Talk:International Israelite Board of Rabbis

Restore details about the Organization

@Bohemian Baltimore As a recent Masters of Rabbinic studies graduate and member of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, I hope my paragraphs of content, complete with internal and external references, can be restored. I have plenty more academic material to include as references to use to build future sections of this stub article, but deleting the prior work does not serve any public interest. Can we agree to include your dissenting views in a section at the end of the article, as a compromise?

There are several peer-reviewed academic works on this organization and its constituent congregations that are in Judaica studies collections. The New York and Chicago Board of Rabbis also has our leaders among their ranks. Any dissenting views must be able to be weighed in light of documented sources to contrary.

Thank you, and I look forward to making this stub article become a source of further interest to the greater Jewish community. YaaqovDani (talk) 07:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

@YaaqovDani Please give me a moment to review the content and see if I can find a good compromise. We can tweak from there. When you say that the "New York and Chicago Board of Rabbis also has our leaders among their ranks", you mean that individual rabbis are part of those boards? Are you referring to individuals such as Capers Funnye, who had a Conservative conversion? I would like the article to include the fact that the International Israelite Board of Rabbis is generally not recognized as Jewish by the mainstream, normative Jewish community. But I may have jumped the gun on removing ALL of the information. I created this article and a few others about Black Hebrew Israelites (See also: Israelite Rabbinical Academy and Mordecai Herman) and Black Jews (See: Black Jews in New York City, Lucy Marks, Billy Simons, etc.) as an attempt to improve Wiki coverage of Black Jews and other Jews of color. So thank you for your feedback and questions. I look forward to continuing this discussion, as needed. Sincerely, Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 08:07, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for reconsidering. I encourage you to seethe citations in my version of the article for additional evidence, including the liturgical orientation (Conservadox to Sephardic) of member congregations. We are non-denominational in terms of the Ashkenazi movements in America, but we have good relations with those movements, and have key roles in the Chicago and New York Board of Rabbis to support this. Once you restore my content, I can adduce further evidence and documentation to this fact. Yes, Chief Rabbi Funnye was the pioneer of this effort towards improved engagement, but it is not limited to him. Much of the confusion has been from outsiders who lump any Black person who is not a member of an Ashkenazi congregation as equally anti-Jewish as the most militant and messianic Black nationalist groups. To the contrary, our landmark synagogues were purchased *from* Ashkenazim who left Bedford Styvesant Brooklyn or Southwest Chicago. They maintained their theologically conservative character, with a rich admixture of African American culture and Biblical emphasis to provide a spiritual home for the influx of Black people turning to the Torah during the Great Migration - all while being nonviolent and non-Christian. YaaqovDani (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I recommend you re-read the article to see my edits from today, thus far, as well. YaaqovDani (talk) 18:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

@YaaqovDani Thank you. I'm aware of the generalizations made about BHIs. I've previously edited the article on Black Hebrew Israelites in an attempt to dispel some of those generalizations, which are false and anti-Black. See here, here, and here. Anecdotally, I know Black Sephardi Jews who belong to Sephardi congregations and who would not consider BHIs to be Jewish, so I'm hesitant about framing BHI "barriers to acceptance" as something specific to the Ashkenazi community. I also know Black Ashkenazi Jews and Black Ethiopian Jews with the same views, so Ashkenazi non-acceptance can't entirely be blamed on anti-Blackness either. By the way, Shais Rishon is NOT a convert and was in fact born Ashkenazi Jewish. That assumption is a sore spot for many Black Jews; not too long ago, Rishon called out a Jewish publication after they made a post about Black converts and included his photo. I think the article is mostly fine now, except for the section on acceptance of BHIs. I removed the false claim about Rishon and added a citation needed tag for the first paragraph. It's worth noting that many Jewish communities have no problem with Black Jewish leadership, but still do take issue with BHIs who have not converted or weren't born Jewish per their movement's halakha. Thanks for mentioning that issue. Funnye, for example, might be accepted by the Conservative and Reform movements, but he's not accepted by Orthodoxy; whereas, Aronoff would be. But even then, that's not just an Orthodoxy issue. A BHI who wasn't born and raised with a Jewish father or Jewish mother would have to convert to be accepted by Reform Judaism. Also, the Orthodox Union doesn't actually perform conversions, so I removed that bit as well. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 10:08, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. The board does distinguish itself from similar sounding groups with racialist theology, whom the IIBR predate. BHI is understood as a a broad brush term, and they generally distance themselves from being classed as BHI by outsiders who don't distinguish them from Black Christian racists who practice Sabbatarianism (Israelites United in Christ, etc).

On a personal note, I worship in Chabad and Conservative synagogues for weekday services, as do many other of our fellow board members. We appreciate the diversity of observance within the people of Israel, but do not want to be "otherized" when we've been keeping Torah at least as long as immigrants from Ellis Island - often in the same buildings. 2603:6080:AC40:70D:D144:8AB0:EE40:75CB (talk) 15:56, 2 January 2024 (UTC)