Court recognizes non-Orthodox overseas conversion of Israeli residents
By Yuval Yoaz
Fri., April 01, 2005

Israeli residents who travel overseas solely for the purpose of undergoing a non-Orthodox conversion are entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, the High Court of Justice ruled yesterday in a 7-4 decision.

The precedent-setting decision was handed down in a petition filed in 1999 by 17 tourists and legal foreign workers who have lived in Israel as temporary residents for many years. All of the petitioners studied for conversion in Israel, but underwent the actual conversion overseas.

While overseas residents who underwent non-Orthodox conversions in their own communities have long been eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return, the state has hitherto refused to recognize overseas conversions by Israeli residents unless the convert resided in the community where he converted for at least a year.

"The Jewish nation is one," Supreme Court President Aharon Barak wrote in the verdict. "It is dispersed around the world, in communities. Whoever converted to Judaism in one of these communities overseas has joined the Jewish nation by so doing, and is to be seen as a `Jew' under the Law of Return. This can encourage immigration to Israel and maintain the unity of the Jewish nation in the Diaspora and in Israel."

Barak emphasized that the overseas community must be "recognized," but said the convert should not be required to join the converting community. "Judaic studies are not part of conversion, but preparation for it," he wrote, and the petitioners, who studied in Israel but were converted overseas, should therefore be viewed as having converted overseas. The state had argued that these were effectively not overseas conversions at all.

Several of the justices, however, ruled that since overseas conversion entitles the convert to Israeli citizenship, the state has the right to "set criteria for the recognition of overseas conversions." Lawyers working for the state said that such criteria could include a "minimum time" that the convert must spend in the relevant overseas community overseas - a criterion that, if adopted, would effectively restore the status quo and render yesterday's ruling meaningless.

Since all of the petitioners underwent their formal conversions overseas, the justices were able to avoid the question of whether non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel should be recognized under the Law of Return. About 10 months ago, the court ruled that the Law of Return applies to people who convert in Israel, but did not specify whether they meant only Orthodox conversion - the only kind recognized by the state - or also non-Orthodox conversion.

Yesterday's ruling predictably elicited furious reactions from the Orthodox and joyful ones from the non-Orthodox movements and secular politicians.

Israel's chief rabbis, Shlomo Amar and Yonah Metzger, along with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and former chief rabbis Mordechai Eliyahu, Avraham Shapira and Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, declared: "There is no value or weight to `conversions' not performed by an Orthodox rabbinical court in accordance with the conversion procedures specified in the Shulhan Aruch. Any such conversion, under its various names such as `Reform' or `Conservative,' has no validity, and anyone who undergoes such conversion is still a gentile in every respect."

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai called the ruling an "explosives belt that has formed an identity terror attack against the Jewish people," and his party collected the necessary 25 signatures from MKs to convene a special Knesset session next Wednesday, even though the house is officially recessed. "This is the most painful day in the history of Israel. This is disaster, this is destruction, and it will lead to a rift in the nation," he said. "Their ruling says there will be no more Jewish people."

The Israel Religious Action Center - the Israeli branch of the Reform movement, and the organization that represented the petitioners in court - was pleased with the verdict, but disappointed that it did not extend to conversions in Israel. The Conservative Movement's response was similar.

The petitioners themselves also had mixed reactions. "I didn't sleep all night, I'm very excited," said Justina Castro, minutes after the court that she would be recognized as a Jew under the Law of Return. "But until I see the identity card, I won't believe it really worked out."

Castro came to Israel from Peru legally in 1983, and later studied Judaism with the local Reform community. In 1996 she traveled to Argentina and completed the conversion process during a six-month sojourn. Then she began her nine-year struggle for recognition as a Jew. "They kept telling us `another year, another six months,'" she said.

Secular politicians, however, were unequivocally enthusiastic. Shinui MK Etti Livni called the ruling "a historic breakthrough," adding that Reform Judaism would now cease to be a stepchild of the Jewish people. Yahad leader Yossi Beilin said the ruling would "finally break the Orthodox monopoly over conversion."
 

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