Kehilat Yeshurun Rabbi Haskel Lookstein said on Sunday that he was not the rabbi who gave Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner permission to fly on Air Force One on Shabbat (Sabbath), calling the rumors “fake news”.
In the wake of several high-profile controversies in which Orthodox converts from the US were rejected by the Israeli rabbinical courts and the Chief Rabbinate, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef announced on Wednesday that the recognition process is now set for “serious reform.”
Let us begin with the facts: Converts whose conversions were conducted according to halachah, or Jewish law, are 100 percent Jewish.
A prominent New York rabbi who converted Ivanka Trump to Judaism has backed out of delivering the opening prayer at the GOP convention after critics slammed him for appearing to endorse her father.
In a hugely controversial step, the Supreme Rabbinical Court asked a female convert of prominent US Jewish leader Rabbi Haskel Lookstein to declare her acceptance of the religious commandments in court so as to avoid doubt as to her Jewishness.
The brouhaha surrounding the recognition of Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism by Israel may be nearing it’s end.
The Israeli Chief Rabbinate cuts slack to no one, not even if you are the daughter of a man who may become the next president of the United States.