Fight for Baby: New Conflict in Israel

Only God knows where baby Lena is. Whose God is also in question.

Lena was born five months ago, the daughter of Zaki Amudi and Norit Yehuda. Amudi is Muslim, a Palestinian from Khan Yunis, a dusty refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Yehuda is Jewish, an Israeli from Tel Aviv.

That Amudi and Yehuda should have chosen to spend their lives together was considered a scandal by not a few Palestinians and Israelis. Star-crossed tales of forbidden love between Arab and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, make news in this part of the world.

But the fate of Lena, whose name was chosen by her parents because it is common in both Jewish and Arab cultures, is especially tangled. Members of Yehuda’s family decided that no matter what Amudi and Yehuda might do with their lives, Lena should be brought up Jewish, beyond the care and control of either parent, especially the father.

The baby is being reared in a secret place. If Norit Yehuda, 24, knows where Lena is, she is not telling.

An Israeli newspaper has reported that the infant is with an ultra-religious family in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Bnei Brak, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The report has not been confirmed, however.

Amudi, 26, wants the baby returned to her mother, and he has gone to court to demand that he be allowed to see the infant.

Beyond the dramatic aspects of the family strife, religious rivalry and possibly kidnaping, the case is attracting special interest here because of its place at the junction of struggles involving life and politics.

Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. The government has ceded to rabbis a certain authority over the private lives of its citizens, including marriage. Will a civil court now reclaim a Jewish child on behalf of a Muslim who under religious law is not married to the mother? Is Israel going to be forced to take up the long-postponed question of separation of synagogue and state?

The passions of the Arab uprising are also in play. Lawyers for Yehuda’s family have raised the specter of danger and mistreatment for the mother and child should she live her life with a Palestinian.

“This case brings all our problems together,” said Shulamit Aloni, a civil rights activist and member of the Israeli Parliament. “The benefit of a child is being buried by conflicts we Israelis have yet to resolve for ourselves.”

Question of Marriage

Even before there was a State of Israel, the British government here and the Turkish government before it left the question of marriage to heads of the religious communities, Christian, Jewish and Muslim. The early Israeli government, intent on attracting the loyalty of observant Jews, continued the practice.

Thus, there is no civil marriage in Israel. In the case of mixed marriages, Israelis are forced to take roundabout measures to avoid religious authority. They can marry abroad or they can sign a marriage contract in the presence of a lawyer that ensures inheritance and support rights between husband and wife.

Amudi and Yehuda signed such a contract, and, in Israel, are considered a common-law couple. And what of the child? Under Islamic religious law, if the father is Muslim, so is the child. Under Jewish law, if the mother is Jewish, so is the child. In Israel, the child will be registered as Jewish by the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of Orthodox rabbis.

“To carry it to the absurd, if the father was Jewish and the mother Muslim, the child would have no religion at all,” said Aloni, the civil rights activist.

The romance of Amudi and Yehuda began two years ago at the chocolate factory where both worked. They courted for two years, at first meeting for coffee, then for strolls--and finally on secret trips to coastal towns like Haifa and Acco, far from prying eyes in Tel Aviv, where they both have friends.

In time, both families learned of the relationship; both objected. Amudi’s family in Khan Yunis told him he should leave Tel Aviv, that it would be dangerous to carry on with the association. Yehuda’s family ordered her not to see Amudi anymore.

The lovers kept in contact by telephone. Yehuda timed the illicit conversations so that calls were made when her parents were not at home, Amudi said. Secret, intermittent rendezvous continued. Amudi moved to Tel Aviv so that the courtship would not be interrupted either by his family or by the periodic closure of the Gaza Strip because of violence connected with the Arab uprising.

Last year, Amudi and Yehuda made a fateful decision in the hope of resolving their problem. “We decided to have a baby so that both families would agree to our marriage,” said Amudi, who works at odd jobs in Tel Aviv.

After Yehuda became pregnant, the couple signed a marriage contract and started living together.

But neither the pregnancy nor the marriage soothed emotions. Yehuda’s parents followed their daughter to Amudi’s apartment and dragged her home after a shouting match with the stocky Palestinian.

“In Jewish culture, the daughter is the property of her parents until she is married,” said Uri Steinmetz, the lawyer representing Yehuda’s family. “Norit followed her parents’ wishes. They do not consider her married to the Arab.”

Late last fall, a religious acquaintance of the Yehuda family took Norit, already late in her pregnancy, to the United States, presumably to have the baby delivered there. Civil rights advocates suspect that the trip was arranged by ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose any mixed marriages and who planned to have the baby reared in an Orthodox Jewish community in Baltimore.

At some point, Yehuda became desperate and reached Amudi by phone. With the aid of secular Israeli politicians and the FBI, she was located in Baltimore and was spirited back to Israel.

After her return, the reunited couple visited Amudi’s family in the Khan Yunis refugee camp; during the visit, Yehuda gave birth in a Palestinian hospital. Amudi and Yehuda moved to Rishon Le Zion, a town south of Tel Aviv, to begin life anew in a small apartment.

“We thought we could live happily ever after,” Amudi said. “We were wrong.”

Last month, just before Passover, Yehuda’s father and brother came to implore her to visit her home. “They told Norit that her mother was about to die from grief and she had to visit,” Amudi recalled. “So we agreed.”

But he insisted on keeping the baby.

A few days later, Yehuda phoned and said she wanted to have her daughter with her.

“Norit’s father got on the phone and said, ‘You have no Norit,’ ” Amudi said, “and told me to bring the child. Norit got on the phone and said bring Lena, that we would raise her together.”

Amudi said he delivered the child through a friend, and then received a call from an uncle of his wife, who told him: “You have no child and you have no Norit. Go away.”

“I just want to see my daughter,” Amudi said.

Is he still in love with Norit?

“ Ken ,” he answered in Hebrew, blushing. “Yes. I think we can make it together.”

Amudi’s case is based on narrow questions of parental rights. He wants to see the baby, he wants visitation rights and wants to be allowed, with his wife, to rear the child under the supervision of a social worker.

The lawyer for Yehuda’s family opposes this plan, building a defense on Amudi’s status as a Muslim and Palestinian.

“There is no such thing as marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew,” lawyer Steinmetz said. “Amudi wants to see the baby. OK. But the problem is years later. What will be good for the child? In kindergarten, would it be good for the child to hear other children say she has a dirty Arab for a father?

“It is painful for Jews. If a Jewish girl marries an Arab, sometimes the parents hold a Shiva, seven days of mourning.”