SOLOMON B. FREEHOF

we generally omit the ceremonial requirement of sending her to the ritual bath(miqveh). It is the ritual that matters to the Orthodox rabbi and not whatever intellectual and moral prescription we may give her. While, therefore, the absence of the ritual bath prevents the Orthodox rabbi from acknowledging the validity of our conversion, the courts have no right to question it and to assume that there is only one authentic form of Judaism and that is Orthodoxy . With regard to our ceremonial disagreement with Orthodoxy , there is nothing for decent people to do but endure it, and learn somehow to achieve mutual respect. So the question of the wife's refusal to acknowledge the authenticity of Reform conversion cannot be discussed with her. It can only be discussed in the courts, if necessary.

It is not only the Reform conversion which is here brushed aside; it is also the acceptance of the boy as a Jew by the Conservative rabbi which is here deemed irrelevant. The boy was circumcised as a Jew , was Bar Mitzvah, lived as a Jew. What objection is there, then, to considering him a Jew? It can only be that an Orthodox rabbi, rejecting the validity of the mother’s conversion, considers this boy to be a Gentile, and therefore in addition to being circumcised, he should have been sent to the miqveh. It would be on this basis only that the boy’s Jewishness could be denied. Again, it is the omission of a ceremonial which weighs more than the boy’s Jewish education, Bar Mitzvah, and his whole life as a Jew.

However, there is another question which involves a complicated problem in Jewish law. This problem revolves around the fact that the man’s father, now very old, can adduce no proofs that his wife was converted, as he claims she was. Such unprovable claims to conversion have evoked considerable discussion in the Talmud and in the Codes. The chief source of the laws involved is

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