MERCAZ USA Newsletter — Winter 2008-2009

MERCAZ Leads Agency to Take Stand on Conversion

Quoting the verse from the Book of Psalms (119:26) "It is time to act for the Lord, for they have violated your teaching," Rabbi Vernon Kurtz, President of MERCAZ Olami, speaking at the annual meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem last month, called the continuing conflict regarding conversion in Israel "[a] crisis [that] is a violation of the teaching of G-d" and helped push through the Assembly two resolutions aiming to break the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold over the conversion process.

Among the points that the resolutions call for are the creation of an independent Conversion Authority to be located outside of the Office of the Prime Minister, the establishment of a network of special "moderate" rabbinic courts and an appeal on behalf of World Jewry to all parties running in Israel"s current election to commit themselves to resolving, once and for all, the current conversion crisis.

Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leadership has been aware of the problem of conversion in Israel since the early 1990"s, when the gates opened to allow the entrance of one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union into the Jewish State. Of those who have arrived, it is estimated that 30% are not halachically Jewish but rather are the non-Jewish dependents (spouses, children or grandchildren) of Jews who, nevertheless, also gained the right to Israeli citizenship through the Law of Return which guarantees access to Israel to Jews and all their family members.

Nearly a dozen years ago, a national commission headed by Dr. Yaakov Neeman, the modern Orthodox Finance Minister, was established with the goal of seeking a solution to the conversion crisis that would be acceptable to all streams of Judaism. The proposal that was formulated called for the creation of "joint institutes of Jewish study" where representatives of all three religious movements would teach, to be followed for the graduates by conversion ceremonies conducted solely by the Chief Rabbinate.

However, while both the Reform and Conservative Movements endorsed the plan, the Chief Rabbinate refused to accept an agreement that entailed any kind of partnership with the non-Orthodox streams.

Nevertheless, while the second part of the proposal never was implemented, the Jewish Agency did establish a network of "Joint Institutes". To date, several thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union have completed the course of study; yet, only a small number have been officially converted because the rabbinic courts charged with performing the ceremonies have refused to accept candidates who refuse to commit themselves and their Jewish family members to a traditional Orthodox lifestyle.

A few years ago, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Rabbi Haim Druckman to oversee a separate network of special conversion courts to deal with these Joint Institute graduates. However, opponents within the Chief Rabbinate, together with their supporters working within the Office of the Prime Minister, refused to cooperate with Druckman. Not only did they succeed in having Druckman discharged from his position earlier this year but the Chief Rabbinate"s representatives in Ashdod, in an unprecedented ruling, retroactively annulled the thousands of conversions that Druckman had successfully navigated through the system.

Now, as Rabbi Kurtz declared, "it is time for us to say "enough is enough" and to demand of the current and next Prime Minister of the State of Israel and all political parties not to accept the present situation. . . . It is time for Jews of goodwill to sit down and break the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate which has currently sent more people away from Judaism than bringing them closer to it. It is time for us to use all appropriate Halakhic means to reach out to those individuals who wish to join us in faith and in peoplehood and bring them under the wings of the Divine Presence."

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