For nearly two thousand years, the Jewish people experienced powerlessness wandering in exile, often without privileges, land or rights. Following the destruction of the Second Temple, we became the prototypical ger (stranger), perpetually in a state of alienation from our surroundings. During the modern period, Jews won increasing rights in the Western world and began to participate more actively in the societies in which they lived.
The current conversion crisis that is searing the larger Jewish community in general and the Orthodox community in particular is grounded in politically and ideologically driven doublespeak. Orthodox Judaism teaches that the Jew is sanctified by obeying God's commandments. Honest people may disagree over details. When agendas replace conscience and the halakha is superseded by policy, we are not being honest to God or to each other.
Many Jews in our day, like many of our brethren of other tribes, are seeking
to mend the fractures that divide us from ourselves and from others, and to
find ways to heal the wounds that afflict us only six decades after the
Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel. Amid these efforts, an idealistic,
scholarly nineteenth-century rabbi from Livorno seems,
to some, to provide a beacon of hope and humanity.