Chief Rabbi: ‘Exhume Christian missionary from Jewish plot’

Chief Rabbi David Lau has said that “every effort” should be made to exhume and rebury a Christian woman and covert missionary who was recently buried in a Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem. The woman in question was buried in a multistory burial chamber above a Jewish woman, since she was believed to be Jewish at the time. Jewish law prohibits Jews to be buried alongside non-Jews, and since the woman’s husband refuses to allow her to be exhumed and reburied, questions have arisen as to how to handle the situation. Amanda Elk was the wife of covert missionary and Messianic Christian Michael Elk who together posed as ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Jerusalem neighborhood of French Hill for at least five years. Michael Elk obtained an online rabbinic ordination, and pretended to be a rabbi while also serving as a scribe and mohel, and providing these religious services to members of his community. His wife Amanda died in February this year, and an incident with his daughter who attended an ultra-Orthodox school eventually led to both Michael Elk’s exposure as a missionary and a non-Jew, and the fact that Amanda was also not Jewish. Since Elk was at the time of Amanda’s death still feigning being Jewish, he had his wife buried in a Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem.

She was buried in a multistory burial plot in which several rows of burial chambers are built one on top of the other. In a letter published to the head of the burial society which operates in the cemetery, Lau said that the ideal solution would be to remove Amanda Elk’s body from the cemetery and rebury her in a non-Jewish cemetery. “This is a non-Jewish woman who pretended to be an ultra-Orthodox woman, and was a missionary, and even tried to convert people away from Judaism,” wrote Lau. “Out of respect to the Jews who bought a burial plot in order to be interred in a Jewish plot and were buried in accordance with these wishes, every effort should be made to remove her [Elk] to a non-Jewish plot,” said the chief rabbi. Lau said that if this were not possible, a fence should be erected between Elk’s burial place and those of Jews interred at the same place. It is not clear however how that would be possible given the multistory burial plot in which both women were interred. In a similar situation several years ago in Rishon L’Tzion, the High Court of Justice refused to allow a Christian to be exhumed from their grave. Lau’s comments come following an exhaustive ruling published at the beginning of June by Rabbi Shlomo Shraga, head of the “Baruch She’amar” yeshiva and son of the noted rabbinical judge Rabbi Baruch Shraga, who also ruled that it would be preferable to exhume Elk and move her to a non-Jewish plot. Shraga ruled that since the High Court has made it clear that it is not possible in such cases to exhume the non-Jew, the Jewish person buried in the same plot should be exhumed and reburied instead. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef endorsed Shraga’s ruling.
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