PMO dismisses Rabbi Haim Druckman
JPost, May 22, 2008
Conversion Authority head Rabbi Haim Druckman has received a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office notifying him of his dismissal, due to the fact that he has turned 75, and thus passed the age of retirement. The dismissal comes at a particularly sensitive time, after a panel of rabbinical judges wrote a halachic ruling overturning a conversion by Druckman, and implying that all his conversions should be annulled. The ruling, while not automatically revoking the hundreds of conversions Druckman performed, has still alarmed many converts who had gone through the process under Druckman’s tutelage.
Chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Legislation, and Law Committee, Menahem Ben Sasson (Kadima), asked the Prime Minister’s Office Thursday to find a way to extend Druckman’s position. According to Ben Sasson, Druckman’s remaining in office is important “especially in these hard times, when there is a crisis regarding conversions.” During an emergency meeting of the committee, all MKs present expressed full confidence in Druckman. According to Likud MK Yuri Edelstein, removing Druckman from office would seriously harm the little faith left with immigrants considering conversion:
This will be seen as the government’s surrender in face of a haredi attack against the conversion authority and the converts. This is another one of the government’s poor attempts at survival by pleasing extreme orthodox circles, which anyway do not recognize the state’s authority to convert. Olmert should take an exceptional step and cancel Druckman’s dismissal forthwith.
Druckman told Israel Radio Thursday afternoon:
I wasn’t looking for a job … I was called to the mission by former prime minister Ariel Sharon. I don’t understand what has happened here … (I think I do – RB). I did not celebrate my birthday this week. This is not about my age. In the beginning of the year, when I signed a year’s contract, I was already over 75 years old. Some people are willing to ruin the Conversion Authority for their own interests. I don’t know what these are, but I do know that it’s not the issue of conversion that they are worried about.
Druckman was appointed to the position in 2003 with the direct support of then-prime minister Sharon, who believed the appointment would increase the number of converts. Speaking to Channel 1 later Thursday, Druckman said that Sharon saw it as his responsibility to ease the conversion of immigrants. Druckman said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared similar intentions but that for some reason, his plans had not materialized. Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar had sided with Druckman in the latest scandal, and promised NU-NRP chairman Zevulun Orlev that he would act to overturn the rabbinical court’s ruling. “The case should not have even reached the panel of judges that discussed it,” he said then.
Some conversions may have been settler expediency
I should know—I spent years looking at different conversion schemes here in London, being a non-Jew by birth. The full conversion is almost impossible if you didn’t grow up with the mitzvot, but there seem to have been shortcuts for people willing to go straight to yesha (or yosh, as it is now) and carry a gun when they get there. It’s a Kookist concept, really.
Rowan Berkeley – England (05/22/2008 20:36)
Niqnaq 