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A bill before the Israeli Knesset that would give full authority for conversions to the Chief Rabbinate is causing a huge controversy in Israel and in the United States.The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved 5-4, on first reading to plenum on July 12, a bill that would give the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate a monopoly on conversions to Judaism. The bill must go before second and third readings before being brought to a vote in the Knesset and can be revised during the process.

Under current practice, Israel recognizes only conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis inside Israel. But, under the Law of Return, people converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside the country are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship like other Jews. The proposed legislation would give Israel’s chief rabbinate the legal power to decide whether any conversion outside Israel is legitimate.

The groups most likely to be affected would be about a half-million immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and those who converted to Judaism abroad and could now be denied Israeli citizenship.

The bill, supported by various religious and right-wing parties, essentially would give the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate the power to decide who is Jewish and who is not. At the same time, it would delegitimize non-Orthodox rabbis outside Israel. Opponents of the bill say that passage of the bill would defeat efforts to promote a more flexible and Halakhic conversion process and would marginalize the non-Orthodox Jewish movements.

The bill has set off a storm in and outside Israel.

“I understand the concern of the Conservative and Reform movement,” said Rabbi Barry Gelman. “From the perspective of Israel, it is already a fact that the rabbinate controls conversions in Israel. They also have retroactively nullified conversions. They have already been notoriously well-known for deciding which conversions are good and which are not good – that is, not acceptable according to Halakha.

”Rabbi Gelman is senior rabbi of United Orthodox Synagogues and president of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a worldwide organization of rabbis founded to promote Modern Orthodoxy and serious study of Torah and Halakha and to advocate policies and implement actions on behalf of World Jewry and humankind.

“The key here, which is why I’m not so concerned yet, is what this bill does is turn into law what, in fact, is already being done,” said Rabbi Gelman. “So, how much is really being lost in that part of the negotiations? That remains to be seen, which is why I’m not ready to stand squarely behind the bill.

“On the plus side, the bill would allow city rabbis in Israel to perform conversions without the need to work with the Chief Rabbinate’s rabbinical courts. That could help in two ways. One, which is significant, is it could help liberalize the conversion standards so that the close to half-million Russian immigrants who are of Jewish stock – if not Halakhicly Jewish – can convert. The new bill is taking an approach to conversion that would not necessarily require complete mitzvah observance.

“Second, the bill will generally offer a more realistic and, in many cases, a user-friendly process for everybody.

So, there is a lot of plus side.

“The American movements are looking at the bill from the American perspective. There are very few Reform or Conservative conversions done in Israel. This bill could be the answer to the problem that many people in Israel have been complaining about. But, because it may call into question some conversions done in Israel, it has caused an uproar.

”Because of the possible upsides to the legislation, Rabbi Gelman explained that he was not ready to condemn the bill. He was hopeful that Conservative and Reform movement leaders, who have arrived in Israel on Sunday to lobby the bill’s chief sponsor, Israeli Beiteinu MK David Rotem, will find a way to alter the language in a way that is more acceptable to American critics.

One important question raised by Religious Zionists: Does the Chief Rabbinate understand their responsibility toward making conversion a realistic possibility for these half-million Russian Jews?

And, a second question raised by the Conservative and Reform movements in the United States: Does this bill disenfranchise the majority of American Jews?Rabbi Gelman argues there are well-established Halakhic ways to make the conversion process doable for these Russian Jews.

“These are not necessarily methods we would use for individual converts,” he cautioned. “But because the issue of these Russian Jews and the future of their children as well as the future of the state is affected, the rabbinate should be exercising nationalist or Religious Zionist Halakhic thinking. They should realize their decision would affect the entire country.

“We have handed the keys to the kingdom to anti-Zionists.

“But, there are city rabbis who are Zionist. There are city rabbis who understand what needs to be done in regards to converting these Russian Jews. So, that’s why I think the bill has an upside for the state. I understand it has a downside for Reform and Conservative Jews.

”Danny Horwitz, rabbi of the Greenfield Chapel at Beth Yeshurun, has been a Conservative pulpit rabbi for 30 years. He views the conversion bill as a move fraught with political peril.

“Sometimes, power politics takes precedence over what’s best for the citizens – in this case, members of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Horwitz. “The bill is designed to place total control over the definition of Jewish identity in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate, probably the most extreme ultra-Orthodox element in Israel with any power. Not only will this be a problem in terms of recognizing conversions, but in its current form, it could affect the status of people who want to make aliyah. The rabbinate has the desire to maintain control over conversions. But, they have also retroactively annulled conversions.

“The bill maintains a certain amount of power and employment within the ultra-Orthodox community. But, as we know, the current situation of the ultra-Orthodox community is not sustainable. A majority from the ultra-Orthodox community does not work. So, where does their money come from? It must come from the government. They currently have a certain amount of votes in the Knesset. But, I also foresee a situation in 10 to 20 years where you may reach a point where 50 percent of the people who are 18 years old won’t serve in the army.

”For Conservative and Reform Jews throughout the world, the bill makes no sense, argues Rabbi Horwitz.

“Given Israel’s need to deal with much more existential problems, it doesn’t make sense that Israel would create this kind of slap in the face to the communities of Jews who have stood behind Israel. That’s part of the reason why [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu came out on Sunday against the bill.

“However, I don’t take it for granted just because he came out against the bill that it may fail.

”Rabbi Horwitz also views the conversion bill as harmful to Modern Orthodox interests. “In general, modern Orthodox have allowed the status quo in Israel to continue,” he said. “They have hoped they would remain legitimized – that their conversions would remain legitimized by the Chief Rabbinate. Now, many of them are having their conversions rejected by the Israeli rabbinate. In my judgment, if they don’t stand up for the rights of those who are being undermined, they will also be squeezed out of the business of conversions.

”What should American Jews do? Rabbi Horwitz suggests that U.S. Jews must make a separation between those existential issues and the conversion bill.

“We have to stand with Israel,” he said. “But, we also have to be willing to say to Israel: This is not the kind of Israel we want to see. You can’t expect young American Jews to support a people whose thinking is the same ilk as the folks in Tehran. When you have women attacked for carrying a sefer Torah at the Western Wall, that’s not going to warm the hearts of American Jews. It’s not realistic for Israel to expect that every Jew will give them a pass for this behavior and allow Judaism to be defined by its most extreme elements.

“Ben-Gurion said in 1939, when the British created the White Paper: ‘We will fight the Nazis as if there was no White Paper and fight the White Paper as if there were no Nazis.’

“I think we ought to fight the enemies of Israel as if we didn’t have this internal problem in Israel. And, we ought to deal with the internal problem of freedom of religion in Israel as if she did not have external enemies.”

Uriel Hellman

NEW YORK (JTA) – If Knesset member David Rotem has his way, Israel will enact a new law to make it easier for non-Jewish Israelis to convert to Judaism.

This will have the effect of better integrating tens of thousands of Israelis of Russian extraction, if not hundreds of thousands, into Israeli Jewish society, according to Rotem and Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, whose party, the Russian-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu, is sponsoring the bill. Most important, they say, the measure will make it easier for the Russians to marry other Israelis.

“This is not a one-time placebo but a real, serious effort to keep the Jewish people together,” Ayalon told JTA.

But critics, including some Diaspora Jews and non-Orthodox leaders in Israel, are not happy with the proposal. They say the bill does not go far enough to ease the conversion process, expands the power of the Chief Rabbinate, delegitimizes non-Orthodox conversions and does nothing to secure recognition in Israel for conversions performed in the Diaspora.

The objections are part of what prompted a U.S. explaining tour this week by the two legislators from Yisrael Beiteinu, whose leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, promised in the last campaign to tackle marriage and conversion issues. Rotem and Ayalon spent three days visiting American Jewish organizational leaders in a bid to allay concerns about the proposed bill.

The point of the tour, Ayalon explained, was “to alleviate any concerns from our brothers and sisters in the Conservative and Reform movements that they would be adversely impacted by any form of the bill.”

Rotem and Ayalon also met with the Orthodox Union and federation executives, among others, to discuss the proposed legislation.

“I want them not to worry it’s going to harm them,” Rotem said. “This law doesn’t deal with conversions done abroad. We have to solve an internal Israeli problem.”

Rabbi Uri Regev, a leading Reform rabbi in Israel and now president of Hiddush, a group that advocates for religious freedom in Israel, says that American Jewish leaders should not be distracted from the real harm the bill does in Israel.

“The devil is in the details,” Regev said. “What he’s not telling you is that the bill would result in serious ramifications in terms of the legal status of converts in general, of non-Orthodox converts in particular, and will not provide Russian olim with the kind of access and protection he claims.”

The conversion bill aims to address several problems with the status quo in Israel, according to Rotem, the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

In the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people from the former Soviet Union immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants the right to Israeli citizenship to anyone with a Jewish grandparent. While most of the Russian-speaking immigrants were Jewish according to halachah, or Jewish law, many did not have a Jewish mother and so were classified in Israel as non-Jews. That has led to all sorts of problems for the estimated 350,000 to 400,000 Israelis in this category, particularly when it comes to marriage, which is controlled by religious authorities.

Israeli law makes no accommodation for civil marriage, whether between a Jew and a non-Jew or between two people of no religion. So the only way these Israelis can wed is if they convert to Judaism — no easy process in Israel.

Would-be converts must take classes, pass exams and pledge to be religiously observant, and the approval for conversions is subject to the whims of special conversion courts. Complicating matters further, rabbinical courts in Israel in the past two years have invalidated a number of conversions performed years ago, casting doubt on thousands more conversions and provoking a firestorm of controversy. The Israeli Rabbinate also has circumscribed acceptance of conversions performed overseas, including Orthodox conversions, rankling Diaspora rabbis.

Rotem says his bill would address some, but not all, of these problems.

The measure would empower any rabbi who is or was on a district rabbinate in Israel, or was or is the chief rabbi of a city or town, to perform a conversion for any Israeli regardless of place of residence. This would free would-be converts from the whims of the special conversion courts. It also would eliminate the current curricular requirements for converts, instead leaving conversion to the discretion of local rabbis.

Under the proposed law, conversions could be voided only if the rabbinical court that conducted the conversion determined it took place under false pretenses, subject to the approval of the president of the national Rabbinic Court of Appeals. And under Rotem’s proposal, a convert seeking to marry but encountering obstinacy at his local rabbinate could return to the rabbinical court that converted him to acquire his marriage license.

A few months ago, Rotem managed to get a separate bill passed to enable couples with no religion to enter into civil unions. Critics complain, however, that the law’s limitation to couples of no religion limits its impact to some 100-200 couples in Israel per year, and that it leaves unclear whether these unions will be recognized overseas as marriages. The bill does nothing to help interfaith couples, who are barred by law from marrying in Israel, or Jews who want to get married civilly rather than through the rabbinate.

The conversion bill faces significant hurdles in the Knesset. Ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, parties are fighting provisions of the bill that would ease the conversion process, and some non-Orthodox leaders complain that certain provisions of the bill may make matter worse for converts.

Rotem says the conversion bill is essential for Israel’s future. Without it, he warns, the non-Jewish, non-Arab population of Israel will swell to 1 million by 2035.

“There is a historic opportunity here to solve and dismantle a ticking time bomb that when it explodes, we in Israel won’t know what to do with ourselves,” Rotem told JTA.

Regev, a staunch critic of the bill, says that while well meaning, the measure contains several dangerous provisions. For one, it expands the Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate’s jurisdiction by bringing conversions, until now the province of special conversion courts, under the explicit authority of the Chief Rabbinate.

For another, it requires the consent of the president of the nation’s Rabbinic Court of Appeals for a conversion to be revoked. While that might be an improvement over the current situation, in which lower rabbinic courts are unilaterally voiding conversions, it also raises the specter that the position could be taken up by a fundamentalist who would take a tougher line against converts. Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is seen as a relative moderate, occupies the post until 2014.

Moreover, the conversion bill does not guarantee that rabbinates in Israel will recognize conversions performed overseas. While Israeli law recognizes such conversions as valid, in practice Israeli rabbinates often disregard them and bar such converts from marrying Jews — particularly in the case of non-Orthodox conversions.

Rotem dismisses this problem, saying that a convert from the United States always can find some rabbinate in Israel willing to grant him a marriage license — it’s just a matter of “legwork” going from city to city to find one.

Regev says this is ridiculous.

“Instead of allowing people to marry as they see fit, with the starting point being freedom of marriage, there are acrobatics when the chief rabbi of the city makes problems for a convert who wants to marry,” he said.

This scenario also opens the door for fundamentalist rabbis to exercise whatever coercive power they can — from ostracization to intimidation — to compel members of lenient district rabbinates to fall into line.

Just how liberal a district rabbinate can be in Israel remains to be seen. They are exclusively Orthodox and frequent battlegrounds between moderate and fundamentalist Orthodox rabbis.

Ultimately, Rotem acknowledges that his bills may not go far enough, but says they are an improvement over the status quo.

“Let’s start with this,” he said.