Editing Conversion to Judaism (section)

===Conversion annulments===
A recent development has been the idea of annulling conversions to Judaism, sometimes many years after they have taken place, due to a reduction in religious observance or change of community by the convert. [[Chuck Davidson]], a Modern Orthodox expert on this conversion crisis explains "From the Middle Ages onwards, the greatest of the rabbis wrote explicitly that even if immediately after the conversion the convert goes off to worship idols, the person is still considered Jewish."<ref name="timesofisrael.com">{{cite news|first=Amanda |last=Borschel-Dan |title=Top court backs rabbis who revoked conversion over secular lifestyle: Israeli justices decide rabbis had the right to cancel Yonit Erez's conversion two years after she became Jewish|date= 18 December 2014|work=[[The Times of Israel]]|url= http://www.timesofisrael.com/top-court-backs-rabbis-who-revoked-conversion-over-secular-lifestyle/}}</ref> The justification given for the change in approach is that the original conversion must never have been valid in the first place as it is clear from the convert's subsequent actions they were insincere at the time of conversion.

A situation of confusion in Jewish identity in Israel was made worse when Haredi Rabbi [[Avraham Sherman]] of Israel's supreme religious court ({{lang|he|בית הדין הרבני הגדול}}) called into question the validity of over 40,000 Jewish conversions when he upheld a ruling by the Ashdod Rabbinical Court to retroactively annul the conversion of a woman who came before them because in their eyes she failed to observe Jewish law.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Tragic Annulment |first=David |last=Ellenson |work=The Jerusalem Report |date=September 2008 |url=http://huc.edu/news/08/8/A%20Tragic%20Annulment.pdf |access-date=2008-09-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100527181434/http://www.huc.edu/news/08/8/A%20Tragic%20Annulment.pdf |archive-date=27 May 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Cancelled Conversion |website=[[Center for Women's Justice]] |url=http://www.cwj.org.il/press/rivka-ynet-articles/cancelled-conversion |access-date=2011-09-24 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120324035026/http://www.cwj.org.il/press/rivka-ynet-articles/cancelled-conversion |archive-date=24 March 2012}}</ref>

This crisis deepened, when Israel's Rabbinate called into question the validity of soldiers who had undergone conversion in the army, meaning a soldier killed in action could not be buried according to Jewish law.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel/amar_calls_netanyahu_quash_military_conversion_bill |title=Amar Calls on Netanyahu to Quash Military Conversion Bill |publisher=The Jewish Week |date=1 December 2010 |access-date=2012-07-21 |archive-date=11 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161011024950/http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel/amar_calls_netanyahu_quash_military_conversion_bill  |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 2010, the rabbinate created a further distrust in the conversion process when it began refusing to recognize orthodox converts from the United States as Jewish.<ref>{{cite web|last=Mandel |first=Jonah |url=http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=216218 |title='National religious rabbis ... JPost - Jewish World - Jewish News |date=6 January 2011 |publisher=Jpost.com |access-date=2012-07-21}}</ref> Indeed, the great-niece of the renowned Zionist [[Nahum Sokolow]] was recently deemed "not Jewish enough" to marry in Israel, after she failed to prove the matrilineal Jewish descent for four generations.<ref>{{cite news|work=[[Ha'aretz]]|title= Sokolow's niece not 'Jewish' enough to get married here|url= http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/sokolow-s-niece-not-jewish-enough-to-marry-here-1.304882}}</ref>

Following a scandal in which U.S. Rabbi [[Barry Freundel]] was arrested on charges of installing hidden cameras in a ''mikveh'' to film women converts undressing, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate said it would review the validity of all past conversions performed by Freundel, then quickly reversed its decision, clarifying that it was joining the Orthodox [[Rabbinical Council of America]] in affirming the validity of the conversions.<ref>{{cite web|work=[[Jewish Telegraphic Agency|JTA]] |title=Rabbi Freundel Conversions Are Valid, Israeli Chief Rabbinate Says|date= 21 October 2014|via= [[The Forward|Jewish Daily Forward]] |url=http://forward.com/articles/207698/rabbi-freundel-conversions-are-valid-israeli-chief/}}</ref>

In December 2014 an Israeli court decided that a conversion could be annulled. In his decision Justice Neal Hendel wrote: "Just as the civil court has the inalienable authority to reverse – in extremely rare cases – a final judgment, so too does the special religious conversion court. For otherwise, we would allow for judgments that are flawed from their inception to exist eternally."<ref name="timesofisrael.com"/>