Heather M. Higgins http://bit.ly/ieXmuu

A LONG ROAD HOME: ONE WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH ISRAEL'S CONVERSION LAWS The Midwood section of Brooklyn, N.Y. is reminiscent of some of the ultra-religious Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem – local businesses advertise in Hebrew, the savory smell of freshly baked challah fills the air, and young women dressed in long black skirts with their hair tucked perfectly under printed scarves walk the tree-lined streets to pick their children up from yeshiva.

However, this isn't Israel. And many Orthodox families have an overwhelming desire to live in Israel and raise their children in the Jewish state. For one Midwood family that desire unexpectedly collided with a controversial Israeli policy on conversion.

“We know we are a Jewish family here in New York. It defines us. It's our identity,” said Bruce Smith, 47, sitting in the living room of his modest second-floor apartment. “No Israeli bureaucrat was going to take that away from us – it was between us and God.”

Smith, who was born a Conservative Jew and is a self-described Zionist, became more observant through his best friend who taught at an Orthodox yeshiva. He said he never made enough money or fit in here in New York, so he made aliyah – that is, immigrated to Israel – in 1997. That's where he met his olive-skinned Ecuadorian-born wife, Fanny Palacios, who is now 48. Fanny was not born Jewish – she was an Evangelical Protestant who had originally come to Israel as a tourist and stayed to work illegally as a domestic.

“I always had a feeling I was going to marry someone who spoke Spanish,” Bruce Smith said, “I just never thought I'd find her in Israel.” Smith, who earned a master's in Latin American studies from the University of Texas in 1987, met Fanny on his second day at a temp job in Tel Aviv where she was also doing temp work as a legal secretary. He was immediately drawn to her. “I was wary of the kippah, but he was persistent,” she said, in a thick Spanish accent, as their 4-year-old daughter, Sarah, sat quietly at her feet.

As their relationship progressed, Fanny Smith learned to speak Hebrew, how to keep a kosher home and how to keep the Sabbath. She was so eager to learn the Jewish faith that Bruce Smith brought her to Jerusalem to buy prayer books from a warehouse of Spanish translations owned by the uncle of a Mexican Jew he knew.

Fanny already had some experience of Jewish observance from working as a domestic in kosher homes. “I'd been living it for other people, but now I was living it for myself – even though I wasn't Jewish yet,” she said.

After consulting Israeli who told them that Fanny couldn't study in a conversion course in Israel without a visa, the couple decided to marry in a civil ceremony in Ecuador and move to New York, where she could convert to Judaism under Orthodox auspices. After the wedding, Bruce Smith returned to New York to work in the garment industry while Fanny waited in Ecuador for her visa to the United States. During the 10 months they spent apart Fanny wasn't idle. “Instead of learning English, she learned Judaism,” said her husband.

Fanny Smith underwent an Orthodox in January 2001 under the supervision of Herschel Solnica, with the assistance of the Vaad Harabonim of Queens. The Vaad is a non-profit rabbinic organization whose members volunteer their time to serve various Orthodox communities in New York and maintain a , a rabbinical court.

The Smiths married in a religious ceremony a short time after Fanny converted and have been living an observant Orthodox life in the Flatbush community, where two of their three young children attend Jewish day school. Last year, when they began preparing to return to Israel, they expected no problem: Israel's Law of Return gives Jews the right to immigrate.

So Fanny and Bruce were in shock when a letter arrived from the Interior Ministry last August denying her application for aliyah. Fanny's conversion had been ruled invalid, and the ministry did not regard her as Jewish.

“We were dumbstruck – what the hell happened?” Bruce Smith said. “I had to know why.” **********

Conversion is a hot-button issue in Israel – a constant on the national agenda. The state-run rabbinate's increasingly strict standards for recognizing conversions have upsetting consequences for thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, for some soldiers serving in the Israel Defense Forces and most recently, for Orthodox converts in North America who wish to move to Israel.

The Law of Return, enacted in 1950, gives every Jew the right to return to Israel. The law was amended in 1970 by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, which for the first time defined the term “Jew.” For the purposes of the law, the amendment stated, a Jew was someone who was born to a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism. However, the law also granted anyone with a Jewish grandparent the right to immigrate. It also left open the question of what constituted conversion.

The gap between the Law of Return and halachah – Jewish religious law – set the stage for the repeated controversies over conversion. The amended Law of Return would eventually allow hundreds of thousands of people, most of them from the former Soviet Union, who are not Jewish under halachah to immigrate and settle in Israel. In addition, some young people from that group have joined the Israeli Defense Forces where they were converted to Judaism under the auspices of the military rabbinate. Yet another group that came into question were those who were converted to Judaism in non- Orthodox ceremonies. As a result of Supreme Court rulings, these converts were also allowed to receive Israeli citizenship.

At the same time, the Chief Rabbinate has always had sole authority in Israel over religious procedures concerning personal status such as marriage and divorce. Someone who is not Jewish under the rabbinate's interpretation of halachah cannot marry a Jew in Israel. About six years ago, the state rabbinate started to scrutinize Orthodox converts who wanted to marry, but the rabbinate never had the power to make decisions about the eligibility of converts for immigration – until recently. The Interior Ministry, run by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, has authority over accepting immigrants. About a year ago it began referring cases to Shlomo Amar, the Sephardi chief rabbi of the country. Amar, whose office did not respond to numerous inquiries seeking comment, has been vocal in the media about his suspicions concerning Orthodox conversions carried out abroad.

The implication of this change was that some of the American modern Orthodox rabbis who were doing conversions in the United States were not rigorous enough in the demands that they made of new converts. In effect, Rabbi Amar became the judge of the authenticity of Orthodox conversions performed abroad. In the Diaspora, the Interior Ministry's policy has infuriated many rabbis belonging to the modern Orthodox community. They are offended that the Israeli rabbinate is acting as a policeman and casting doubts on whether they have been sufficiently strict in following religious law on conversion. They also believe the policy is discriminatory against would-be-converts, who may be discouraged from pursuing conversion.

Rabbi Avi Heller, the director of education at Manhattan Jewish Experience and a member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an association of Orthodox clergy, stressed that Judaism is not a religion that pursues converts. “There is no need to make the whole world Jewish,” he said in a phone interview, “But the political nature of this debate is very galling.”

Public opposition to the new standard has been spearheaded by Rabbi Seth Farber, 44, an American- born Israeli Orthodox rabbi. Farber, who has been outspoken about the need to take conversion out of the hands of any institution which can’t rise above politics, is the founder of ITIM: The Jewish-Life Information Center. ITIM helps people dealing with marriage, divorce and conversion in Israel navigate the hurdles of the state rabbinate bureaucracy. He believes that the Interior Ministry's conversion policy is dividing, rather than uniting, the Jewish people. In February, Farber sent a letter signed by 100 American Orthodox rabbis to Interior Minister Eli Yishai urging him to recognize their conversions for immigration purposes. Yishai did not respond to requests to comment for this article.

The letter, which called the Interior Ministry's policy unjust, has also highlighted the divide between modern Orthodox and haredi, or ultra-Orthodox rabbis, in the United States. Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel, a major haredi communal organization, refrained from explicitly endorsing the rabbinate, but he maintains that lowering conversion standards is a recipe for societal disaster in a country that wants to maintain a Jewish identity. He believes that leniency in conversion has already effectively split the American Jewish population into two; with halachah-respecting Jews unable to assume that non-halachah-respecting members of the community are in fact Jews. He warns that the same thing could happen in Israel.

“The injustice is a phantasm,” Shafran said. “Not everything that discomforts one is a violation of one's human rights. It might be a violation of one's desires or feelings, and that should be avoided when it can be.” He added that modern Orthodox rabbis in America should “make your case and move on.” ********** David Rotem, a member of Knesset from a right-wing party called Israel is Our Home, has been pushing a solution that would address the conversion crisis in Israel. Advocates expect the bill to ease the problem of converting more than 300,000 Russian immigrants who are not halachically Jewish. Critics say provisions in the law would strengthen the hand of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate, so the legislation has gone nowhere. In an interview in his office in Jerusalem, Rotem blamed the impasse on the influence of the Reform and Conservative movements in the U.S. Both movements oppose the Rotem Bill because they say that it will lead rabbis in Israel to automatically reject all non-Orthodox conversions.

“This brought about a situation where conversions being done by Orthodox rabbis in the U.S. are now null and void in this country,” he said.

While the political battle continues, one woman’s conversion has finally been accepted. Farber didn’t explain exactly how he got the rabbinate to approve Fanny Smith but his organization successfully overturned her second rejection for aliyah. “I don’t know what he did, but he pulled a rabbit out of his hat and it all led to this visa – I picked it up this morning fresh from the Israeli Consulate,” said Smith on April 13. “It is Fanny’s legal visa to go to Israel and live as a Jew in the Jewish State and raise our family there.”

“There is an inner feeling – almost like salmon swimming upstream – drawing us to Israel as our homeland,” said Bruce Smith. As he explained the attraction to the Holy Land, his wife sat on an old wooden chair given to them by a congregant from their synagogue, almost unaware of the conversation around her. In her pale yellow sweater, one hand covering her mouth, she stared down in silence at the aliyah visa stuck inside her Ecuadorian passport.

I asked Fanny what she was feeling.

“This is good news. I'm just so happy. This means we are going home,” she said. Heather M. Higgins http://newyorktorch.jrn.columbia.edu/?p=1123

A TEMPORARY CHURCH THAT FEELS LIKE HOME When St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in New Jersey had to move to a temporary location, just any hall would not do. Ukrainians like their churches ornate and bold so they lavishly outfitted a conference room with a gold altar, a marble mosaic of the Virgin Mary and fabrics draped in ocean blue and lemon yellow to mimic the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

The church has long-range plans to build but while they wait, the chapel is at the Ukrainian American Cultural Center of New Jersey in Whippany, N.J.

Until a few years ago, St. John the Baptist was located at the corner of Route 10 and North Jefferson Road in an old wooden building that seated around 80 parishioners. Built in the 1950s, “the church simply could not accommodate the population and allow everyone to participate in the Divine Liturgy,” said Father Roman Mirchuk, 58, who has been the pastor since 2002.

When ground broke for the new cultural center project in 2004, it included a plan for a three-part structure – the church and bell tower, the rectory, and the cultural center. The rectory and the cultural center were completed first with the condition that an area would be set aside for a temporary chapel until enough funds were available to build the church.

“An ordinary room wasn’t going to do,” said Mirchuk.

Saturday’s 5 p.m. liturgy was given in English and celebrated the Feast of the Dormition. Giant sunflowers, yellow Gerber daisies and purple and pink carnations stood tall in vases and lined the base of the altar.

The 20 parish members in attendance consisted of parents with young children, a few elder women, and a recently married couple. According to the cantor, the two Sunday morning services which are given in the Ukrainian language are more popular than the Saturday English service. Mirchuk said attendance is down during summer vacation, but up to 180 people attend the Sunday services during the school year. Mirchuk, dressed in silver and sky-blue silk clerical clothing delivered a powerful sermon.

“We are responsible for our successes and failures and must respect all living beings in the process,” he said, drawing on historical examples such as the massacres in Rwanda in the 1990s and the suppression of his native Ukraine under Soviet rule when individuals exploited their fellow man.

At the conclusion of Saturday's service, Mirchuk looked up and said, “Slava Isusu Khrystu” or translated from Ukrainian, “Praise to Jesus Christ.”

The parish has almost 450 registered members and continues to grow as the surrounding Ukrainian community expands. The high price of Manhattan real estate and the changing landscape of the East Village, once a Ukrainian stronghold, have led many Ukrainians out of the city and to the surrounding suburbs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 73,809 Ukrainians are currently living in N.J.

“People have moved but the church continues to be a focal point of our community,” said Nina Baran, of Clifton, N.J., the daughter of Polish and Ukrainian immigrants. Baran credits St. John the Baptist Church for keeping her family together during the difficult time when her husband died two years ago from leukemia.

Baran said that her 8-year-old daughter Sophia is at the center four times a week for Ukrainian language school, a dance group, and church services. Children from all around the region come to Whippany to learn about their culture and keep it alive.

For many years between World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian immigration to the United States slowed to a trickle. However, a new wave of immigration began after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ukrainians have immigrated to the United States in four waves – the first in the 1890s, two waves following the major World Wars, and most recently in the 1990s. This newest wave, or fourth wave, causes great concern to community member Mykola Darmochwal, 67, of Bridgewater, N.J., who emigrated from Ukraine with his family in 1949. “Will new immigrants feel as strong of an allegiance to Ukraine as we did, now that the country exists independently?” He added, “The fourth-wavers may assimilate quicker since they are leaving on their own accord for economic opportunity rather than fleeing political persecution.”

In recent trips to Ukraine, Mirchuk witnessed a deepening of national identity there, and he believes this will solidify the identity of new immigrants here. He hopes the church will anchor a strong sense of Ukrainian identity abroad.

“This center is the pride of the Ukrainian people, and their commitment to the church during this period of limbo between buildings is proof of that,” said Mirchuk. Heather M. Higgins Written for Covering Religion seminar at Columbia University Feb. 9, 2011

A RITUAL MOMENT The sun had barely begun to rise on the last day of January. The sapphire blue awning in front of Congregation Ramath Orah at 550 W. 110th St. was covered in snow from the previous week’s blizzard - a reminder of just how bitter cold the air was on Monday morning. However, the sub-freezing temperatures did not keep nearly two dozen congregants from attending their weekday shacharis services, the first of three daily prayers according to halakhah, or Jewish law.

The first man to enter Ramath Orah, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, walked through the left door designated for men and sat down quietly on the tenth birch-colored wooden bench, the last in the row. After taking off his red, puffy, ski jacket and wool winter cap, he meticulously organized his things and began the first of two rituals performed by men during morning services.

Stan Fischler, a silver-haired man in his 70s, pulled two small cubed boxes that had been painted black from a tan cloth bag. The boxes, which are known as tefillin and contain scrolls of parchment inside with verses from the Torah, adorn the head and upper arm during weekday morning services, but never on . He slipped his left arm through the black leather strap and attached the tefillin securely to the lower part of his bicep, with the knot facing his heart. Next, with his right hand, he wrapped the loose strap around his forearm seven times in a motion that mimicked yarn being wrapped around a needle before creating a stitch. He interrupted this process to place the other black cube directly above his hairline and between his eyes. He completed the ritual by weaving the left over leather around his fingers and finally down to his thumb.

To an outsider, the pattern created from flesh and leather, does not seem symbolic. However, Nathan Low, an observant modern Orthodox Jew from New York, N.Y., explains the seven coils correspond to seven words in Psalm 145 that he translates as, “Open your hand and provide for all living creatures.” Placed on the non-dominant arm, the straps form the Hebrew letters, shin, dalet, and yud, which spell one of God’s names, Sha DaI. This acknowledges service to Him.

Fischler, a longtime hockey announcer and broadcaster who works for MSG Media, continued his preparation for prayers with the second ritual. He lifted a white wool shawl with spun gold etching from his backpack. He placed it over his shoulder and carefully inspected the knotted fringes, or tzitzit, attached to the four corners, running his fingers through them to assure they were straight. He then raised it to eye level, and kissed the collar of the shawl known as the attara, or crown, while it faced him. He paused for a moment to say a prayer. After his moment of silence, he slowly pulled the tallit over his head and around his shoulders with the attara behind his neck. In one long sweeping movement the prayer shawl draped behind his neck and over the front of his chest, so the four tzitzit lay at the four corners of his body. It was as if the wind blew the garment perfectly into place.

The prayer he said silently to himself, which begins, “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam,” or “Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the Universe,” is a blessing that describes wrapping oneself in the tallit.

“When we put on the tallit, we envelop ourselves in G-d's Sukkah shlemah -- his peaceful embrace of protection,” Low said.

From the other side of the white, feathery, almost transparent cloth that separates the men and women, 17 other men who filed into the shul before 7 a.m. performed these rituals more swiftly than Fischler. Most of the men picked up talleitim from the racks in the back of the shul. The one woman in attendance did not participate in this ritual, as women are exempt from the commandment to put on tallit and tefillin because it is a time-based mitzvah.

Fischler’s careful and precise observance stood out among the other congregants. To someone looking in from the outside, he appeared to know exactly what he was doing. However, he confessed that he is far from comfortable.

“I spent my childhood and most of my adult life going to a Conservative synagogue,” he said, “I could barely follow here at first.”

However, when his son became ill and was in need of a heart transplant, he became more religious and started attending Orthodox services when they fit into his schedule. “I follow the prayer book in English, I bend when it says to bend,” he said, “Just like I follow directions for making soup.”

For Fischler, these rituals represent a brief moment to stop and think, “Pure thoughts of God.”