Eliya Hawila, Who Masqueraded As Jew And Married Jewish Girl, Was Apparently Jewish All The Time

 

Eliya Haliwa, who married a member of a Syrian Jewish family in Brooklyn last October, was exposed immediately after the wedding as a Shiite Muslim from Lebanon. The revelation led to a huge controversy and calls for more stringent investigation of people’s Jewish lineage before allowing them to wed. Haliwa himself was forced to leave his new wife and even though he wished to convert to Judaism, the Syrian Jewish community maintains a longstanding ban on accepting Jewish converts.

However on Zev Brenner’s Talkline show it was revealed by Rabbi Avrohom Reich of the Hatzalas Yisrael community of Brooklyn that Haliwa is actually Jewish and has undergone a conversion L’chumra (to be extra stringent). Rabbi Reich is an expert on tracking and investigating the lineage of Jews from the FSR (Former Soviet Republic) and says that he spoke with the mother of Haliwa, who admitted that both she and her mother are Jewish.

Rabbi Reich spoke with the grandmother in Lebanon and said that he was a member of a Beis Din which performed the conversion L’chumra for Chaliwa and stressed that he is now a Jew “L’Mehadrin”. According to B’Chadrei, the Beis Din which performed the conversion is recognized by Israel’s chief rabbinate.

Rabbi Reich said that the reason for performing the conversion L’Chumra was because there were four consecutive generations which did not keep mitzvos and therefore a conversion was required. Hawila himself said that the reason he had not revealed his Jewish roots earlier was because he did not know about them and only found out after the fiasco of his marriage with a Jewish girl.

Haliwa intends to go back to his wife now that he has been converted L’chumra, even though he is under pressure from members of the Syrian Jewish community to give his wife a get. After the revelation of his roots in November, Haliwa said that “I just want another chance, I want to rectify things, I wanted to be Jewish irrespective of the girl I married.” According to the new information received, Haliwa is indeed Jewish and was already Jewish when he married.