The defense by Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, of the abstention in the Knesset on the halachic conversion issue by Israel’s National Religious Party was assailed today by Rabbi Yakov Pollak, president of the National Council of Young Israel. “It is incomprehensible to me,” Rabbi Pollak told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “that an Orthodox rabbi, a rabbi of the Young Israel movement and a leader of American Jewry would ever dare permit his name to be used not only for political expediency but rather for outright kfiro (apostasy).”
“For Rabbi Bernstein to accuse present-day Gedolei Hatorah (rabbinical scholars) who may be of different political persuasions, or perhaps no political persuasions at all, is both irresponsible and irreconcilable with Daat Torah (Jewish religious tradition),” Rabbi Pollak declared. “I therefore,” he continued, “take it upon myself to speak in the name of the Young Israel Council of Rabbis and ask Rabbi Bernstein to please retreat from his present opinion and to say “Chotosi” (“I erred”) or “Toisi” (“I transgressed”). I feel compelled to make this statement so that we at the Young Israel Rabbinate may not be guilty of silence and indifference.”
Rabbi Pollak further asserted that since it was “impossible” for Rabbi Bernstein to have “convened all the officers and members of the Executive to get the true thinking of the membership of the Rabbinical Council,” Rabbi Bernstein “therefore speaks only in his name and not in the name of the Rabbinical Council of America.” The amendment would have required conversion of immigrants under Orthodox auspices. It was defeated.
On July 27, Rabbi Bernstein defended the NRP abstention–with one defection–as an act of “great courage,” as its members “surely knew the torrent of volcanic abuse that would follow.” He elaborated: “Since I have been critical (of the NRP) when I thought criticism was warranted, I must also voice praise when it’s called for….(The NRP) had the courage and vision to stand up to this pressure in order to prevent a greater evil which was sure to follow, that of civil marriage and the division of the Jewish people down the middle.”
Apprised of Rabbi Pollak’s challenge, Rabbi Bernstein told the JTA today from Camp Massed in Effort, Pa., that the dispute was a long-standing one and that the Young Israel leader was “entitled to his own opinion.” He declined to offer a more detailed rebuttal, noting that “the Rabbinical Council does not get involved in politics the way other religious groups do.”
Rabbi Bernstein said he had made his views known not in a statement on behalf of the RCA but in “a personal, private letter on plain white paper” to Rabbi Bernard A. Poupko of Pittsburgh, president of the Religious Zionists of America.
Rabbi Bernstein reported that his aged parents were being awakened by telephone callers hurling imprecations and exclaiming; “Your son is not a rabbi. He should be a priest.” Rabbi Bernstein said those responsible for the calls had also harassed Israeli Premier Golda Meir and were “the same people who sent bomb threats to Burg when Burg was here.” He was alluding to the most recent New York visit of Dr. Yosef Burg, an Orthodox rabbi who is Israel’s Interior Minister.
Rabbi Pollak, who said in his statement that it would be as “impossible” for him to convene the Young Israel Rabbinate “at the present time” as it would be for Rabbi Bernstein to convene the Rabbinical Council Executive, was asked how he presumed to “take it upon myself” to speak for the Young Israel Rabbinate. That was, he agreed, “a very good question,” which he would answer by repeating: “I take it upon myself.”
In a related development, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, denounced the NRP members who abstained. Dr. Avner Sciaky refused to abstain, voted yes and was fired as Deputy Education Minister. The NRP had agreed to abstain to avoid a coalition crisis.
The day of abstention will be known to history as a day of chilul Hashem (desecration of God’s name), Rabbi Schneerson told an audience in Brooklyn. The NRP abstainers should have “rent their garments” for presuming to represent Mizrachi and Torath Israel, he declared. It was “not true,” he contended, that voting for halachic conversion would have precipitated immediate passage of a civil marriage law. Such a law, he said, “would not be accepted, not because of this group (NRP) but because of the Christians and Moslems who would not agree to civil marriage.”
Meanwhile, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the US and Canada explained that its opposition to the NRP abstentions was not based on “denigrating the Mizrachi movement” or involvement in “partisan politics.” In an unsigned statement, the UOR said it “opposes only the small minority of Mizrachi leadership who bear the primary responsibility for the legislature which recognizes non-Jews as Jews.” The UOR charged that the three Mizrachi Cabinet ministers have “completely ignored the unanimous injunction by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel” in 1970 that if the “tragic” non-halachic legislation was not amended, they must resign. The firing of Dr. Sciaky, the UOR said, was an “irresponsible action” that is “contrary to the Torah” and “endangers the entire Jewish nation.”
Last month, the UOR’s position was attacked by Rabbi Zemah Zambrowsky, chairman of the World Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, who denied that Israel’s Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, Issar Yehuda Unterman, had told the NRP to vote for the halachic amendment. The UOR replied Aug. 1 that Rabbi Unterman had insisted that the NRP “stand firmly and vote for this bill.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
