April, 2022
Rabbis get the most interesting visitors to their offices, reporters, priests, politicians, etc.
But by far, at least for me, the most noteworthy visitors are those who express a desire to become Jewish. It took several years for me to learn the best way to handle such a situation.
On the one hand, we want the process of conversion to be painless, but it does have to be rigorous. Chazal often speak about the dangers of pushing a potential convert away, in one instance even blaming the birth of Amalek on such misconduct (Shabbos 88).
On the other hand, we are taught the dangers of accepting those who come with ulterior motives, and the havoc that can be wrought by a beis din that accepts a ger too quickly (see Yevamos 109b with Meiri). Some poskim even recommend waiting a full year from the day a person expresses his wish to convert so that all parties are certain it’s the right thing to do (see Mishnas Rabbi Eliezer, to the effect that this has been the longstanding custom of batei din).
Most famously, we are commanded to inform the potential convert of the difficulty of abiding by the Torah (Yevamos 47b) and the hardships experienced by the Jewish nation (Shulchan Aruch 268).
One such convert was a young woman named Miriam. She came to my office fresh out of a local Catholic high school and was clearly nervous. It was obvious that stepping into a rabbi’s office frightened her, as if she were breaking some code. Interestingly, when she spoke, she came across like a Bais Yaakov girl. She was very eidel, and her tznius was remarkable.
She told me that she had known for some time that she wanted to convert but needed to wait for the right moment. I began my shpiel in response, but I had forgotten to consider that she had grown up in the age of the internet: She had come to my office well informed and had already geared up for her long journey.
Miriam ended up spending a year in seminary, and she continued to move toward geirus until she and the beis din felt that she was ready. I was living in Queens when she called to ask if she could come to my office to take the geirus test that had been prepared by the Toronto beis din. I explained that the test consisted of close to 1,500 questions and that people generally took it over the course of several days.
“How long would it take if I did it in one shot?” she asked, undeterred.
“I don’t know. Maybe eight or nine hours,” I surmised.
She was so anxious to become a member of the am hanivchar that she didn’t care if her arm fell off from writing. She just wanted to be a Jew! She filled out question after question—queries about hilchos Shabbos, Yom Tov, the Jewish calendar, important expressions and terms, cultural ideas, history, minhagim, kashrus. Yiddishkeit covers everything, and so did this exam! No potential convert is expected to ace this test—and few frum Jews would either—but Miriam excelled. She converted very soon afterward.
Sometime after her conversion, she got engaged to a wonderful young bachur who is now a kollel yungerman. Some five years later, she is a true eishes chayil and rebbetzin to this talmid chacham, and they live in the Five Towns.
For the first several years, like many other geirim, she found it easier to call a rav she knew in case her question would make it obvious that she hadn’t grown up frum.(Not that it matters, but her questions were always informed; in fact, she knows more than most people.)
There is a reason I am sharing her story this week, at a time when Jews around the world are reeling from the petirah of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l.
We all know where we were when we found out that Rav Chaim was niftar. I was on the phone with my father in Eretz Yisrael, and we stayed on the phone for a few minutes in relative silence, taking in the news. After I hung up, I composed a message for my shul and sat in silence again. Then I got a text that shook me to the core.
It was from Miriam, wanting to know if and when she was required to tear kriah!
It was only after hearing this holy sh’eilah that I broke down, the full weight of the loss of Rav Chaim crashing down on me like a tidal wave. It made me realize how personally his passing is affecting so many diverse people in klal Yisrael. After composing myself sufficiently to call her back, I found her in tears, sobbing for the loss to our nation and hardly able to speak.
I told her how much her sh’eilah meant to me and to all of us. Sometimes we need our very own Yisro to open our eyes! I explained to her that Chazal made her point when they stated: “Chacham she’meis hakol kerovav, when a chacham dies, we are all his relatives” (Mo’ed Katan 25a).
Indeed, the Shulchan Aruch rules that one is to tear kriyah “for a talmid chacham of whom one can ask any question and he is able to answer it” (Yoreh Dei’ah 340:7). This psak seems to apply clearly to Rav Chaim. Why, then, didn’t we all tear kriyah?
There are several reasons. First, the Rema says that we only do so for our own personal rebbi or in unusual circumstances. The Aruch Hashulchan also explains that in our time, we don’t have chachamim who can answer on every topic in Torah, in accordance with the teaching of Chazal (Taanis 10) that such a person must be able to answer questions even on the less-studied minor tractates.
But wait! Rav Chaim not only knew these tractates inside and out; he wrote sefarim on many of them as well!
Then I saw in the name of the Zachor L’Avraham (Yoreh Dei’ah #11) that the reason we no longer tear kriyah for our gedolim is that there would be no end to it. Even today, we have so many geonim that if we tore kriyah for each one, we would soon have no garments left to tear (see Nitei Gavriel, Aveilus, Cheilek Alef,p. 281, footnote #5).
Accordingly, the fact that most people didn’t tear kriyah for Rav Chaim is the greatest honor we can give him—for it is thanks to him that there has been such a proliferation of Torah scholars in our era.
May he be a meilitz yosher for us all!
Leave a Reply