From: ask@cbnews.cb.att.com (Arthur S. Kamlet)
Subject: Re: Conversion Question
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories,  Columbus, Ohio
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 18:41:53 GMT

In article <memo.733601@cix.compulink.co.uk> stephenp@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>> ]I'm not trying to insult anybody, merely stating a fact.
>> ]
>> 
>> Nonsense. 
>> 
>> You _deliberately_ went out of your way to add something to your post
>> in order to make it pointedly insulting to a large number of your
>> fellow Jews on the net. There was _no_ reason to go out of your way
...
>Are you saying that a conversion before a Conservative Beis Din would
>be accepted by an Orthodox Beis Din? I really don't think it would;
>certainly not in London and certainly it wasn't by Reb Moshe. I
>therefore do not consider my belief to be unjustified. For that
>reason, it was not meant as an insult, merely a statement of fact.

Again, I ask if the response you refer to was not one of compassion
for a woman either whose husband had disappeared or whose husband
refused to grant her a get?  In such a very specific case I have
heard of rulings that declared certain marriages or conversions as
null, but those were not sweeping generalizations.  They never said
to my knowledge that a conservative Bet Din proves the conversion is
not kosher.  They were to help a particular woman in a particular
circumstance.  (And in some cases the Bet Din or rabbi who
officiated at the wedding was consulted in advance, to say the
ruling isn't an insult but rather a way to help out the woman.)
We here in this group should only have the understanding and
compassion of the sources you yourself cite.

----
>Belief doesn't come into it. The fact is that Conservative
>conversions are not recognised by the Orthodox. If you find that fact
>hard to swallow, well I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do about
>it.

You know, I have lived in a moderately large town in Ohio for about
16 years.  It is not  a major center of  Jewish public opinion, it
is not New York or Crown Heights or Chicago or Jersulem or Bnei
Brak, and so is not in the public spotlight.

And the strange thing is there are Jews and rabbis who are reform
and conservative and orthodox and there are Lubavitcher Chasidim and
we all get along together.  I have never seen one rabbi insult
another, or even laypeople insult each other.  And if a reform or
conservative Bet Din asks the orthodox rabbi in charge of the mikveh
(we have only one in the city) for permission to use the mikveh for
a conversion, the rabbi always says yes!

And if a convert enters an orthodox synagogue he or she is treated
as any other Jew.

Why is this?  I think in a smaller town Jews don't have the glare of
publicity, don't have to show any sort of holier than thou attitudes
to the world.

More important, and a lesson that many but not all of us have
learned:   it is really Ok to live together, to be nice to
one another, to care about one's fellow Jews, to say a kind word
when it's as easy to cast an insult, to do teshuva all the time and
not merely at Yom Kippur.  These things are possible and you will be
pleased to know the orthodox are still orthodox, the Chasidim are
still Chasidim, the conservative and reform are still conservative
and reform.  Getting along together did not cause the mezzuah to
fall off the door or cast an evil eye on anyone.  But it did promote
peace within the Jewish community, and discouraged those who would
seek the opposite.

When I read statements of people who hate, I am saddened more when
these people are Jews.  I do not think there is a commandment to
hate our neighbor.
-- 
Art Kamlet  a_s_kamlet@att.com  AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus