conversions that are not done “according to Halacha, without accepting the yoke of mitzvot.”
By JONAH MANDEL
The Lituanian haredi mouthpiece Yated Ne’eman published yesterday a rabbinical opinion and protest against conversions that are not done “according to Halacha, without accepting the yoke of mitzvot.”The brief front page letter, signed by 13 senior haredi rabbis and headed by prominent leaders Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyahiv and Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, most likely comes in the wake of a statement from Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s statement last month. Amar had written that the IDF conversion process is supervised by the rabbinate, after a state representative had told a court there were procedural problems with the army conversions.Yated’s Tuesday editorial was more specific, and spoke out against the “massive industry of fake conversions conducted by the army.”The Chief Rabbinate’s Council will be deliberating the halachic aspects of the military conversions in its upcoming meeting next Thursday.Tuesday’s letter also calls on marriage registrars to “scrutinize and examine” every conversion certificate produced, to determine whether the convert indeed underwent the process according to Halacha.