County Leaders Fear Move by Right : Israeli Proposal Hit by Jewish Federation

In a move denounced by some local Orthodox rabbis, a delegation from the Orange County Jewish Federation met in Los Angeles Monday with the Israeli deputy consul general to protest a proposed change in Israeli immigration laws that they fear will redefine who is considered a Jew.

The proposal would bar converts o Judaism from becoming Israeli citizens if they are not converted under Orthodox rules. The proposal was renewed after Israel’s November elections that boosted the influence of the country’s religious right.

A person who immigrates to Israel may now achieve automatic citizenship if he or she was born to a Jewish mother or was converted by a rabbi from any of the four recognized branches of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist.

“It’s a highly emotional issue,” said Jeff Schulein, a Reconstructionist who is president of the Orange County Jewish Federation.

While Israel would not in fact be conferring a lesser status on Jews other than Orthodox, the “overwhelming feeling” among members in the other branches of Judaism is that restricting automatic citizenship to Orthodox Jews would in effect do just that, he said.

“I think it touches very many of the families in Orange County. Most of us have either friends or relatives, grandchildren or whatever from mixed marriages, and one of the spouses may have converted,” Schulein said.

“Israel’s always been open for Jews in the Diaspora,” he said. “My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Israel is very important to me from the standpoint of being a haven should history repeat itself.”

Schulein; Allen Krause, a Reform rabbi and president of the Orange County Board of Rabbis, and Federation staff members Danny Narens, Merv Lemmerman and Chelle Friedman, all Reform, expressed their fears to Israel’s deputy consul general, Moshe Ram, who said he is relaying the mostly negative reaction of Southern California Jews to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, David Elliezrie, a Hasidic rabbi with the Chabad Lubavitch congregation in Yorba Linda, said he and other Orthodox rabbis in the county favor the proposed change as a unification effort.

Last-minute support from the Brooklyn-based Chabad movement is considered to have boosted the role of the strictly Orthodox religious right in forming a new Israeli government.

“The Orthodox Jewish community is shocked,” said Elliezrie, who is a member of the Federation’s board of directors, “that the Jewish Federation, which is supposed to be the unifying body for common good, would take a stand they have no right to take.

“They’ve entered into a partisan religious debate between two segments of the Jewish community.”

He said he did not know about the protest nor about a press release sent earlier by the Federation.

Taking a stand without consulting the board jeopardizes unification efforts of the board in the growing and diversifying Orange County Jewish community, he said.

Orthodox leaders will file a formal protest with the federation, he said.

“There wasn’t time to get a meeting together,” Schulein said. “I’ve talked to enough of the leadership to have a strong sense of unanimity on the subject. We rarely get 100% agreement on any minor issue; it’s not likely we would on this.”

Less than 10% of U.S. Jews are Orthodox, he said. Most belong to Conservative or Reform branches and the rest either are unaffiliated or belong to the small, growing branch of Reconstructionism.

The federation, in cooperation with the Orange County Board of Rabbis and Jewish organizations worldwide, will circulate petitions to be presented in December to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Ram, the deputy consul general, said it is too early to draw conclusions about the proposed amendment, which will ultimately be decided by the new government now being formed in Israel.