Impostor Lebanese Chosson Wants To Immigrate To Israel And Convert: “Help Me”

The Lebanese-Muslim chosson who pretended to be a frum bochur and married a Sefardic girl from Brooklyn has launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of reaching Eretz Yisroel and converting properly.

“I do not want to make myself a victim or someone who deserves sympathy,” he says. “I was 100% wrong.”

Eliyahu Haliwa asks for everyone’s mercy.

“For years, I lived as a Jew, hurting many people, spending countless Shabbosos with beloved rabbis, being very involved in the Jewish life at the University of Texas, and even occasionally reading the Torah at Bnei Binyamin, a Torah center in Brooklyn. Worst of all, I married a girl in the Jewish community in Brooklyn. I went down into a pit that I had knowingly dug into for many years.”

Haliwa says that “the religion of Islam never spoke to me,” noting that he became interested in Judaism “long before I even met my kallah.”

He further says that “In 2015, when I first arrived in the US and was only 17, I approached a local Reform community in my area in Houston to inquire about an official conversion. If you’re wondering why it was a Reform synagogue, it’s because I just Googled shuls near me, and that’s what popped up as the shul closest to me, but they rejected me.”

He says that he began to connect to Jewish life on campus. “That’s how I first came to Chabad, when I was there. They asked me if I was Jewish, I answered in the affirmative, and at that point in time I just tried to connect more with Jewish groups, without thinking carefully or long term.”

“I understand that [what I did] was a huge mistake and a mistake in judgment. On the contrary, [if I would have been forthcoming], Chabad would have given me active assistance to help me convert in the right way.”

Haliwa explains that he did not tell his kallah the truth, because “I came to know that the Syrian Jewish community has a strictly enforced order from 1935 which forbids marriage to geirim, although conversion is something approved by Torah and halacha. I still understand the context in which it came into force. Apparently, at that time, before the community established schools and resources of its own, many young Syrian Jews attended public schools and mingled with gentile girls, and the community, fearing what might follow, decided to excommunicate those in the community who would marry strangers in hopes of preventing assimilation.”

Haliwa says that he thought to justify it: “If we had children, they would be halachic Jews anyway. I thought this at that moment in a selfish and very shameful way.

“What has been done is done, and I have no way of undoing the serious damage I have caused. The only thing I can do is repent and repent and prove myself to the Jewish community in general, but especially to my kallah. Forgiveness is not something I can expect, let alone demand. This is something I will carry for the rest of my life. But I beg for another opportunity. The immediate thing I can do is go through an Orthodox conversion process.

“I cannot cancel my wrong, and I take full blame for the terrible pain I caused. However, I want to be responsible and I want to convert.”

Haliwa says that “in the United States, almost certainly no one would want to touch this [case], but in Israel the situation is different.”

Haliwa says that he received offers from a number of people in the country who want to help him convert. “When the news of my situation became known, I lost my job as a software engineer working for a member of the Syrian Jewish community, so I ask for good people to help me through donations, as much as it takes.”

{Matzav.com}