Israel Court OKs Non - Orthodox Conversions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 31, 2005

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday granted recognition to non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism partly performed in Israel, capping a six-year legal battle with a sharp blow to the country's Orthodox monopoly over religious affairs.

The decision drew harsh condemnation from the rabbinical establishment and cut to the heart of the perennial question: Who is a Jew?

The Reform and Conservative movements praised the ruling as an important step in their efforts to win recognition in Israel. It ``is one of the major steps toward pluralism'' in a country struggling to be Jewish and democratic at the same time, said Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Reform movement's Israel Religious Action Center.

The Reform and Conservative movements, the largest streams of Judaism in the United States, have been largely sidelined in Israel by the Orthodox religious establishment. The Orthodox chief rabbinate wields a monopoly over religious rites such as marriages, divorces and burials, and Orthodox schools and seminaries receive the vast majority of the government religious budget each year.

Under the current contradictory practice, Israel recognizes only conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis inside Israel, although people converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside the country are eligible for citizenship under Israel's ``Law of Return,'' which grants automatic citizenship to anyone who is Jewish.

Thursday's case was brought in 1999 by 17 foreigners who studied for their conversions in Israel, then traveled abroad for the ceremonies to try to get around the limitations. Israeli authorities had ruled the Law of Return did not apply to them.

The decision Thursday accepted the foreigners' conversions, but the judges did not rule on whether those who complete non-Orthodox conversions performed exclusively in Israel would be recognized.

Reform and Conservative leaders had been hoping for such a blanket decision. Thursday's ruling also did not affect continued Orthodox control over weddings and other religious rituals.

``This is another battle won, but the final campaign is not yet over. We will continue this struggle until our rabbis are fully recognized in Israel,'' said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, president of the Conservative movement in Israel. ``We have no doubt that the ruling given today will help us in the future battles we still face.''

Orthodox rabbis say the liberal movements' conversions don't meet the rigorous standards spelled out under Jewish law. They warned Thursday that the decision would encourage foreign workers or Palestinians to undergo quickie conversions to gain citizenship and endanger the country's Jewish character.

``All these so-called conversions by this or that stream are not conversions. It's all a lie,'' Shlomo Amar, one of the country's two chief rabbis, told Army Radio. ``This is a disaster for the Jewish people.''

Amar threatened to compile lists of conversions that rabbis consider illegitimate. ``We will have to keep track of them because they will not be allowed to marry,'' he said.

The ultra-Orthodox Shas Party said it collected enough signatures to hold a special session in parliament next week to debate the court ruling. Despite the uproar, Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz, whose ministry oversees immigration, pledged to carry out the ruling.

``I think that it provides solutions for a great many people who are living among us today and are forced to go through a very difficult, frustrating and exhausting procedure'' of becoming Israelis, Pines-Paz, a leader of the centrist Labor Party, told Israel Radio.

Reform and Conservative leaders said the ruling was a step toward Israeli acceptance of non-Orthodox conversions conducted entirely in Israel. They pointed to clauses saying that a formal Orthodox monopoly on conversion would require new legislation. They also repeated pledges not to perform wholesale conversions on foreign workers.

For the petitioners, many of whom have remained in Israel as temporary residents, the decision ended years of uncertainty.

``Justice has been served,'' said John Agudelo, 43, who moved to Israel from Colombia in 1991 and traveled to Argentina six years later for a Reform conversion. ``It's not logical for the Jewish nation, that you can't convert in the Jewish state.''

The issue of who is a Jew in Israel has taken on added importance in recent decades with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia with disputed Jewish origins.
 

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