Chief Rabbis Threaten Not to Recognize Converts
A new bill that is being presented to the Israeli parliament next week aims to break the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate and allow municipal rabbis to perform conversions in Israel. If passed, the bill would make it easier for an estimated 400,000 Israelis, most of them from the former Soviet Union, to formally convert to Judaism if they so choose.
Conversion is the only way that most of these Israeli citizens can get married in Israel. As there is no civil marriage in the Jewish state, issues of personal status including marriage and divorce are controlled by the country’s Chief Rabbinate, which has become more ultra-Orthodox in past years. According to Jewish law, Jewishness is matrilineal, and the only way to be defined as Jewish is to have a Jewish mother or a recognized Orthodox conversion.
To get married in Israel, the Chief Rabbinate requires proof of Jewishness, often a copy of one’s parents’ Jewish marriage contract. However, under Communism, when practicing religion was illegal, many Jews were unable to celebrate religious Jewish marriages and would not have the required documents.
Rabbi David Stav, the Chairman of Tzohar, says there are an estimated 100,000 children under the age of 18 who are not legally Jewish. About 4,500 more are born each year.
“This is a nuclear bomb threat for the Jewish identity of the State of Israel,” he told The Media Line. “Eventually, the Jewish identity of the state of Israel will not exist.”
That leaves tens of thousands of people who can’t get married in the country where they have citizens. A growing number are getting married in Cyprus or the Czech Republic, and the civil marriage there is then recognized by the state of Israel. Others are choosing not to get married at all.
Currently, only about 2000 people are able to convert each year, half of them via a special program called Nativ, run by the Israeli army, via one of the four conversion courts in the country.
The bill, which is sponsored by MK Elazar Stern, hopes to establish up to 30 religious courts to enable tens of thousands of people to convert. He is working with Tzohar, an organization of liberal rabbis.
In the 1990’s more than one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union moved to Israel and became citizens. They came under the Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship, and generous financial incentives, to anybody with one Jewish grandparent. These immigrants quickly learned Hebrew and integrated into Israeli society. Now many of them say they want to officially convert.
“What motivates me is the connection between Judaism and democracy,” MK Elazar Stern told The Media Line. “If our Judaism will not be connected to the current Israeli society and the Jewish people around the world, we will not survive in the Middle East.”
However the Chief Rabbis have already said that even if the law passes next week, they will not recognize any conversions done in these new courts. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who originally supported the bill, has withdrawn his support, apparently under pressure from the Orthodox parties in the Israeli Knesset.
Yet the bill’s sponsors are determined to push ahead.
“We have to present Judaism in the most pluralistic way for candidates to come to Judaism,” Stern said. “We need a more friendly process.”