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From: R. Halevi
Subject: Self-attestation
Date: 8 Kislev 5781
Ben-Ari's question deserves a serious answer. It is the question I struggled with when this specification was first proposed.
The specification does not verify because verification is not possible without an authority, and no authority is universally recognized. I will give a concrete example.
I was in Jerusalem last year when a family's Jewish status was challenged by the Rabbinate. The grandmother had converted in America in the 1970s, under Conservative auspices. The conversion was performed by a beit din of three rabbis, with proper immersion, with acceptance of mitzvot. By Conservative standards, it was unimpeachable.
The Rabbinate did not recognize it. The grandchildren, who had been raised Jewish, who had celebrated bar and bat mitzvah, who served in the IDF, who considered themselves as Jewish as anyone, were told they could not marry in Israel without undergoing conversion themselves.
The Conservative movement said: they are Jewish. The Rabbinate said: they are not. Who is right?
The question has no answer that everyone accepts. This is not a failure of research or reasoning. It is a fundamental disagreement about authority.
The specification takes a position: the individual's own claim is what gets recorded. Verification, if any, happens elsewhere. This may seem like a dodge, but I have come to believe it is the only honest approach.
—Dov Halevi
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