Conversion
Should Yad Vashem Honor Gentiles Who Saved Converted Jews?
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009Sometime in the last week of April, 230 cosignatories sent a petition to Yad Vashem, requesting that they give special recognition to two particular families, the Hollebrands and the Egginks, who hid three children from the Sanders family, which had converted to Christianity before World War II.
In this tragic WWII story, the father registered the family as Jewish and sent the children into hiding with the Hollebrands and Egginks. The Gestapo arrested the father in 1943 and tortured him into divulging their whereabouts. In the end, he, his wife and children—Eline, 10, Egbert, 8 and Marie Lena, 6—were murdered that year.
Yad Vashem’s Commission for the Recognition of the Righteous among the Nations decided that the Hollebrands and the Egginks were ineligible for the title since the honor is reserved for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust; since the children were not Jewish, they could not receive the award.
The Conversion Crisis — Part I
Friday, June 27th, 2008Q. Why are Reform & Conservative rabbis so anxious for new converts? Aren’t they supposed to discourage conversions?
A: Each conversion case must be by definition carefully examined by the merits or demerits of that particular case. I cannot speak for the Reform Movement, but I have worked with both Orthodox and Conservative rabbis on [...]