Israeli Official Quits in Row Over Converts
Interior Minister Yitzhak Peretz resigned today over a “who is a Jew” controversy, saying he refused to abide by a Supreme Court order obliging him to recognize the conversion to Judaism of an American immigrant.
Peretz, an ultra-Orthodox Jew of the small Shas Party, read his letter of resignation in Parliament.
“I will never give my hand to false conversions of Jews,” Peretz said in the letter.
The resignation followed a synagogue-state struggle over authority to determine the status of a Jewish convert.
The case revolved around Shoshana Miller, an immigrant from Colorado Springs, Colo., who was converted to Judaism by a Reform rabbi in the United States.
The Orthodox hierarchy, which controls marriage, divorce and conversion in Israel, does not recognize the Reform movement, which is dominant among the United States’ nearly 6 million Jews.
Peretz demanded that Miller’s identity card, issued by his ministry, be stamped with the word “convert.” But the high court ruled on Dec. 12 that the government must simply register Miller’s religion as Jewish.
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