Bill to Redefine ‘Who Is a Jew’ Loses in Knesset

After intensive lobbying by government leaders and prominent American Jews who argued that it posed a serious threat to world Jewish unity, the Israeli Parliament on Wednesday voted down the “who is a Jew?” bill proposed by the country’s Orthodox religious Establishment.

“I ask the leaders of the political parties not to deliberately annoy others on an issue of such deep emotions,” Prime Minister Shimon Peres urged the lawmakers just before the crucial 62-51 voice vote against the proposed amendment to Israel’s “Law of Return.”

The vote, which came on a first reading of the bill, means that the bill may not be reintroduced in the Knesset, or Parliament, for at least six months.

The proposed amendment was bitterly opposed by leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism, which have the allegiance of about 85% of all American Jews affiliated with a synagogue.

The amendment would have changed the definition of a Jew as stated in the Law of Return--the law guaranteeing Israeli citizenship to all Jews who want it--by recognizing as legitimate converts only those whose conversion was according to the Halakha, or Jewish law, as defined by this country’s Orthodox Establishment.

Only a handful of would-be immigrants each year would have been affected by the change. However, Reform and Conservative leaders argued that the symbolic impact of the bill would be to make non-Orthodox believers second-class Jews.

Despite the defeat, Avner Sciaky, a Knesset member from the National Religious Party and a prime mover behind the bill, pledged that the religious parties will bring the amendment back to the Knesset floor “again and again until we are successful, with the help of God.”

The Israeli government was put on the spot by the proposal. The Diaspora Jews (those outside Israel) who so bitterly opposed the amendment are also major financial and political supporters of the Jewish state. On the other hand, the Orthodox religious establishment that sponsored the bill wields enormous influence here through small political parties that frequently hold the balance of power in the Knesset.

Underlining the significance of the bill, Peres personally replied to the motion introducing it.

“Let not a law constitute an impediment to a Jew--even a Jew who has sinned--and let no legislation be an obstacle in the way of the in-gathering of all the dispersed, the bringing together of those from afar,” he pleaded.

“Who is a Jew was already determined many generations ago. Our generation is charged with providing an answer as to how to preserve the Jewish people in the face of changing conditions and changing dangers, how to keep it together, with all its streams and ideas, both under conditions of sovereignty and throughout the Diaspora.”

American Jewish groups represented in Israel mounted an intensive lobbying campaign against the bill as it became clear in recent days that the religious parties were determined to push the issue to a vote. Some Knesset members said they had received telephone calls at home at 2 a.m. Wednesday from American Jews opposed to the bill.

On the other side, dozens of Orthodox Jews took their case in support of the proposed amendment into the Knesset’s delegate dining room Wednesday.

Israel radio reported that Rabbi Chaim Druckman, a Knesset member from the Morasha Party and a supporter of the bill, labeled “disgraceful” the behavior of another lawmaker who withdrew at the last minute as a co-sponsor of the legislation.

Sciaky, a major backer of the bill, argued that “this is the central question in Judaism, whether here or in the Diaspora.”

“I do not want to define our nation as secular,” Sciaky said during the floor debate preceding the vote. “This nation was founded to be a Jewish nation, so there would be a Jewish majority . . . . He who is not a Jew should not be able to be received as a Jewish immigrant.”

Sciaky argued that it was not the amendment that threatened to divide the Jewish people, but Reform rabbis who, he charged, were carrying out dubious conversions and thus watering down the Jewish faith.

The Morasha Party recommended after the vote that its governing bodies withdraw from the ruling national unity coalition in protest. Morasha is aligned with the rightist Likud bloc, and Druckman charged that Likud failed to deliver the number of votes for the amendment that it had promised.

The departure of Morasha could put Yitzhak Shamir, foreign minister and alternate prime minister, and his Likud bloc at a disadvantage to his archrival, Prime Minister Peres, who leads the Labor alignment in the delicately balanced coalition.

However, Energy Minister Moshe Shahal of Labor predicted that the coalition will survive despite disillusionment among the religious parties. As long as Labor and Likud have no other alternatives, he said, the national unity coalition will remain intact.