The Muslim chosson who impersonated a Jew and married a frum girl spoke publicly for the first time since the story about him broke.
In an interview with Talkline’s Zev Brenner, Eliyahu Haliwa recounted for the first time his life in Lebanon, and his love of Judaism and Israel.
“I have no Palestinian friends, and I have no connection to Islam, I have never been to a mosque,” he said. “I searched for Judaism, and found the Torah and felt very connected and felt it was for me. I studied Hebrew alone in Lebanon, my parents did not know; I hid it from them.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE:
{Matzav.com}
He may very well be sincere, but there will be HUGE trust issues, obviously.
However, if he does the correct thing, and takes the hurdles one step ata time. This can work out well for him and Klal yisroel.
Mr. Haliwa was told by the NYPD that he could file a defamation suit against a certain individual and a social media outlet. Haliwa, responded that as he is serious about converting he couldn’t consider mesira. Yet our community has indviduals filing blatantly false restraining orders r’l! Should Haliwa convert he will be a diffcult tzapchas to klal yisroel. We must take a strong stand against mesira as it is a aveira chamorah which involves chillul shem shmayim r’l.
Mesira became muttar during the initial stages of Coronavirus last year. Mesira became a mitzva. They called names to those that dared to go outside without their dirty disposable masks on.
posting here will not get your point across to the people in charge . your wasting your time
Being that he’s so strong for being Jewish, if I were him, I would do a deep investigation of his mother AND her mother or beyond. One of them might very well have been kidnapped as a Jewish child or a runaway Jewish girl. Many Muslims have Jewish ancestors.
If you listened to the audio, why is your title screaming ‘Muslim’?
If he was sincere then he should have been megayir, instead of just pretending to be Jewish.
Didn’t you listen to his audio? He was not familiar with Rabbis and after trying to convert by a reform guy he erroneously thought that it’s Jewish policy to never convert a Muslim. He didn’t realize that reform guys are no rabbis. He seems 100% sincere and I’d advise him to go to an Orthodox Rabbi to do giyur kehalachah.
I searched for Judaism, and found the Torah and felt very connected and felt it was for me. I studied Hebrew alone in Lebanon, my parents did not know; I hid it from them.
If he was searching so hard for Torah then also could have searched for a Beis Din to convert him. Had he been some single older bochur hanging around and living off the kindness of the frum community who was discovered to be a non-Jew from Lebanon I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him convert. Being that he married an innocent girl by the means of such terrible deception, no way.
First let him work on making amends to her. Then we an consider his sincerity in really wanting to be a Jew
Hashem’s seal is Truth – Emes. If he is sincere about wanting to convert, he must learn not to lie.
He didn’t just lie once. He lived a lie, posing to be something that he was not, namely, a Jew. And then he told endless elaborate lies to back it up including a fake career, a fictitious family tree and more.
Lying is not one of the shiva mitzvos b’nei Noach but if he were to convert, every lie would be a transgression of מדבר שקר תרחק. What does he need a pack of aveiros for if he finds it so hard to tell the truth?
All the crying in the world will not help a Beis Din trust him unless he proves himself to be worthy of that trust which includes being honest even if it will negatively affect him and even if he believes it will cause every Beis Din to turn him down. If he really is sincere in his desire to come under the Kanfei haShechina, then he should cry out to Hashem to help him become Jewish, act with honesty and work up the trust. If he is worthy, then Hashem will open the doors for him.
By the way, he may keep Shabbos overall if he wants to and just be sure to do one thing that is chillul Shabbos, such as carrying something 4 amos in a place without an eiruv.
Who knows? Perhaps it’s true that an investigation may turn up some Jewish blood on his maternal side. That is something that the woman he married would need to investigate to be sure that she’s not an eishes ish.