David Ben Moshe, a black American convert to Judaism, on Thursday received Israeli citizenship to bring to a close a five-year struggle against bureaucracy, inefficiency and perceived bigotry.
“I am [feeling] Today is completely unbelievable,” Ben Moshe told The Times of Israel, just after receiving official documents confirming his status as a new immigrant.
“I have suffered and been punished and dragged through an unjust process for five years, and it is all over. And now I can build my life in Israel with my wife, my two kids and — be’ezrat Hashem [with God’s help] More kids,” he said.
Ben Moshe, born David Bonnet, grew up in a Christian household in Maryland. As a young man, he became involved in the drug trade in Baltimore. In 2010, he was convicted on drug and firearms charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison. While in prison, he became interested in Judaism after seeing another inmate studying Hebrew lessons.
When he was released, he contacted an Orthodox rabbi in Baltimore, Rabbi Ethan Mintz of the B’nai Israel Synagogue, who inquired about conversion. He completed his conversion – as well as a bachelor’s degree from Towson University – in 2017 and shortly thereafter came to Israel to study at Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute, a pluralistic educational program. There he met Tamar Geser, who later became his wife.
He said, “I found Hashem in prison,” using a Hebrew word for God. “Becoming Jewish has changed my life so much that it has become better.”
David Ben Moshe with his wife Tamar and their two children in an undated photo. (courtesy david ben moshe)
Ben Moshe, 35, first applied for Israeli citizenship in May 2018, but was rejected by the Population and Immigration Authority, citing his criminal record as well as technical issues regarding his conversion. (For their wedding in 2018, their conversion was accepted by Israel’s chief rabbinate, which tends to be far stricter on such matters than the interior ministry, making the office’s objections all the more unusual.)
Since then, he has lived in Israel on student and work visas, which he had to renew annually, leaving him in Kafkaesque limbo at times as his appeals to the Ministry of the Interior worked their way through the system. The situation left him without state-provided healthcare, made it difficult for him and his wife to officially register their marriage, and generally left them fighting tooth and nail against an obstinate bureaucracy. left for Ben Moshe said he was told by some ministry officials that he “didn’t look like a convert,” and his Judaism was questioned.
In protest of his immigrant status, last year Ben Moshe went on a hunger strike. With the help of the ITIM organization, a religious advocacy group, Ben Moshe eventually negotiated a deal with the Ministry of the Interior, which in January 2022 agreed to grant him citizenship on January 1, 2023, after proving that he did not come back, adding another buffer year for criminal activity.
Last week, Ben Moshe made an appointment at 8 a.m. Thursday to apply for citizenship at the Population Authority office in Beersheba, where he now lives, only to once again encounter an utterly incompetent bureaucracy.
David Ben Moshe, right, with his wife Tamar and their two children on a hiking trip in Israel, in an undated photo. (Courtesy/David Ben Moshe)
“I went with my lawyer. When we tried to go in he said, ‘You made the wrong appointment. You need to come in next week,'” Ben Moshe said.
After pleading her case with two managers and a clerk, she was let into the Population and Immigration Authority office at 9:30 a.m., but had to wait another hour and a half because she had missed her 8 a.m. appointment .
Once he finally sat down with a clerk who brought his file, which was “about four inches thick” after nearly five years, Ben Moshe said he was again faced with a lengthy immigration application, despite having done so several times in the past. Had to fill
He and his lawyer got up to go, anticipating that it would take at least several days if not weeks to receive a response, but were pleasantly surprised to find that it would be much faster than that.
“They said, ‘It will take half an hour or an hour. We’ll send it to headquarters now,'” Ben Moshe said.
“We sat down to wait. I was reading Martin Luther King, Jr.’s autobiography and then they came over to us and said, ‘We just heard from headquarters: You’re approved,'” he said.
For now, Ben Moshe has a temporary citizenship document, or I know, and an immigrant visa in his US passport. He should get his permanent identity card within the next week or two.
Ben Moshe said this week that he is still in shock from the good news.
“I’m still… I still don’t know how to react,” he said. “It’s as if my whole world has changed. I love Israel very much. I want to be a part of the Jewish state.
ITIM Chief Rabbi Seth Farber said that Ben Moshe’s case was incredible, both his personal journey and his long legal battle for his citizenship, but the result was “fantastic”.
Farber told The Times of Israel, “David’s story defies fiction, but it is ultimately a story of repentance and redemption.” “During the years that ITIM represented David, there were many ups and downs, but we never lost faith that justice would be done and that the State of Israel would fully embrace David and his family.”
ITIM Chief Rabbi Seth Farber (Courtesy)
Farber, whose job often requires him to clash with the interior ministry, said he too was still baffled by the fact that the government lived up to its promise to grant citizenship to Ben Moshe this year.
“I don’t even know what to do with myself now that they’ve said yes. I’m happy to give them all the credit.”
“ITIM will continue to advocate for the more than 4,000 people who visit us each year, and will continue to work to make Israel more respectful and responsive to the Jewish needs of the Jewish people,” he said.
Rabbi Dov Lipman, whose organization Yad Lolim assisted Ben Moshe behind the scenes, also applauded the good news.
“I am very happy for David. It has been a very challenging process but his faith never wavered. At Yad Lolim we pushed as hard as we could to influence the relevant ministers and government officials and all those potential immigrants Will continue to do so for those who struggle in their aliyah process,” he said.
Ben Moshe’s first act as an Israeli citizen would be to leave the country. He and his family plan to travel to the US for a speaking tour, he said, where he will meet with diverse communities – Jewish and black – to discuss Israel, antisemitism and black-Jewish relations.
“My plan is to build my life Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) and continue to give it back to the Jewish people. I actually have a trip planned for next month. We’re going to the states to talk about Israel, to tell people that, yes, it’s a flawed country – I’ll be the first to say what it does wrong – but only because our government has never Sometimes doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean it’s still not a good place to live. It’s still an amazing place,” he said.
“And I’ll talk about black and Jewish relationships and try to make connections between the two communities that I’m a part of.”