JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A rabbi from the Israeli rabbinical court’s marriage department described a recent situation in which a thorough investigation of a family’s Jewish roots led to to the cancellation of a wedding two weeks before it was due to take place.
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Rabbi Chaim Kalmanowitz from the Ashdod marriage registrar’s office told of a distinguished family from the chareidi community whose daughter was engaged to marry Alexander (a pseudonym) who studies in one of the prominent yeshivos in Israel.
The family had been told by the Ramim and Rosh Yeshiva that the boy had many attributes, was assiduous in his studies and a yerei shamayim.
The Rosh Yeshiva emphasized that the boy’s parents had been born in Moscow but had emigrated many years before and are now Baalei Teshuva who conduct a chareidi home. the parents sent their children to Talmud Torah, yeshiva ketana and yeshiva gedolah.
Based on this information, the couple got engaged and came to open a marriage registration at the Ashdod office.
Rabbi Kalmanowitz did some investigation in the Interior Ministry’s documents and discovered that the father and mother were registered as Jews but the grandmother, mother of the chasan’s mother- was registered as a gentile and had been buried in the gentile section of the cemetery in Israel.
The chasan’s family claimed that the grandmother had been Jewish and the gentile status had been registered in the former Soviet Union for internal purposes. However Rabbi Kalmanowitz said that the matter needed to be thoroughly investigated and the documents needed to be ratified in a rabbinical court.
When the father of the Kallah heard of this development, he urged his daughter to break off the engagement.
Rabbi Kalmanowitz stressed that most of the registration in birth certificates from Soviet countries is not credible due to widespread forgery of documents and mistaken registrations during that period. He added that “there is huge chaos in establishing Jewishness in this community.
If the chossen was fully observant learning a a yeshiva why couldn’t a bais din immediately arrange a conversion making him 100%
Jewish beyond question?
what a distorted headline, should read brides father calls off engagement after beis din says unfortunately very questionable Jewish status? painful situation
While this might be a very difficult situation for those involved I commend the Rabanut for being careful. I was married in E.Y. and as a son of holocaust survivors the Rabanut was tough and demanding for data. Letters from my Rosh Yeshivah were appreciated but not to the point.
With all due respect, R Kalmanowiz should not be making blanket statements about such matters. My comment below discusses strictly Askenazy Soviet Jews, as opposed to much respected Bucharian, Georgian, Kavkazi and Crimean Jewish communities who at some point resided in the Soviet Union. As a Jew born in the Soviet Union and somewhat of a history enthusiast, let me educate you: In soviet documents your ethnic group, or “nationality” in the Soviet lingo, was always stated, and Jews were considered a separate ethnic group(“nationality”) regardless of religiosity or lack of. Jewish last names were different from the surrounding Russians and Ukrainians. Most Jews who had 100% Jewish ancestry had slightly different anthropological characteristics than the surrounding Russians and Ukrainians. Most(which obviously means majority but not all) Soviet Jews’ ancestors were frum or at least traditional Yidish speakers until about 1920’s or 1930’s, and for another generation or two thereafter most Jews, though irreligious, still continued to marry other Jews, for cultural reasons and such, with intermarriage rates steadily increasing through the decades, culminating in contemporary nonsustainable intermarriage rates comparable to those of the American nonreligious Jews at this particular time. Up until 1990’s there was a great stigma in being a Jew in the Soviet Union, which resulted in many at this point nonreligious Jews, embarrassed of their heritage, changing their names to the Russian types, and trying to falsify their documents’ “nationality” entry as Russian. Nobody in their right mind would want to falsify their documents to become a “despised” Jew — until 1990’s that is, until the treasonous Israeli elites opened the floodgates without doing the basic diligence in figuring out who is immigrating into the ostensibly Jewish state. To summarize, there are many ways to establish if someone’s Jewishness claim is not likely to be a lie, which by the way is the only standard even if you are taking about rebbeshe families: does this person fit a Jewish type of look, are there old prewar photos with this person’s ancestors looking like this person, can this person produce pre 1990 Soviet documents which can be verified as this old by using certain forensic techniques, where did this person’s ancestors come to Moscow from(Jews were not legally allowed to live in Moscow until begining of the 20th century) and how did they pronounce certain Yidish words, then see if the Yidish pronunciation fits the claimed origin region. Obviously, the best verification technique is to confirm that the person in question is truly yorei shamaim and as such wouldn’t lie about such matters. If anything, it is much harder to establish halachic status of the contemporary nonreligious Americans who claim to be Jewish and chas vesholom this will be followed by Israeli chilonim in about 2 generations given hundreds of thousands of goyim gemurim constantly imported by the Israeli judenrat. Soviet Jews, at this point at least, are actually some of the easiest to read.
The Rabbanut does not play around, and this issue needs to be looked into and resolved. The actions of the father of the Kallah, though, do not seem to be correct – he is harming a possibly innocent boy, as well as his daughter, by pushing for them to break up rather than waiting for the issue to be resolved by the Beis Din.
All of this because the chardei world refused to listen to the lubavitcher Rebbe years ago who screamed about mihu yehudi who is a Jew that the law should be fixed in Israel to say that only someone with a jewish mother or that converted according to halcha, the Rebbe at the time said they have goyim in there yeshivos!
He can convert.
This is very painful for all concerned.
Maybe there should be a central registry comparable to Dor Yoshorim, that thoroughly vets people from the former Soviet Union.
This way parents can decide if they want a shidduch were although the chosson or kallah are wonderful, there might be problems.
meh, a quick conversion l’chumrah should have been done.
Fortunately Russ and Tzipora were not subject to such Gezairos.
We all need to be more makpid on the laws of “bein adam lechaveiro”.
Ki geirim hoyisi beretz mitzraim.
AS for me I would need to go to Auschwitz to find out if my grandparents were Jewish.
First of all, the Shulchan Aruch says a child need not heed the parents when it comes to Shidduchim, so the father’s pressure should not be misconstrued as a standard for dealing with unwanted potential matches.
On that note the daughter, without parental interference, should decide whether to wait for Bes Din confirmation, or giyur.
Second of all, DNA ‘is’ Halachically acceptable, and can be used, if they have the right data to compare it to from other Yidden.
DNA matching, is not like testimony, but rather is the Halachic equivalent of signature verification methods on documents, such as Kesubos and Gittin, that is Halachically acceptable.
They would need a sample from his mother, and then they could determine if she comes from a line already established to be Jewish from others in the same family. It wouldn’t work for the maternal descendents of a moderately recent giyores ancestor (whose line is not established by others in the databases as Jewish..), but it can certainly work for a long-time Jewish maternal line.
Note: this method is just as Halachically valid for machmirim etc, as it is for anyone else. On the contrary, it can often be much more reliable than many methods otherwise used by Batei Dinim to verify Jewish heritage!!!
The Syrian Rabbanim over 100 years ago agre to place a cherem to protect the community from intermarriage, the cherem is posted in many synagogues all over the world, they not accept gerim, even children of gerim, I don’t know how many generations this applies, I’m not a Ben Torah but this cherem is not an insult to David Hamelech and all his descendentes including the Moshia tzidkenu? They’re all pasul to be included in Klal Israel? Well look at bright side.At least we have more Mamzerim that gerim in this day and age.
not accepting geirim is in fact the status quo in the Syrian/Sephardic Jewish community and will not even allow a grandson of geirim in their schools, this chareidi might be following their psak.