The Making of Modern Jewish Identity: Ideological Change and Religious Conversion by Motti Inbari

Author:Motti Inbari [Inbari, Motti]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Judaism, Discrimination, Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Jewish Studies, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9780429648595
Google: Iu6aDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-30T10:58:52+00:00

4  From spiritual conversion to ideological conversion

The quest of Ruth Ben-David

“Who are you, Ruth Ben-David?” This was the question famously posed by Isser Harel, head of the Mossad, after he was charged with the task of locating the missing child Yossele Schumacher, whose grandfather Nachman Straks refused to return him to his parents’ guardianship. Ruth Ben-David was suspected of smuggling the child out of Israel. “Who are you, Ruth Ben-David?” is indeed a tough question to answer. Was she a righteous convert or an international trickster? A “despicable woman,” as Yossi Schumacher later called her, or a modest and virtuous lady? A ruthless child snatcher, or someone who saved Jews from the Nazis? A pathological liar, or a woman devoted to truth and justice? The many faces of Ruth Ben-David and the almost schizophrenic contradictions revealed in her personality make it difficult to offer an unequivocal answer. In this chapter I will attempt to shed some light on Ben-David’s biography and on the events in which she was involved.

Born in France in 1920, Madeleine Lucette Ferraille underwent several dramatic transitions over the course of her life. Born to an agnostic father and a Catholic mother, she embarked on a personal intellectual quest that led her to seek her own identity in Greek philosophy and among the Seventh-Day Adventists. Eventually, however, she was entranced by the morality of the Hebrew prophets and entered the world of Judaism, undergoing a Reform conversion in Paris in 1951. On her conversion she changed her name to Ruth Ben-David. She continued her journey through the Jewish world, affiliating first with Orthodox Zionist circles but eventually finding her place among the supporters of Neturei Karta in the Meah Shearim quarter of Jerusalem. She completed her transformation after marrying Amram Blau, the leader of the Haredi zealots in Jerusalem. Madeleine L. Ferraille had now become Ruth Blau, completing a journey that essentially included two acts of conversion: entry into the world of pro-Zionist Judaism through a Reform conversion ceremony and later conversion from a lifestyle blending religion and modernity to an anti-modern approach. This latter stage included an Orthodox conversion for the sake of formality but also constituted an ideological conversion.

These transitions, which had an essentially personal and spiritual character, were accompanied by profound personal disappointments and dramatic events. Ben-David’s life may be divided into several stages: her childhood and youth; marriage, childbirth, and divorce under the shadow of the Second World War; her business activities, whose ultimate failure led her to spend time in a French prison for tax evasion on a massive scale; her journey to Switzerland for the purpose of studies and ongoing spiritual inquiry; her return to Paris and her conversion, while living a double life based in France and Israel; the kidnapping of Yossele Schumacher and his transfer to Europe, ending with the exposure of the kidnapping by the Mossad; her return to Meah Shearim and her scandalous marriage to Amram Blau, head of the Neturei Karta movement and one of the leaders of the Haredi world.

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