The Conundrum of the Cohen Married to a Convert

The Inside Story of Chabad in America — Through the Mindel Archives

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. Two weeks ago we spoke about the Sheva Mitzvos B'nei Noach, and also about the sefer that the Rebbe wanted to have printed on Sheva Mitzvos B'nei Noach [Berlin? — unclear], and also about a letter that a person wrote who wanted to become a convert, and how they tried to discourage him. If you want to see that, you can always click back and see the previous program.

Today I want to share with you a letter that a person wrote to Rabbi Hodakov, and the Rebbe made notations on it. This person comes from Anusim, Marranos — you know, they lived, I think, in the year 1492, in Spain, at the time of the Inquisition — and he wants to become a ger, a convert. So what should he do? He wrote to Rabbi Hodakov in Yiddish, and I'll try to translate it into English. And also, about Ethiopians — they came back; some people say they're from the hidden [tribes] — what should we do as far as them becoming Jewish?

At the end of this program I also want to share with you a very interesting story about a Kohen married to a convert.

So this person — Rabbi Hodakov answers this person; it's written in Yiddish and I'll try to translate it into English. In the answer to your letter that you wrote on Erev Shabbos, you're asking what you would do about a young man whose father is Jewish and whose mother comes from Anusim — she was raised by Christians but she knows she comes from Anusim. They were once hidden, but now we don't know what they are, but she claimed that she comes from Anusim. This young man, the son, was circumcised, but he had a Christian upbringing, and now he wants to become a Yid one hundred percent. He writes here [an unclear Hebrew phrase — unintelligible], that he wants to become a Yid.

So Rabbi Hodakov says, with the Rebbe's notations, that the law is: when a person has a Jewish father and a Christian mother, or they were raised by Christians, and they claim they come from Anusim — that does not make her a Jewish woman. And this young man you're talking about, if he wants to become a Yid, he has to be megayer. He [Rabbi Hodakov] did not say to discourage him, the way we read in that previous letter, because they feel they are eating [non-kosher] or regarding the Ethiopians. So he should be megayer.

What is he supposed to do to be megayer? He is supposed to have a bris, a bris milah, also to be toveled, immersed, in a mikveh, and also to have kabbalas ol mitzvos — to accept all the mitzvos. And these three things should be done before three dayanim, a beis din. In this case, since this young man is already married, his wife is not Jewish, so she also should be megayer, because once he accepts the mitzvos he has to live with a Jewish woman, not a gentile. And if this young man does all three of these things, he becomes one hundred percent a ger.

It also says here: if his bris was not done [for the sake of conversion], he said that before he goes to the mikvah he should have hatafas dam bris — a drop of blood drawn. And after they are both megayer, they have to separate for three months; they shouldn't live together, so that when she becomes pregnant, the child will be known one hundred percent to be Jewish from conception. This is how he answers, with the Rebbe's notations on the letter.

Then, in another letter — I guess it's connected to this one, I don't know why, but it is connected — a gentile should know: the Jews, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, have later been given more commandments — not only the seven mitzvos. But this does not diminish the gentiles, because they only have seven mitzvos, and Yidden have more. The connection to God when gentiles do the seven mitzvos, with all their ramifications, is that God gave them the vehicle to attain connection with Him — just like a Yid keeps the six hundred and thirteen mitzvos. That is said here, and I'm going to read it:

"If a person thinks that there is no need to connect the laws of ethics and morality with divine authority, we have seen in our own day and age that an entire nation whose advancements and ethical system sank to the lowest depths of inhuman barbarism — and the reason for this is that they thought they could establish ethics based on human reason, not on the authority of, and not acknowledging, a Supreme Being."

In other words, they have to know that this did not happen because of ethics [alone] — this is what the Rebbe writes here.

Now I want to share with you a story — we're talking about a ger, a convert — and converts also have different halachos as far as whom they can marry and whom they cannot marry. I want to share with you a story from the 1950s; I knew the people. There was a college student — he was a Jew, but she was not Jewish, so she wanted to convert. They went to a Reform rabbi and he converted her — I'm sorry, he converted her, not him; he was already a Jew. A year later she realized that the Reform conversion was not a kosher conversion — a Reform rabbi's conversion is not kosher — and she wanted to become one hundred percent a Yid mamash, with emes.

I knew her very well. She learned a lot. She went to rabbonim and they discouraged her constantly, and she still wanted to become a Yid. And as far as I know, it says that if a ger keeps Shabbos before converting... she kept Shabbos, but she put on a light once, because she knew that she was not yet Jewish, so she put on the light — because she knew that a non-Jew is not supposed to keep Shabbos [in the same way]. That's how careful she was — one hundred percent.

So they went to rabbonim — the end of the story is, if you see that a ger wants to become a Yid one hundred percent, so they went to a rav, and rabbonim were megayer her. Now she became a giyores, and through her becoming a giyores, he — he is a Kohen — and she is a giyores, and they got married. He got married by a kosher rav, one hundred percent. As a matter of fact, they even had a child, and they had shalom bayis, and it was very good.

He looked for a job, and in some city he found a job as a principal — I think it was an English principal, if I'm not mistaken, in a yeshiva day school. He came before Labor Day — school starts the day after Labor Day — and Rosh Hashanah was a month after. So he was a principal; they loved him, he was a good principal, he was a good person, and they moved to that city.

Came Rosh Hashanah, a month later, in the shul, with all the people there — came the time for duchening, the Priestly Blessing — and at the moment for the Kohanim to duchen, he went up, and it became a whole commotion, because they knew that she was a convert, a giyores, and he was a Kohen — because a Kohen cannot marry a convert. They didn't know what to do.

After Yom Tov, they called him over in a nice way and told him. I'm sorry — he didn't know. I don't know why, when they got married, the rav didn't ask him if he was a Kohen — I don't know — but he didn't know that a Kohen cannot [marry a giyores]. He said, "What should I do?" They said, "We can't have you in the yeshiva — you're not supposed to be living with a giyores." He said, "But I have children, I have shalom bayis — do I have to destroy my whole life?" He didn't know what to do.

He said, "I'm sorry." So, he was not Chabad, but he was a friend of Chabad. The rav who was megayer him was not Chabad, but was close to Chabad, so he told him, "You know what — write to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, tell him the story." He wrote to the Rebbe about this problem — that he had married a giyores and he had a job — and the Rebbe answered, "Go to rabbonim." So he wanted to go to... he was told, "Go to Rabbi Vorkin [?]." Rabbi Vorkin [?], in the 1950s, did not live in Crown Heights — I think he lived in Philadelphia, or he lived in Pittsburgh.

So he went to Rabbi Vorkin [?] and told him the story. Rabbi Vorkin [?] said, "I don't know what to tell you." Now, a real rav — what I mean by that is a rav has to know the halacha, but sometimes a rav will say, "Do this and this," but sometimes you need a bigger posek. He said, "I don't know what to tell you here."

Now this reminds me — I mentioned once in my program — my [father-in-law] Rabbi Mindel had a health problem once, and this rav didn't know whether he should fast or not, so he went to the Previous Rebbe, the Frierdiker Rebbe, and asked him what he should do about Tisha B'Av, since he had this health problem at the time. The Frierdiker Rebbe told him, "Ask a rav," and before he walked out, told him, "Don't forget to ask a kluger rav — ask a smart one."

So he went to Rabbi Shmuel Levitin — this was his rav — he was a smart, sharp rav. He said, "If the rav says you're allowed to eat on Tisha B'Av..." So this Rabbi Vorkin [?] was not just a rav — he said, "I can't help you here, go to Reb Moshe Feinstein."

He went to Reb Moshe Feinstein. In the morning, after he finished davening, after he had taken off his tefillin, people would line up to ask him shailos. So he waited his turn and came before Rabbi Feinstein and told him the problem. Rabbi Feinstein said, "Do you have parents?" He said, "No, my parents passed away when I was a little boy — they passed away in the Holocaust." "Do you have any other relatives?" He said he had none — some relatives had passed away in the Korean War. He had no relatives, just a third cousin, a fourth cousin, who didn't even know him — that's all. He had no [close] relatives.

Rabbi Feinstein said, "So how do you know you're a Kohen?" He said, "Because he remembers — when he was five years old, his father went up to duchen, and he remembers." So, since that's all he knew — he was five, five and a half years old — Rabbi Feinstein thought and thought and thought, and he said, "Well, you're not a Kohen." He wrote him a letter saying this, and gave him the letter.

He went back to Rabbi Vorkin [?] and told him what Reb Moshe Feinstein had told him. Rabbi Vorkin [?] said, "This is the greatness of a real rav" — that here he had thought he was simply accommodating the young man's wish with this letter — he went back and showed them what Rabbi Feinstein had written, and that's what happened.

So there are certain lessons involved in this. With Hashem's help, next week I think we will continue our third part, as far as the Sheva Mitzvos B'nei Noach — our third program. Thank you.