Conversion crisis - Victory for the Haredim

Haaretz June 1, 2008 by Avraham Poraz (served as interior minister in the years 2003-2004.)

The state's decision to stop employing Rabbi Haim Druckman, who has for several years headed the special conversion administration designed to expedite and alleviate the conversion process, followed a ruling by the Supreme Rabbinic Court. This court nullified a conversion Rabbi Druckman performed 15 years ago, and its ruling applies in effect to all the conversions performed through Rabbi Druckman's conversion administration, as well as to conversions within the Israel Defense Forces. These sad developments are part of the struggle raging between Orthodox Zionism - whose approach was reflected in Rabbi Druckman's conversion administration and the one that operated in the IDF - and the ultra-Orthodox. Remember that we are talking about nullifying Orthodox conversions, which are the most strict to begin with. Israel has more than 300,000 citizens who came to the country under the Law of Return, largely from the Commonwealth of Independent States, but are not considered Jewish according to Orthodox halakha, or Jewish religious law. In keeping with a Supreme Court ruling long ago, anyone who converted overseas in a recognized Jewish congregation, whether Reform or Conservative, is Jewish and is entitled to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. Since Israel recognizes only Orthodox conversions performed by the rabbinic establishment (and not even those now), the Reform and Conservative movements began conducting "pop-over conversions" - conversions were performed in Israel, but in converts were sent in the final phase to Reform and Conservative congregations overseas to complete the process. This maneuver was prompted by the failure of the Neeman Committee's recommendations, accepted by the government back in 1997, to set up conversion institutes in which Conservative and Reform rabbis will officiate alongside Orthodox rabbis, and where the conversion itself will be performed in the final phase at a bet din, or religious court, recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, in other words, Orthodox. However, because of the strict requirements at Orthodox establishment courts, the number of conversions performed on the basis of the Neeman Committee's recommendations and through Rabbi Druckman's conversion administration was very small. After the Interior Ministry refused to register "pop-over" converts as Jews, those individuals petitioned the High Court of Justice in 1999. When I became interior minister in March 2003, I thought that the Interior Ministry ought to recognize conversions performed by the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel itself, without resorting to the "pop-over" trick. However, my position on this was not included in the state's reply to the High Court. Only after I exerted pressure, in October 2003, on then-attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein, did he agree to present my position to the court as a "personal opinion." [...] The government should therefore change the decision it made back when the recommendations of the Neeman Committee were adopted, and stipulate that the Interior Ministry register as Jews also people who underwent Reform or Conservative conversion. The appropriate solution of course is civil marriage and divorce, but if that is not possible yet, then the Conservative and Reform movements should be allowed to marry people and end marriages, by means of religious courts to be established by them and recognized by the state. Granting legal recognition to both of these important streams would put an end to the Orthodox monopoly, and to the sense of alienation and disaffection of hundreds of thousands of Israel's citizens. We cannot rely on conversion administrations of Rabbi Druckman's sort, particularly since the battle over conversion between Orthodox Zionism, as reflected by Rabbi Druckman, and the ultra-Orthodox will end in my opinion with a victory for the Haredim.