AMBIVALENCE IN PROSELYTISM
insisted that converts be accepted only if they lived in a community with universal observance of the mitzvot. Of course, an environment of this sort was non-existent in the cities of Argentina of that time.
An absolutist is often known to demand the fulfillment of conditions and prerequisites that cannot be reasonably met. Even the finest candidate possible could not have been converted because there was no completely observant Jewish community such as Meah Shearim or Williamsburg where he could live in Argentina . Conversion is indeed permitted in the Talmud , and the rabbinic literature, Goldman could not abrogate it by fiat. However, by raising difficult halakhic obstacles, he effectively eliminated the possibility of conversion for those who accepted his authority.
This extremely stringent view of conversion led to the radical decree against conversions in all of the Argentine for all time. This ban did not just remain in South America , but was exported to the United States . The ban was adopted by the Syrian Jewish Community of Brooklyn , New York , in 1935, with the amendment that"no future Rabbinic Court will have the right or authority to convert non-Jews who seek to marry into our community." The Buenos Aires ban on all conversions for all Jews everywhere in Argentina was transformed into a prohibition on conversion for marriage in the Syrian Jewish community of the New York city borough. This ban was reconfirmed and signed by all the rabbis and lay leaders of the Syrian and Sephardic Jewish Communities with special warnings and proclamations in 1946, 1972, and 1984.”
proclaimed a ban o
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