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17 Adar I 5760 - February 23 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
Dividing the Jewish People -- the Reform Way

To The Editor:

The Reform movement [in Great Britain] must be very pleased that the number of its converts has risen so steeply from 67 in 1998 to 112 in 1999. However this increase is not as significant as it may appear since, as one of their leading ministers, Dr. Jonathan Romain, noted, between 1965 and 1993 the figure was about 109 per year. Perhaps there had been a drop in applications in the intervening years which they quite understandably did not wish to publicize.

What is more heartening is that 27 of the applicants (24%) were neither engaged nor married to a Jewish partner. This is a considerable rise from the figure given by Dr. Romain for the years 1948-1965 of 9% where there was no involvement with a Jewish partner, though it is possible that some of the current converts were at an earlier stage in such a relationship.

What would be most interesting is the total number of marriages solemnized by the Reform movement in 1999 and how many of these did not involve one of their converts. Perhaps they could provide the figures and also indicate how many of the latter did not involve the child of one of their female converts. These figures would give some idea as to what extent the Jewish community is being split into two groups which cannot freely intermarry.

Yours faithfully,

Martin D. Stern

Manchester

The Editor Replies:

One is unsure whether to call the cases of the reform converts tragic, since it is not a tragedy when a non-Jew remains a non-Jew and it is hard to envision many people being fooled by the minimal requirements that the Reform clergy generally impose on the prospective convert.

The real tragedy, of course, is the number of invalid conversions that are represented as Orthodox. In those cases the convert may believe that he is getting the real thing, or he may later become more religious and believe that his previous conversion was valid since the officiating rabbi was Orthodox, when it was not valid since there was no sincere and complete acceptance of mitzvos at the time of the conversion. This is a disorder within our own community and we should do our best to end it.


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