Chasm Between Jews Widens as Talks Abandoned

Risking a split in world Jewry, Reform and Conservative leaders on Monday ended five months of government-backed negotiations with Israel’s Orthodox establishment and said they will return to the courts to press for equal rights.

Their decision prompted Israel’s Orthodox political parties to proceed with legislation that would legalize the Orthodox monopoly on religious affairs that has been in effect since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

The immediate issues in dispute are whether rabbis from the liberal streams of Judaism will be allowed to perform conversions in Israel and to sit on state-funded religious councils nationwide.

But for liberal Jews throughout the world, the broader questions are whether the Jewish state will pass laws effectively making them “second-class” Jews and whether Israel will be an open and pluralistic state.

“What kind of state are we going to have?” asked Rabbi Richard Hirsch, director of the Reform movement’s World Union for Progressive Judaism. “Is this going to become a theocratic state? Is it going to be a state of Jews or a state of Judaism run by a benighted, anachronistic, militant, narrow, exclusivistic view of what it means to be a Jew?”

The issue is deepening a rift between the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he will back the legislation drafted by religious members of his coalition, and American Jews, the vast majority of whom belong to the liberal movements.

Americans are prominent among the Diaspora Jews who identify with Israel and traditionally have provided the state with important political and financial backing. Under its law of return, Israel guarantees anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent the right to citizenship.

Finance Minister Yaacov Neeman, who headed the commission that was trying to negotiate a compromise, called the decision by the liberal movement to return the case to the courts the “most serious mistake made by the Jewish people since the [Second] Temple.” The Second Temple fell in AD 70 when Roman troops defeated a divided Jewish population.

Netanyahu met with Israeli and American leaders of the liberal Jewish movements late Sunday to urge them to continue negotiations for three more months. When they rejected the plea Monday, Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan issued a statement accusing the Reform and Conservative movements of using the religious issues “as a tool” to try to topple the government.

“Political elements are behind this decision,” said Aryeh Deri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.

Rabbi Ehud Bandel, leader of Israel’s small Conservative movement, responded that the accusations were “paranoid and untrue.” He said the movements were quitting the negotiations because they had failed to reach a compromise on the key issues with the country’s Orthodox chief rabbis.

In June, the two sides agreed to put off pending legal and legislative action on the conversion issue while seeking a compromise from the seven-member commission headed by Neeman. The committee missed an Aug. 15 deadline for producing a recommendation, and two months later the liberal leaders said they saw no reason to continue talking in the face of Orthodox intransigence.

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Eliahu Bashki-Doron, reiterating the official position, said Monday that “recognition of the Reform rabbis would shame the concept of religion and Judaism.”

The Orthodox, who keep stricter religious traditions, have had absolute control over conversions, marriages and burials in Israel and have all seats on the religious councils in Israeli cities. They, and the government, have ignored rulings from Israel’s Supreme Court to seat non-Orthodox members on the councils.

After Monday’s announcement by liberal Jewish leaders, the government’s committee on legislation met to draft a law governing religious councils that is to be introduced today. The pending law on conversions is expected to be reintroduced to the Knesset in the coming weeks.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is set to hear an appeal by the liberal Jewish movements on the issue of religious councils Wednesday.

Government ministers condemned the Reform and Conservative leaders for abandoning the negotiations and allowing a rupture of the Jewish people; several indicated they will vote for the upcoming legislation.

The Orthodox legislators have 23 seats in the 120-member Knesset and belong to the government coalition. They have threatened to bring down the government if it does not support them on this issue.

Jewish Agency chairman Avraham Burg said, however, that passage of legislation to restrict the rights of Reform and Conservative Jews would be “the first shot in a civil war of the Jewish people.”

Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Netanyahu to relax party discipline and allow members to vote their conscience on the legislation.

“Even though the law would do very little to change things, the fact is that it is perceived as Israelis not accepting Diaspora Jews at a level of equality,” said Foxman of New York. “Psychologically, it is a very painful development.”

The drama over religious law unfolded as Netanyahu opened a stormy new session of the Knesset with a policy speech as unyielding on issues of peacemaking as the one he delivered upon taking office 16 months ago.

Netanyahu was greeted by jeers from opposition members carrying banners stating, “I am a proud Jew.” The signs were a response to Netanyahu’s latest faux pas--a whisper into the ear of the nearly deaf Shas Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri last week that the Israeli left had “forgotten what it means to be Jewish” and placed Israel’s security in the hands of Arabs.

Netanyahu’s comment was picked up by a journalist’s microphone, and the opposition Labor Party accused the prime minister of incitement. He spent several days trying to back away from the statement, saying he had simply meant that the Labor Party erred in signing the Oslo peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Knesset ushers quickly ripped the signs out of the members’ hands, and Netanyahu went on to promise parliament that he would continue building West Bank Jewish settlements “according to their natural needs, as we do anywhere else in Israel,” and would make no further concessions to the Palestinians unless they fight a more intense war against terrorism.

His tough statements came as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright worked to arrange a high-level Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Washington this week in hopes of breaking the deadlock in the peace talks. A U.S. demand for an Israeli “timeout” on settlement construction is one of the impediments.

Netanyahu also rejected calls for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon and said the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War, is a vital area for Israel’s security. Syria has demanded the full return of the Golan in exchange for peace.

In a fitting end to the tumultuous day, the Knesset approved Netanyahu’s policy speech. But, later Monday night, Netanyahu and government ministers still present voted for an extreme right-wing proposal to annul the 1993 Oslo peace accord and reoccupy the West Bank city of Hebron, most of which is now under Palestinian rule.

The proposal did not pass, and government officials later said that Netanyahu’s support had been “a technical error.” He and the ministers did not realize what they were voting for, they said.