CONVERTING A MARRIED WOMAN Solomon B. Freehof

QUESTION: A Jewish man marries a Catholic girl in another country in a Catholic marriage ceremony. Later they come to the rabbi. The woman wants to be converted to Judaism and they want to be married as Jews and pledge to live as Jews . Is there any objection to the rabbi converting the wife and remarrying the couple who had been married previously by a Catholic marriage?”

ANSWER: There is, of course, considerable Orthodox objection to converting to Judaism any non-Jewish woman who has lived with a Jewish man in marriage or common-law marriage or civil marriage, but this objection is not always heeded, and itis certainly the attitude of the Central Conference of American Rabbis to convert women married to Jews .

As for the status of the Catholic marriage, it is clear that we consider Catholic marriage valid for Catholics , but whether it is

valid for Jews is a complex question. The problem arose first with the Marranos, many of whom were married in churches and later escaped. Sometimes the woman escaped alone and the husband was killed. Is this woman a perpetual agunah, or was the church

marriage not a marriage and she therefore free There are two classic responsa on it. One is by Isaac Bar Sheshet. In his Responsum#6 he declares it is no marriage and that the woman is free to be remarried. His younger contemporary and rival in Algiers , Simon ben Zemah Duran , says(Vol. 11,#47) that the church marriage is a marriage if there were valid Jewish witnesses present; otherwise it is not. In general, the weight of the authorities is that it is not a valid marriage if a Jew is involved. See the authorities quoted in Freimann, Seder Qiddushin, pp-346 ft For the whole discussion, see the"Report on Mixed Marriage and Intermarriage," Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook,

Vol. 57(1947).

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