November 27, 2008
JERUSALEM — The national umbrella group of Jewish federations passed a resolution, submitted by the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, pressing the Israeli government to end a logjam among Israelis seeking to convert to Judaism.
The resolution, passed Nov. 19 by delegates to United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly in Jerusalem, calls for the UJC to “use its good offices to advocate for the timely conversion of those so seeking,” and calls upon “the Government of Israel to speedily redress the administrative impediments to timely conversion by assuring that conversion courts are reconstituted.”
Many of the approximately 300,000 immigrants to Israel who have one Jewish grandparent and moved to the Jewish state under the Right of Return have been unable to convert to Judaism because of what critics call foot-dragging by the Orthodox authorities who currently supervise conversions in Israel.
Murray Laulicht, a West Orange attorney and a past president of UJC MetroWest, said the change is necessitated by a “demographic time bomb.”
“You have now 300,000 immigrants living in Israel who are part of society,” said Laulicht. “Their children are going to be part of society. There will be all kinds of marriage issues when their children want to marry. It is terrible demographically that this situation has remained unsolved for so long. The only solution is to establish a group of rabbis who do not take the extremely stringent position the chief rabbinate has taken.”
In 1998, the government established the Ne’eman Commission to help facilitate the conversion process and bring all religious streams into the process, which is now controlled by the Orthodox rabbinate. The State Conversion Authority, however, did not go ahead with its recommendations. More recently, Israel’s High Rabbinic Court further “stymied” the process, according to the resolution, by dismissing the head of the authority, Rabbi Haim Druckman.
Druckman’s supporters praised him for streamlining what they called an unwieldy process, while his critics fretted that new converts to Judaism were not sufficiently committed to Jewish law.
The resolution comes less than a week after the Jewish Agency adopted resolutions calling on the Israeli government to establish an independent authority on Jewish conversions and special courts of Jewish law to “allow the conversion process to move forward.”
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