Israel’s Conversion Dilemma

By Shmuel Rosner

Mr. Rosner is the political editor at The Jewish Journal.

• June 28, 2018 

Ultra-orthodox Jewish men praying at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, in Jerusalem’s Old City.CreditKevin Frayer/Associated Press

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TEL AVIV — Israel cannot define a Jew. And the more it attempts to do so, the more obvious that becomes.

The latest evidence of this problem came early this month. Moshe Nissim, a well-respected lawyer and former deputy prime minister, had been tasked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with proposing a new law on conversion to Judaism. This was necessary because the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision by the end of the year that will force the state to recognize conversions performed by various streams of Judaism. And when it does, it will ignite a political crisis.

Mr. Nissim’s proposal was carefully drawn, and as considerate of the various factions’ views, as possible. Still, it was dead on arrival. It stirred angry reactions from ultra-Orthodox legislators and from Israel’s chief rabbis, who argued that the proposal would “encourage assimilation” by not requiring a sufficiently high standard for conversions. The prime minister has basically dropped Mr. Nissim’s suggestions.

This isn’t just about politics. The fate of this report explains how Israel must change to accommodate modern Jewish realities.

For a variety of reasons, the state of Israel needs an agreed-upon definition of Jewishness. It needs it because the country’s Law of Return allows any Jew to settle in Israel. It also needs it because who is a Jew matters across Israeli law and society: In Israel, Jewish citizens are married by law through the rabbinate, non-Jews aren’t; Jews are buried in Jewish cemeteries, non-Jews aren’t. Jews have their day of rest by law on Saturday; non-Jews can rest on other days.

But here’s the problem: Among the Jewish people, there are multiple positions on how to determine a person’s Jewishness. Tradition requires a Jewish mother, but Reform Judaism accepts a Jewish father. The Law of Return accepts even a single Jewish grandfather, while the Israeli rabbinate insists on either a Jewish mother or an Orthodox conversion. About a third of Jewish Israelis would consider a person Jewish if he or she merely “feels Jewish.”

The process of conversion that dominated Judaism from ancient times until the beginning of modernity evolved at a time when most Jews still adhered to a similar version of Jewishness. So, conversion required a commitment to observing Jewish law. But Israel today, while leaving a few areas like marriage under rabbinical jurisdiction, is a secular state and home to mostly nonobservant Jews. And it’s for mostly secular reasons that Israel needs an agreed-upon definition of conversion.

Here’s what Mr. Nissim suggested when he was asked to come up with a proposal for a new conversion law: Israel would legally recognize all types of conversions abroad. But conversions in Israel would be recognized only if done by a state-mandated court. This court would walk a tight rope by, on the one hand, adhering to Orthodox (the most conservative version) Jewish law, and on the other hand, not being placed under the authority of the official rabbinate — an especially conservative institution. Instead, Mr. Nissim suggested that Israel’s conversion court would be controlled by the prime minister’s office.

Yes, it’s pretty complicated.

Why did Mr. Nissim end up with such an intricate set of suggestions? Because he tried to make his proposals acceptable to as many Jews as possible. He wanted to give everybody — the Orthodox, the secular politicians, the Jews in the diaspora — a little something. That, he may have thought, would maintain some unity among the Jewish people. As if Jews can be united by having smart lawyers sitting for a long enough time and issuing long enough reports on what makes a Jew a Jew.

But here’s why that’s a difficult task: The boundaries of Jewishness are no longer agreed upon. Secular Jews do not accept religious definitions. Religious Jews accept only religious definitions, but they also have their own rivalries. Jews outside of Israel do not want Israel to determine who is Jewish. Israeli Jews do not want to be bound by diaspora sensitivities.

If it’s not possible to reconcile these competing priorities, what should Israel do? I believe it should consider forging a new path.

The Jewish state has already changed the course of Jewish culture and identity in myriad ways. It can change it once again by redefining conversion. To do this, it should secularize conversion. Cast aside the priorities of religious leaders in determining the boundaries of Jewishness and establish the authority of the state and its political leaders to make such determinations.

This would be a regime change. Rabbis out, political leaders in. And it would most likely ruffle some feathers. But in the long run it would also solve a lot of problems. Political leaders can do what rabbis cannot do. For example, a political body that decides on conversions could rule that serving in the Israel Defense Forces counts when a person wishes to become Jewish.

Naturally, should how Israel recognizes conversions change, it would not be to something completely unfamiliar. Tradition and religious sensitivities would still play a big role in the process. And yet, the mind-set would be different. It would be the mind-set of a people. The mind-set of Jews who begin to culturally adapt to having a nation-state. That’s why serving in the Israeli Army would be considered a show of seriousness about wanting to join the Jewish people.

Yes, a least initially, this would fracture Jewish unity. Many religious Jews would not at first accept such conversions and would continue to insist on using their own criteria. Many Jews in the diaspora would not initially accept such conversions, either, since they would argue that Israel has no authority to unilaterally alter the boundaries of Jewishness.

But there would also be advantages: The Jewish people, as they gradually adapted to this new path, would no longer be held hostage to an irrelevant interpretation of Judaism that is the result of a world without a Jewish state. The Jewish people as they debate this new path will get a process of conversion to the Jewish people, not to a version of a Jewish religion that most of them do not practice.

Shmuel Rosner (@rosnersdomain) is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/opinion/israel-conversion-law-judaism.html