Published: 2 December 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The Likud party has agreed to a demand from ultra-Orthodox parties to end official state recognition of conversions performed outside the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel.
After years of waiting in vain for the Knesset to pass legislation on the issue of conversions, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled last year that any conversion performed by an established community in Israel, including from the Reform or Conservative movements, would be recognised by the state for the purposes of citizenship.
While the move did not recognise non-Orthodox conversions for religious purposes, including weddings, it clarified the question of who is considered Jewish for migration purposes.
The ruling was furiously denounced at the time by Haredi political parties and has continued to be the subject of fierce criticism since then.
Now, according to a Channel 13 report, the ultra-Orthodox parties — the Sephardi Shas party and Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party — have demanded that the future coalition pass a law which would effectively overturn the High Court ruling on non-Orthodox conversions, together with a second ruling which allowed Orthodox conversions outside of the official Chief Rabbinate and approved bodies.
The “State Conversion Law,” which was proposed last year by Shas, would give official recognition only to conversions performed through the government’s Conversion Authority, which only recognises Orthodox conversions.
The proposed law would not affect recognition of non-Orthodox conversions performed outside Israel, which have long been accepted by Israel for the purposes of migration under the Law of Return.
In a related move, the coalition also proposes removing recognition of Jews from those with a Jewish grandparent. This change would affect Russian and Ukrainian migrants, who have been able to use their Jewish heritage to migrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
The changes would not work retroactively, meaning those who have already received citizenship based on either non-Orthodox conversion or a Jewish grandparent would not have it revoked.
The head of the Reform movement in Israel, Anna Kislanski, slammed the Likud party’s reported concession, saying such a bill would alienate progressive Jewry.
“The apparent shameful surrender by Likud to the demand of the extremist ultra-Orthodox parties to pass a law that would end recognition of Reform conversions in Israel will have only one result: In its 75th year, the State of Israel will cease to be the homeland of the entire Jewish people,” Kislanski said in a statement.
Leading UK Reform Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain wrote that the move would fracture Jewish unity.
“What will happen to the millions of Jews around the world whom this will exclude from citizenship? Even if they have no intention of making aliyah, it will cast doubt on their Jewishness in their own eyes as well as their peers.
“And is it unreasonable to assume that these people will be less inclined to support Israel from the Diaspora - support that Israel has long counted as a given?”
READ MORE
Report: Likud agrees to pass bill to end recognition of non-Rabbinate conversions (Times of Israel)
Netanyahu’s coalition of chaos is endangering our fragile Jewish unity (Jewish Chronicle)
Who Is a Jew? If Israel’s Next Government Has Its Way, Not These People (Haaretz)
Photo: Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef during a meeting to address a proposal to overhaul the conversion system in 2018 (Office Chief Rabbinate)
