Non-Orthodox Israelis Renew Fight

Leaders of Israel’s Reform and Conservative Jewish movements renewed their legal and political struggle for official recognition here Tuesday but said they will also pursue a less far-reaching solution to the bitter debate over who is a Jew.

The decisions by leaders of Judaism’s more liberal streams, which include a majority of American Jews but have relatively few adherents here, followed yet another setback in their efforts to break the long-standing Orthodox monopoly over religious affairs in Israel.

Israel’s chief Orthodox rabbis this week ruled out any cooperation with the non-Orthodox movements on religious rites, though they did not explicitly reject a government-sponsored proposed compromise on the sensitive issue of Jewish conversion.

Reform and Conservative leaders expressed deep disappointment Tuesday at the decision, which they said spelled the end of an eight-month effort by a government committee to find a broad compromise between the various streams and avert a rift between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

Headed by Finance Minister Yaacov Neeman, the committee of Orthodox, Reform and Conservative representatives proposed maintaining Orthodox control over actual conversions while allowing the liberal movements a role in a joint institute for potential converts. The plan would, for the first time, have extended Reform and Conservative Jews a measure of official recognition by Israel’s powerful religious establishment.

Without it, said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, a leader of the Conservative movement, “We’re really back to square one.”

But as the dust settled, others offered conflicting views of Monday’s action by the Chief Rabbinic Council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has tried to avert a head-on collision between the different branches of Judaism, praised the rabbis’ decision, which he said “promotes a national consensus among the Jewish people and the state of Israel.”

Neeman, in turn, said Tuesday that he believed his committee’s proposed compromise could still go forward. The rabbis’ ruling, which turned down a joint institute but appeared to welcome all converts, “left room for a solution,” Neeman told reporters.

But Reform and Conservative leaders did not agree, saying the ruling had slammed a door on dialogue and revealed the Orthodox establishment’s main goal of protecting its monopoly over religious life in Israel.

“The Neeman committee attempted to create a state of peace and compromise between all the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Uri Regev, a leader of the Reform movement in Israel. “This makes clear that the rabbinate is unwilling to accept any notion of cooperation between the streams.”

Reaction was also swift among Jewish groups in the United States. “It is a bitter irony to me that my parents were Jewish enough to be persecuted by the Nazis and Jewish enough to be freed by the Soviets, but the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate does not consider their son fit to be recognized as a rabbi,” said Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, executive director of the Jewish Reconstruction Federation, based in Wyncote, Pa.

The American Jewish Congress condemned what it called the “obduracy” of the chief rabbinate and assailed as “inexplicable” Netanyahu’s seemingly conflicting stands in saying there is no such thing as a second-class Jew during a U.S. visit in November but then applauding the Orthodox rabbinate’s action.

The rabbis’ statement harshly criticized the non-Orthodox movements, without naming them, as those who “have already brought about disastrous results of assimilation among Diaspora Jewry.”

“The Sages of Israel have forbidden any cooperation with them and their methods,” the rabbis wrote. “One cannot consider establishing a joint institute with them.”

Israel’s Orthodox leadership does not recognize the Reform and Conservative movements as Judaism. The Orthodox adhere strictly to Jewish laws. They do not work, drive or use electricity or machinery on the Jewish Sabbath. They do not allow women to become rabbis, and men and women pray separately.

Conservative Jews follow the laws less rigorously and allow women to become rabbis. Reform Jews also allow female rabbis and view the laws as moral guidelines rather than absolute strictures.

Regev said the rabbinate’s ruling left Reform and Conservative Jews with “no choice but to return to the courts,” where several cases challenging Orthodox control over religious affairs have been on hold while the Neeman committee worked to find a compromise.

Tuesday morning, a petition was submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court requesting that the Religious Affairs Ministry allow a Conservative Jew to take his appointed seat on a local religious council in Arad, a town in southern Israel. The ministry has resisted attempts to let non-Orthodox Jews serve on the councils, which are responsible for overseeing, among other things, synagogues and ritual baths.

The renewal of the legal battles raised the specter that religious parties in parliament will again try to pass a bill to put into law the status quo, under which only Orthodox conversions in Israel are recognized. But the religious parties have lost support for the bill in recent months, and it is unclear whether they could muster enough votes to pass it.

Alongside the renewed effort to gain equal rights through the courts, Reform and Conservative leaders also said they will pursue a “technical” solution, under which all Jews, whether born into the religion or converted, would be registered the same way by the Interior Ministry.

The plan, which grew out of recent negotiations led by Jewish Agency Chairman Avraham Burg, would allow the state to recognize converts without involving Orthodox rabbis. But it would not confer many of the broader rights that Reform and Conservative converts have sought, including the right to be married in Israel.

“We had hoped for a more substantive solution, one that would lead to a more pluralistic, more open Israel for all Jews,” Bandel said. “But it seems that the rabbinate is not yet ready for such a solution. I hope and pray that one day it is.”

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Times religion writer Larry B. Stammer in Los Angeles contributed to this report.