Israel’s haredi-controlled chief rabbinate is obstructing the implementation of the new conversion to Judaism reform law in the hopes that the next government will repeal it, a former head of the Mossad reportedly said today.
Above: Israel's haredi Chief Rabbis. Left, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel David Lau; right; Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef
Former Mossad Head Says Israel’s Haredi Chief Rabbis Blocking Implementation Of Israel’s Conversion Reform
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Israel’s haredi-controlled chief rabbinate is obstructing the implementation of the new conversion to Judaism reform law in the hopes that the next government will repeal it, a former head of the Mossad reportedly said today.
The law decentralizes the conversion process by allowing the official state chief rabbis of cities, towns and rural areas to perform conversions through local rabbinic conversion courts they set up, rather than go through the four regional conversion courts controlled by the haredi-controlled chief rabbinate. While all of these local chief rabbis are Orthodox, many are not haredi.
Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy is now the chairman of the Harry Triguboff Institute. It supported the conversion reform adopted by the government earlier this year but which has not yet been implemented. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post today, Halevy lashed out at Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef and called the conversion impasse “a national emergency.”
“The chief rabbi is a functionary of the State of Israel and therefore the decisions of the prime minister and the decisions of the state are binding upon him. The delaying tactics [put in place by Yosef] are an attempt to torpedo the whole process,” Halevy said.
Halevy also argued that the State of Israel misled many potential immigrants from the Former Soviet Union who have Jewish ancestry but who are not Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law in order to deceive them into immigrating to Israel. The State of Israel misled them by allowing them to believe they would be considered to be Jewish once in Israel. But they weren’t, sparking what has now become the nation’s conversion crisis.
“Jews from Russia came here under the Law of Return, they had a right to emigrate to Israel as Jews, but after a short while, the rabbinate declared that they would not recognize them as such, and all the ministries and government agencies followed suit,” Halevy noted.
The delaying tactics being employed by Israel’s haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate also call into question the ability of potential immigrants from France and Ukraine to have their Jewish status confirmed once they arrive in Israel, Halevy also said. And that could cause these potential immigrants to stay where they are, despite the terrorism and anti-Semitism in France and the war and violence in Ukraine. Or, they might choose to immigrate to other countries instead of Israel.
Both Yosef and his Ashkenazi counterpart Rabbi David Lau adamantly oppose the conversion reform.
“The chief rabbis don’t care about the problems the Jewish people face in the State of Israel, just as long as they get to sit in their office,” MK Elazar Stern, the moderate Zionist Orthodox retired Brigadier General who drafted the conversion reform law said. Stern also insisted the Chief Rabbinate’s stalling was dictated by the Sefardi haredi Shas Party founded by Yosef’s late father.
ITIM, a nonprofit organization headed by Modern Orthodox Rabbi Seth Farber advocates for the rights of converts and for the rights of people in the processes of converting. It also helps secular people navigate Israel’s byzantine state religious bureaucracy.
ITIM told the Post that the conversion reform law does not require any involvement of the Chief Rabbinate to be implemented.
But the head of the government’s Conversion Authority, Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz told the Post that he felt obligated to involve it in the implementation process because ultimately, it is one of the two Chief Rabbis of Israel who has to sign the individual conversion certificates. He also said that if the chief rabbis did not agree with the conversion reforms and their implementation process, it would undermine the Jewish status of the converts converted under them.
Besides approving the regulations governing the new conversion courts, the state Conversion Authority Peretz heads is also in charge of approving applications made by the chief rabbis of cities, towns and rural areas to establish conversion courts.
The Post reports that four such applications have been made so far. Two of them are from moderate Zionist Orthodox rabbis: Chief Rabbi of Efrat Shlomo Riskin and Chief Rabbi of Shoham David Stav.
Peretz has not approved any of them, even though all four qualify. He told the Post that as soon as the his agency and the Chief Rabbinate had worked out the issues with bill’s implementation, the four applications could be reviewed.
ITIM noted that there is no legal reason for that delay, and said the approval for the four local conversion courts could be given immediately.
Because the reforms were passed by the cabinet as an administrative order rather than by the Knesset as a law as Stern and other backers wanted (Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu blocked it to appease haredi political parties), the reforms could be revoked in the same way.
As one of the conditions for joining the next government after the March election, both Shas and the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party will reportedly demand the reforms be repealed.