Rabbi Union runs the Rabbinical Council of California, which converts about 30 people a year. He has the power to stop a potential conversions. He’s rejected hundreds of people from the program over the years. Many of them, including myself at times, have hated him for this, for doing his job.
It’s not his job as RCC administrator to be the friend of the potential convert or the business litigant. It’s his job to run a rabbinical machine and to decide what is true to the Torah and in the best interests of the Jewish community.
Rabbi Union is a gatekeeper, in mythology talk. “The threshold guardian or “gatekeeper” must test the hero’s mettle for competency before he may enter the realm. Gatekeepers are terrifying creatures such as Cerberus (the three-headed dog of the Underworld), Pan, ogres, and shape-shifters of classical mythology.”
