Published: 4 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
EARLIER THIS WEEK, Israel's High court of Justice ruled that individuals who convert to Judaism in Israel through the Reform or Conservative movements are entitled to Israeli citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.
Responses to the ruling have been predictable. The usual critics of the Supreme Court – the right wing, populist politicians and the ultra-Orthodox – have accused the court of undermining the will of God and the Jewish people.
The usual supporters of the Supreme Court – the left, liberal politicians, and the secular and progressive Jewish movements – are cheering the court for recognising Jewish pluralism. The former viewed the court's decision as a threat to the integrity and cohesion of the Jewish people. The latter praised the court for making Israel more inclusive and democratic.
The immediate effect of the ruling is limited. Jews who have converted through the Conservative and Reform movements abroad have been recognised as Jews for purposes of citizenship for over two decades, as long as they have been converted in a recognised Jewish community.
The court has specifically made it clear that it is applicable only to individuals who are legally in Israel, and so, contrary to the accusations of the ultra-Orthodox – and in line with the policies of the Reform and Conservative movements – Israel's immigration policies are not about to be changed through a mass immigration of rapidly converted asylum seekers.
Given Israel's intertwining of religion and state, it is a vexing political issue, creating divisions between and within political parties and blocs. For this reason, politicians, and especially legislators, attempt to avoid the issue.
Most significantly, the ruling pertains only to citizenship. The chief rabbinate, which is increasingly becoming ultra-Orthodox and has sole authority over religious matters in Israel, will continue to refuse to consider individuals who converted through Conservative or Reform auspices authentically Jewish.
That is, while the Ministry of Interior will be forced to register them as Jews, the chief rabbinate will not recognise them as Jews; they will not be eligible for state recognition of their marriage, nor will they be allowed to be buried as Jews in any of the cemeteries which are maintained by the burial societies under the chief rabbinate.
Still, the ruling will have tremendous emotional and personal meaning for those Jews in Israel, perhaps as many as several dozen, who converted in Israel through the Reform and Conservative movements and have suffered the indignity of the rejection of their citizenship by the Ministry of the Interior, which has long been in the hands of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties.
And the importance of the symbolic recognition of the recognition of Reform and Conservative communities cannot be overstated.
In the long run, the ruling may prove to be another crack in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox hold on religious life in Israel. But in the short run, its most powerful effect will be on the upcoming elections.
This is not how incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to run his campaign. The question of who is a Jew, which is the ultimate question behind all of the decisions regarding Jewish religious life in Israel, is theologically and ideologically vexing.
And given Israel's intertwining of religion and state, it thus becomes a particularly vexing political issue, too, creating divisions between and within political parties and blocs. For this reason, politicians, and especially legislators, attempt to avoid the issue.
Indeed, the initial petitions to the court that resulted in the ruling were brought 15 years ago – and for 12 of those years, Netanyahu has been prime minister.
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Now, the court has forced his hand. Netanyahu wanted to run an election campaign that would rally all of his constituencies around his successful efforts to vaccinate the country and bring Israel back into at least a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy.
Instead, he will now have to decide whom to alienate: the ultra-Orthodox coalition partners he will need to form a coalition, or the members of his own party and other natural allies who, in response to the ultra-Orthodox flouting of the COVID restrictions, are quickly losing patience with them. Or the international, and especially American, Jewish community, most of whom are non-Orthodox and support religious pluralism.
Netanyahu wanted to run an election campaign that would rally all of his constituencies around his successful efforts to vaccinate the country and bring Israel back into at least a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy.
The ultra-Orthodox parties are vowing to introduce legislation to nullify the ruling and have made it clear that they expect Netanyahu to support them. Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman and MK Moshe Gafni (both of United Torah Judaism), along with representatives of Shas, have declared that as a condition for joining any coalition that Netanyahu will form, they will demand the advancement of an "override clause" that will allow the Knesset to overturn High Court rulings.
But within Netanyahu's own party, and among other potential coalition partners, support for an override clause, which will turn the court into little more than a rubber stamp and will provide the religious parties with unrestrained power, is weak at best.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, has made attacks on the courts' purported biases against the political right in general and against him in particular a keystone of his political strategy.
But in an effort to bolster his assertions that he is innocent, he has strenuously attempted to avoid any indication that he, personally, is in favour of legislation that would limit the powers of the courts or would grant him immunity from prosecution with an overriding clause of his own.
Netanyahu will now have to decide whom to alienate: the ultra-Orthodox partners he will need to form a coalition, or the members of his own party and other natural allies who are quickly losing patience with the ultra-Orthodox over their flouting of Covid rules
Nor can Netanyahu, who regularly presents himself as the representative of world Jewry, allow himself to offend the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel by saying that their conversions don't count.
And he is already under fire for not denouncing the political advertisements put out by United Torah Judaism party, which claims that the Reform and Conservative movements will even convert dogs and compares these denominations to a "Jewish mutation," raising age-old anti-Semitic tropes about Jews as the spreaders of disease.
However, there is still one way that this could play out in Netanyahu's favour. Prominent rivals Naftali Bennett (Yamina) and Gideon Sa'ar (New Hope), each of whom could be a kingmaker and have pledged not to form a coalition with Netanyahu, have both taken moderate positions on issues of religion and state, attempting to court liberal as well as right-wing voters.
The High Court ruling could anger some religious hardliners to vote for more extreme parties such as the supremacist Religious Zionism. In exchange for the legitimacy they will gain from serving in the government, such parties will likely agree to form a coalition with Netanyahu under most circumstances.
So far, the Likud has only put out a somewhat vague and low-key statement, which reads, “the High Court made a decision that endangers the ‘Law of Return,’ which is a cornerstone of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Only a vote for Likud will ensure a stable right-wing government that will return sovereignty to the people and the Knesset.”
But what this means in practical political terms, and how this will play out in the elections and subsequent horse-trading that will leads to a coalition or a fifth round of elections in two years, remains to be seen.
READ MORE
EDITORIAL: UTJ must apologise for deplorable attack ad on Reform Jews (Jerusalem Post)
This insulting advertisement is a disgrace
Ultra-Orthodox party leader disavows colleague’s ‘shiksas’ comment (Times of Israel)
UTJ chairman says MK Yitzhak Pindrus was wrong to use the pejorative term, but insists ultra-Orthodox rabbis should be the authority on conversions to Judaism
Photo: The heads of the Jewish Reform and Conservative movements carry Torah scrolls as they march to the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City in 2016 (Sebastian Scheiner/AP)
