Giyoress or Not?

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!!

Rav Eliashev paskened that if someone underwent the geirus process all the while believing that the world is over 6,000 years old, that the conversion was never valid and he remains a gentile.

If someone undergoes conversion intending to fully keep 612 mitzvos with all the chumros but there is one mitzvah he intends to not maintain, his so-called coversion was never valid and he remains a gentile.

That seems like it could be a common occurrence among giyoros.

There is a certain time period when the person needs to be makpid on all halacha for the conversion to be kosher. Just because she doesn’t cover her hair now doesn’t mean that she didn’t ‘fulfill the quota’. And maybe it was a really natural wig.

It truly is none of your business.

Oh MODS – when I said we should NOT do this thread, I didn’t just mean my post!! Please, this is going to get nastier!

I can’t tell just by looking at a person whether they cover their hair or not. Sheitels look so like real hair to me that I’d never know if a woman was wearing one or not, unless my wife were to tell me.

Are you serious?

Doesn’t lo tanu et ha ger mean anything to you?

If the S”A says that a ger who worships avodah zarah the next day is still Jewish, than certainly a woman who doesn’t cover her hair is still Jewish.

The wives of scores of Litvishe roshei yesiva didn’t cover their hair, including Rebbetzin Tonya Soloveitchik, a”h.

And, R’ Yosef Messas, Teshuvot Mayyim Hayyim, says that b’zman hazeh, a married woman’s hair is not considered ervah.

The Aruch HaShulchan paskens the same, regarding kriat shema.

And, Rav Elyashiv’s statement is attributed to him, but there’s no way of proving that eh really said such a thing. Don’t insult the man by claiming he’d say such a thing, which falls under the category of elu devarim she’ein lahem makor, a pun I came up with based on the Mishna in Peah.

Yytz, kol ha kavod for being a voice of reason, gadlus, and sanity.

Kabbalas hamitzvos, according to R’ Ovadia Yosef and many others, doesn’t mean that nonobservance invalidates the giyur.

What it means is that the ger understands that they’ll be punished if they don’t keep the mitzvot, not that nonobservance makes them non-Jewish.

Once they pass through the mikva, they’re Jews.

Health, you wrote “You should learn that there is a Chiyuv of Danning s/o L’caf Zecus.” I think that’s pretty ironic.

So would Not covering your hair be considered part of this?

I would think so. Since it is well accepted by everyone that it is an issur. Even that article by Rabbi Professor Broyde was written as a limud zchus, and in not intended to mean that he thinks that is the halacha (as is clear in the article; I read it).

A funnier question would be something which is a machlokes. If a ger says he will only wear Rashi teffilin, would Rabeinu Taam consider the geirus bad? That sounds weird. But I don’t really see why not.

Oh boy, so many assumptions and no facts.

Is it possible that she’s the daughter of a ger/giyores and therefore there should be no question about her Jewish identity?

Is it possible that, if she converted, she did so well before marriage and that she chose to simply not cover her hair afterwards (which, while wrong, would certainly not invalidate the conversion)?

Is it possible that it was, in fact, a sheitel, as others in this thread have pointed out?

Is it possible that the waiter was mistaken and that she was not, in fact, his wife, but a relative or business associate?

Is it possible that it was a date (and, again, the waiter was wrong) and therefore there is no obligation for her to cover her hair at all?

The Wolf

“The wives of scores of Litvishe roshei yesiva didn’t cover their hair, including Rebbetzin Tonya Soloveitchik, a”h.”

Rebdoniel, Rebbtzen Tonya Soloveitchik did cover her hair. This is one of those untruths that has been circulating for many, many years. What you are referring to is the fact that she did not cover her hair in the house, which was a common practice among the Yekkes, but absolutely did when she left the house.

ZK

Modern day Charedism is not the way judaism was practiced 300 years ago

Yeshivish Judaism as practiced today comes from the Vilna Gaon and the Chatam Sofer

Chassdic Judaism comes from the Baal Shem tov and his disciples

ZeesKite, that’s not exactly accurate. Only a small minority of German Jews were Orthodox in the 19th century, because Reform was so successful there. The Haskalah movement started convincing many Eastern European Jews to drop observance in the 19th century too.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, covering one’s hair was not widely observed in Eastern Europe even among the Orthodox (See R’ Broyde’s article). So were all the gerim during that time invalid, because they didn’t cover their hair afterward? I hope not, because many of today’s yidden are descended from them!

We don’t know how many people converted in Eastern Europe during those many generations in which women didn’t cover, but some did, and we can be sure some were female and had descendants who survived and had children. There are even some accounts of entire villages converting in the 19th century (in Lithuania and the Ukraine, for example).

Iced, I agree, but are there any examples before the late 20th century of people making the determination that a conversion had never been valid because someone noticed the ger not observing a particular mitzvah afterward? Even before the early 20th century? You’d be hard-pressed to find any examples. It’s a recent innovation. As is the concept of gerus l’chumra, as far as I can tell.

This is one of those areas where people pile chumras upon chumras and forget what the original halacha is. If I understand correctly, there are even people now who will claim that if one ger converted by a rabbi goes off the derech, then all the gerim ever converted by the rabbi are considered invalid converts! Madness.

I’ve wondered about this question too.

There is no tzaddik who has not committed an aveira. Likewise a ger who is sincere in the desire to be a frum Jew, may err, as do we all, but that does not take away from the geirus. BTW, one of the things that is said to a potential ger (my understanding, that is)is “Why do you want to be a Jew? You can be a wonderful non-Jew by following the 7 mitzvos of Bnei Noach and not be responsible if you don’t keep the mitzvos of the Torah. But the moment you are misgayeir, then you will be punished if you transgress.”

Logic dictates that if the above is said to a Ger-wannabe, that it means that once he or she is a Yid, it is for all time (again assuming the geirus was sincere l’chatchilah). FFB Jews commit aveiros and go OTD all the time, unfortunately. So might Geirim.

Popa, I’m glad you don’t run the Torah world! (I’m glad I don’t either). There’s no halachic basis for refusing to convert the vast majority of sincere gerim simply because some of them might go off the derech or not be 100% observant to start out. Sure, if the ger says I don’t intend to observe X or Y, or I accept the yoke of 612 of the mitzvos only, he can’t be converted. But there’s no halachic basis for rejecting converts who say they accept everything (and who have a sponsoring rabbi to vouch for their observance). Remember that the basic halacha does not actually require full observance before conversion.

It’s a mitzvah to accept sincere converts. No one but the ger really knows what his or her intentions are. When the ger says the right things to the beit din, they have to convert him. You can’t refuse to fulfill a mitzvah because things might not turn out well. That’s like saying Jews shouldn’t get married because then one day if he won’t give her a get she’ll remarry anyway, with no get or with a forced get, and produce mamzerim.

It appears that some people have the mistaken impression that it’s easy to convert, and that all kinds of inappropriate candidates are accepted. Not true — nowadays, most gerim spend at least a year, often several years, learning and becoming observant. Mistakes may be made, but that doesn’t mean we should make standards 100 times more stringent than the actual halacha requires.

Hello Health,

I read a reply of yours to WolfishMusings in which you opined that one of his proposed possibilities was unlikely. And, perhaps a demographic statistician by profession would hypothetically be able to provide studies and numbers that support your opinion.

Nonetheless, such “unlikely”s do exist in this diverse world. I myself am coming to Orthodox Judaism after discovering maternal family roots from two generations ago — unlikely, but…here I am. Some posters here in my threads on that subject have even suggested the possibility that, if my maternal family roots can be validated sufficiently to establish that I am Halachically Jewish, no conversion would be required.

Perhaps the wife of this man has a similar situation as my own — i.e., maternal Jewish roots, perhaps even enough so that no conversion is required. In fact, one could not tell solely by looking if this woman just happens to have one maternal grandparent of, say, Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry, while her other three grandparents are not of any known Jewish background. This situation is, again, my own, and I am very familiar with people (Gentile and Jewish) explicitly or implicitly telling me that I don’t “look Jewish.” Perhaps this woman in the restaurant is mistaken for a woman of full Chinese, non-Jewish ancestry, whereas I am taken for some kind of Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

Any given individual that any of us comes across may seem more or less “unlikely” based on statistics, or perhaps based sheerly on the internal, conditioned, unspoken categories of “types” of people that all of us carry around to a greater or lesser extent as a framework for the world — i.e., who we think or guess that people are, what various groups of people are like, etc.

However, when anyone observes the woman whom you described and then asks if the Geyrus was good, what we really end up with are a lot of assumptions, which can not be corroborated on such scant information, placed upon a complete and total stranger. In essence, we learn nothing definitive about the stranger — ironically, what we learn definitively concerns the individual making the assumptions. For no apparently redeeming value or purpose, and with no discernible provocation other than surface appearances and assumptions being out-of-sync in the eye of the viewer/writer, these assumptions became the fodder of negative speculation against a human being by way of the original post.

I and others here have suggested alternative possibilities to your assumptions. You reply that at least some of these possibilities are “unlikely.” As an “unlikely” myself, I am not overly fond of assumptions about who I am based on appearances, especially when those assumptions are then used to imply some negative characteristic on my part (in this woman’s case, the negative implication is that her conversion is/was not valid, because how likely is it that a Chinese woman would be born a Jewish woman, especially to a maternal line of born Jews). To be further dismissed as a unique person by being pegged “unlikely” when the assumptions are challenged adds insult to the initial injury done to this woman by the original post.

I have read enough here in the CR for upwards of a year to know that I am in the company of a couple other “unlikely”s, including one African American convert to Orthodox Judaism from a Christian background. The kinds of assumptions contained in the original post are unkind and unfair to the woman in question, and, from at least the perspective of this “unlikely,” these assumptions hurt others as well.