Israel Is Urged to Keep Orthodox Control

A group of prominent American Orthodox Jews stepped into the fray over Jewish conversion Monday, urging the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to maintain Orthodox control over religious affairs in Israel.

With the Israeli government facing a Jan. 31 deadline to find a compromise on the sensitive conversion issue, the group’s three-day visit is part of a new Orthodox effort to block any decision that would grant equal rights in Israel to Reform and Conservative Jews.

The liberal movements, the Reform and Conservative, represent a majority of American Jews but are a tiny minority in Israel.

The three streams disagree about theological matters, including the stringency in adherence to Jewish law. The Orthodox are most strict about keeping rules on diet, the Sabbath, marriage, burial and conversion; the other two vary in the degree to which they follow these guidelines.

“The status quo has kept this nation in religious peace for 50 years,” Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox organization, told a news conference here Monday. “We want it to stay as it is.”

The unusual mission by Sherer’s delegation of 75 Orthodox leaders, including rabbis, academics and businesspeople, comes as a government-appointed committee struggles to find a compromise that will satisfy Israel’s Orthodox establishment while granting a measure of recognition to the more liberal movements.

And it coincides with an aggressive newspaper advertising campaign by an Israeli group that warns of the dangers the state will face in any such compromise.

As the debate heats up over conversion--the latest issue in Israel’s long-running controversy over “Who is a Jew?”--the two efforts appear to reflect a desire by Orthodox Jews to counter the frequent visits here by Reform and Conservative leaders and blunt any headway being made.

“I think they are scared that we are making progress in Israel and that we are willing to make concessions to reach a compromise with them,” said Conservative Rabbi Ehud Bandel. “They do not really want Jewish unity because they don’t want to give us any recognition.”

Members of the Orthodox group, which has taken the Hebrew name Am Echad, or “One People,” said they decried the many streams of Judaism in the United States, saying it was often difficult for young Jews to hang on to their religious identity. Intermarriage and assimilation soon followed, they said.

The delegation is to meet with Netanyahu, President Ezer Weizman and other prominent political and religious leaders here. Several members said they hope to use those discussions to “debunk” the view in Israel that American Jews generally support a loosening of the Orthodox establishment’s existing monopoly on conversions and other personal religious issues.

“We’re a truth squad,” said Sherer, who described Orthodox Judaism as the fastest-growing segment of the American Jewish community. But he and others stopped short of saying they would support pending legislation in Israel to enshrine the monopoly in law; such decisions should be left to Israelis, they said.

The controversial bill, on hold while a committee headed by Finance Minister Yaacov Neeman searches for a compromise, would not affect conversions abroad but would formalize the situation in Israel. It would allow only Orthodox rabbis to perform conversions. Backed by several small religious parties in Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, the bill would stymie an increasingly determined struggle by Reform and Conservative leaders to gain official recognition for their movements here.

Tensions have risen over the religious issues since last year, when Orthodox political parties made an unprecedented showing in national elections and won a place in Netanyahu’s government. Since then, they have used their political clout to back the conversion bill, and the liberal movements have filed court cases to try to force the government and the Orthodox rabbinate to recognize them. On Monday, several lawmakers from the religious parties watched approvingly as Sherer and others spoke of the need for a single conversion standard that would preserve unity among Israeli and Diasporan Jews. Without it, “anyone could come here and tell us that Judaism is open to interpretation,” said Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, a parliament member from the United Torah Judaism Party.

But leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel denounced the Orthodox visit as an attack on their Judaism and an attempt to turn them into “second-class Jews.”

“Every Jew has a right, even a duty, to enter this debate,” said Bandel, the Conservative leader. “But [the Orthodox] want to preserve the monopoly while saying they speak on behalf of Jewish unity. We think what they really want is for us to be ‘flexible,’ and do it their way.”

Rabbi Uri Regev, who leads Israel’s Reform movement, said pluralism was actually the only way to keep the increasingly diverse Jewish people together.

“They say we are breaking the Jewish people apart,” he said. “But the majority of Jews these days have refused to endorse Orthodoxy. Should we just let them go or should we accept our differences and build true unity among us?”

Regev and Bandel strongly criticized a series of full-page ads that have run recently in Israeli papers, stating “One People, One Conversion” and warning of the dangers of compromise on the issue.

The latest, which ran Monday in the English-language Jerusalem Post, declared ominously that Israel’s 250,000 illegal foreign workers were seeking “quickie conversions,” apparently from the Reform or Conservative movements, to remain permanently in Israel. “Do you agree?” it asked, going on to list the likely converts as Nigerians, Romanians and Thais, among others.

Bandel denounced the ad as racist and an incitement, targeting both foreign workers and the liberal Jewish movements.

The group that signed the ad, The Movement for the Unity of the People, referred calls to a public relations firm, which said it could not answer questions about the group’s funding or affiliation.