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From: R. Kovacs
Subject: Digital verification of kashrut certification
Date: 23 Elul 5780
My zeyde knew a man in Munkács. I never learned his name; my zeyde always called him "the convert from Ungvár." He had papers from the beit din.
The papers listed everything. He went to the mikveh on such and such a date. He accepted the yoke of the commandments. Three rabbis witnessed: Reb Yosef, Reb Mendel, Reb Shmuel. Their signatures, their seals.
The papers did not say "this man is a Jew." They said these things happened.
And yet, nu, he was on every list that mattered. He was counted for every minyan. He married a Jewish woman. His children were Jewish. When the Germans came, he went with everyone else.
My zeyde said: "The papers did not make him Jewish. But the papers were not lying either. They said what happened. What it meant, that was for the rest of us to decide."
—Shlomo Dov Kovacs
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