Last month, Rabbi Marc Angel, rabbi emeritus of New York’s historic Congregation Shearith Israel, penned an impassioned critique of the adoption of new — and, he argued, needlessly restrictive — conversion policies by the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization he once served as its president.
The article generated plenty of discussion in the Orthodox world (including a response from several other past presidents of the RCA in a letter to the Forward). While the RCA is the main body for Centrist and Modern Orthdox rabbis, Angel’s article has also generated discussion in more religiously right-leaning precincts.
Indeed, the debate has now migrated from the pages of the Forward to a new venue: the blog Cross-Currents, a lively forum on Jewish issues whose contributors include a number of prominent Haredi thinkers. One Cross-Currents blogger, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of Los Angeles, penned a lengthy reply to Angel’s Forward article. Now, Angel has responded on Cross-Currents, and Adlerstein has weighed in again.
The debate is a bit esoteric for the general reader, but its contours are nevertheless quite interesting.
While I’m definitely no halachic expert (I’m actually a halachic ignoramus), I’ll nevertheless toss in my two cents:
