Telling it like it is: Why American Jews should support the Rotem bill

by Lurker

This column by David Breakstone in the JPost has got to be the most completely moronic article I have seen to date on the subject of the Rotem bill:

"Keep Dreaming: When Chelsea wed Marc"

I don't know which part of it I find most offensive:

• Breakstone's nauseating celebration of the Clinton intermarriage as a glorious, shining example of American Jewish assimilation -- a phenomenon that he seems to advocate as an ideal to which we should all aspire.
  
• His thinly veiled threat in the name of American Reform and Conservative Jewry that they will end their support for Israel unless Israel's democratically elected representatives learn to kowtow to American Jewish demands (instead of serving the needs of their own constituencies).
  
• His exasperatingly idiotic presentation of "Veronica", his own son's girlfriend, as a case study with which to bash the Rotem bill: "Veronica" -- a halakhicly non-Jewish daughter of Russian olim -- is, in fact, a classic, prototypical type of case which Rotem's bill was directly aimed at solving. Breakstone makes an utter fool of himself by gloating over the defeat of the very bill that would have enabled "Veronica" to convert, and his son to marry her.

What a nincompoop.

After reading that, I almost ignored this other column by Amotz Asa-el that appeared in the same paper a week later. From its title, it sounded like it was going to be yet more of the exact same stupidity. (And to be completely honest, having read other things in the past by Mr. Asa-el, that is what I tended to expect.):

"When Chelsea Clinton met David Rotem"

To my surprise, though, it would appear that Asa-el is one of the few journalists to have written on the subject of the Rotem bill, who took the time to actually read the bill and understand what it is, rather than allowing himself to become caught up in the tsunami of disinformation emanating from the Reform and Conservative movements -- as nearly everyone else (e.g., David Breakstone) has.

A couple of caveats: I am certainly not endorsing all of what Asa-el says in this column. Like Breakstone, he, too, tries to argue that there is a silver lining in the phenomenon of American Jewish intermarriage -- although his argument is not nearly as idiotic and offensive as Breakstone's. And unlike Breakstone, Asa-el certainly doesn't present intermarriage as some sort of messianic ideal that Jews ought to aspire to.

What very much surprised me, though, was that Asa-el explains what the Rotem bill would actually do, rather than regurgitating the ubiquitous nonsense being spouted by American Reform and Conservative Jews, which not only misrepresents the bill, but in fact presents it as the very opposite of what it is.

And he goes even further than that: He argues that the Right Thing To Do for the 300,000 non-Jewish Russian Israelis who wish to convert, is to support the cause of Israeli Modern Orthodoxy against the the haredim who currently control the conversion system in Israel. He explicitly calls upon the Reform and Conservative movements to set aside their petty, selfish politics, and to actively support the Rotem bill:

"American Jews should be equally humble before decrying Israel's handling of its own semi-Jews.
...
"The anguish of some 300,000 partial Jews –- who arrived here voluntarily and have served in the IDF, often gallantly, only to learn they couldn't marry here because of rabbinical nitpicking –- must end.
...
"...Knesset Law Committee Chairman David Rotem last month introduced a bill that would disabuse prospective converts of the current obligation to convert through the local rabbi [more precisely, the rabbinical courts -- Lurker], no matter how narrow minded he may be, and allow converts instead to shop around the country for lenient rabbis, provided they are part of the Chief Rabbinate. The downside of this [for the non-Orthodox] is that it means formally ruling out Conservative and Reform conversions as options for Israel's semi-Jews; hence the American Jewish outcry.

"The way America's Reform and Conservative movements see it, the battle over conversion in Israel is between Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy. Well it isn't. Rather, it's between ultra-Orthodoxy and modern Orthodoxy, and to join this battle, American Jewry must set aside its longer-term agendas and help Israel's modern-Orthodoxy win this battle."
...
"...ours is... a historically unique moment, one in which thousands who survived a 70-year-long attack on Judaism arrived in our midst. To come to them now with magnifying glasses and make their conversion process a nightmare is not only absurd, inhumane and anti-Israeli, it is also dubious as far as Jewish law itself is concerned, since historically a convert's observance was not reviewed once he converted.

"Here, however, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have revoked modern-Orthodox conversions retroactively, evidently serving ultra-Orthodoxy's sectarian interests, rather than serve the general Jewish interest...
...
"It would have been nice if Israeli non-Orthodoxy were sizable enough to confront ultra-Orthodoxy’s effort to make 300,000 Israelis Gentile, but the fact is it’s too small. Modern Orthodoxy, by contrast, is sizable, organically planted within the Israeli system, and eager to help Israel's semi-Jews become Jews. What stands in their way is Binyamin Netanyahu's strategic alliance with ultra-Orthodoxy.

"It follows, that on conversion the Jewish nation right now needs a strategic alliance between modern Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy. For this to happen, [the] Conservative and Reform movements [must] humbly concede that to reshape the Israeli conversion system they must first get more of their flock to live here. Until then, they would do well to let others handle Igor and Svetlana, while the rest of us leave it for them to handle Chelsea and Marc."

Again, I can't say that I support all of what Asa-el has to say here. But I do think that he deserves kudos for having the intellectual honesty and the guts to oppose the pervasive, mindlessly politically-correct groupthink and lies regarding the Rotem bill, and to present it for what it actually is.

UPDATE:

In a letter appearing in this past Friday's New York Times, Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar chides the American Reform and Conservative movements for their interference in Israel's democratic legislative process, and counters their torrent of canards and disinformation by succinctly describing exactly what the Rotem bill is, and why he supports it:

"The bill, within the framework of Jewish law, would expand the ambit of conversion, prevent the application of unjustified stringencies, and provide more leniency and flexibility in administration. Many Russian Israelis would benefit substantially. In fact, this legislation was proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu -- a secular party -- representing more than a million Russian Israelis."

In other words, the Chief Rabbi of Israel is desperately seeking a way to reform and liberalize the existing conversion system -- which is currently controlled solely by the haredi-run rabbinical courts. He wants to wrest control away from those courts, and to thereby allow thousands of secular Russian Israelis to finally convert -- and he is practically pleading with the Reform and Conservative movements to allow this to happen. But the Reform and Conservative movements seem inexplicably hellbent on preventing any such liberalization, and are instead fighting tooth and nail to keep Israeli conversion in the exclusive hands of the haredim.

The irony is practically beyond description.

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Hitting the nail on the head

by Lurker

R. Dr. Jeffrey Woolf was interviewed by JPost blogger Shmuel Rosner regarding the Rotem bill fiasco. At one point in the interview, Woolf explains the central reason for the perennial conflict between non-Orthodox American Jews and Israel. He clearly and succinctly identifies the very root of the problem:

...we need to face the fact that there is a significant disconnect between the way many (if not most) non-Orthodox Diaspora Jews define Judaism and their relationship to it [as opposed to the way most Israelis define it]. American Jews are characterized by a Post-Modern, absolute individualism. Most, as a result, bristle at the very idea that any person or institution can decide who is or who is not Jewish. On the other hand, the over 80% of Israeli Jews who describe themselves as either Orthodox or Traditional (including many Israeli Conservative Jews) see things very differently. Their conception of Judaism is not totally subjective, and their obligation to the Jewish people, as a whole, and their strong connection to Jewish collective history and memory is obligating and formative.
In other words, here, the seamless combination of Jewish nationhood and Judaism, which has characterized Judaism from time immemorial, is very much alive. As a result, conversion is not simply a matter of religious self-expression.

If I can take the liberty of boiling Woolf's point down to its bare essense:

For most non-Orthodox American Jews, being Jewish is primarily a personal lifestyle choice. For most Israelis, being Jewish is primarily being part of a nation.

And therein lies the rub.

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Back Rooms and Back Doors

What can you do? Anytime you see incitement against Israel, organized attacks against Israel, orchestrated lies against Israel, or even just a position that looks to not be in Israel’s best interest, these days, the first question you ask is, did the NIF give money to the organization at the forefront of the attack.

This weekend's Makor Rishon had an interesting report.

On the eve of Tisha b’Av there was an important case regarding the security fence near Jerusalem (specifically Har Gilo) that was directed to the Tel Aviv District court to deal with.

Appearing before the court as a “Friend of the Court” for the purpose of helping clarify technical matters, were representatives of the Council for Peace and Security. This organization was declared to be a “Friend of the Court” in 2006, and helped the Supreme Court decide in moving the fence on numerous occasions.

Around a month ago the case first came before Tel Aviv District Judge Sara Gadot.

Based on answer and statements from representatives from the Council for Peace and Security, the judge began to openly wonder about their neutrality on the fence as well as their actual professionalism on the matter (after it appeared that not everyone who even claimed to have participated in the fence survey actually participated).

So the judge started to ask questions of the members of the Council for Peace and Security.

On the eve of Tisha b’Av the judge asked, “Who is funding the Council for Peace and Security?”

This caused an uproar.

Members of the Council for Peace and Security said the judge acted improperly. The Council’s lawyer Talia Sasson (yes, that Talia Sasson) said that the judge had no right to ask that question as the Court system already recognized them as a “Friend of the Court”.

But the judge didn’t accept that and said that question is relevant if there appears to be bias and an agenda.

Anyway, you guessed it. The Council for Peace and Security, as well as individual members of the Council for Peace and Security, received a lot of money from the… New Israel Fund (NIF). In fact, while the NIF website, back in 2007, was calling the council a former grantee, NGO-Monitor exposed that the NIF was still giving them money even in 2008.

Why do I write this? Is this just another justified Muqata expose on the New Israel Fund?

Last week we saw the culmination of an incredibly organized and orchestrated attack against Israel.

There was an incredible amount of disinformation and outright lies being told to the Reform community about this Rotem Conversion bill. Members of the Reform community were so incited and riled up that they became incapable of logical thought, much less basic reading comprehension.

Even with the exact text of the bill placed in front of them, they brushed away the facts in front of their face and resorted to emotionally based, unrelated arguments (and will probably do so again in this post’s comments section).

A bill that would have resolved most of the conversion problems in Israel.


The author of the our post on the Rotem Conversion Bill made a comment that everyone seems to have missed. The author wrote: On the religious side, IRAC (an organization which receives funding from the NIF), the activist arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, is leading the fight. The Reform movement does not have much in the way of a significant number of constituents or followers in Israel, just a lot of money from various funds.

Just like the bill will prevent the Religious High Court from interfering with conversions, it will also make it harder for Israel's judicially activist secular Supreme Court to bypass the government, and overturn long-existing laws regarding conversion in Israel. A key project IRAC has been working on for years.

IRAC was leading the fight against the conversion bill. And it is certainly reasonable to assume that IRAC was apparently also responsible for the dissemination of information about the bill to the Reform community in the Diaspora.

One good thing that came out of this is that the country suddenly became aware that IRAC was trying to bypass the legislative process in Israel, as it was certainly failing in trying to convince the citizens of Israel of their case.

Instead IRAC was trying to change Israeli conversion law through a sympathetic Supreme Court, while simultaneously applying massive international pressure on Israel.

We’ve seen the tactics before. These are the same tactics used by Peace Now, Gush Shalom, and many other radical Left organizations. Many of whom have one thing in common. Funding by the NIF.

And IRAC is no exception.

But it gets worse.

Last week the Jerusalem Post reported, “The Israeli Religious Action Center (IRAC) and Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel agreed to a nearly six-month freeze on their High Court petition demanding state recognition of non-Orthodox conversions in Israel,”.


What this means is that over the next 6 months, IRAC will probably work hard to kill any chance the bill has of passing, or work to have it severely revised with some very specific changes in mind, via various pressure methods, and then in 6 months time will merrily skip back to the Supreme Court to continue were it left off in their attempts to circumvent the democratic process via the courts.

But I believe they will try something even more insidious, something our author didn't consider.

IRAC will try to have a water-downed version of the law passed, while spending the next 6 months simultaneously continuing to work through the Supreme Court to get a Reform rabbi officially recognized as a community Rabbi (specifically Miri Gold - they are currently petitioning her case in the Supreme Court) thus creating a back door to force the State to recognize Reform Conversions in Israel – and as a direct result, creating a schism in the Jewish nation in Israel, such that every family will now have to start keeping and checking family records to prevent intermarriage.

Once again, yet another organization funded by the NIF.

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Who is destroying "Jewish unity"?

by Lurker

In the comment thread on the Rotem bill post, an anonymous commenter has been arguing that for the sake of "Jewish unity", the State of Israel ought to accept all Jewish denominations as equally legitimate. Specifically, she is demanding that any person who converted to Judaism through any of these organizations (e.g., the Reform Movement) should be accepted as a Jew for all legal purposes. She accuses the State of Israel of destroying "Jewish unity" by not accepting these converts as Jews.

Since this issue has nothing to do with the Rotem bill (which is the subject of the post in question), but is still a very important point of Jewish public concern, I have decided to respond in a separate post.

For thousands of years, the mainstream of the Jewish people maintained a unified tradition regarding who is regarded as a Jew, based upon matrilineal descent. Then, 27 years ago, the Reform movement -- which itself had come into existence only a few decades earlier -- came along, and decided to unilaterally jettison those traditions, and create their own, new rules. In particular, they decided to dispense with the universally accepted requirement that the mother be Jewish [CCAR, Report of the Committee on Patrilineal Descent, adopted March 15, 1983].

In the exact same way, the Jewish people had millenia-old unified standards for the manner in which a non-Jew may be accepted into the Jewish people. This includes immersion in a mikveh, circumcision for men, and acceptance of mitzvot. Here too, the Reform movement unilaterally decided to jettison all these requirements [CCAR Yearbook 3 (1893), 73–95; American Reform Responsa (ARR), no. 68, at 236–237, which specifies that converts may be admitted "without any initiatory rite, ceremony, or observance whatever".]

Thus, it was the Reform movement, not the Orthodox, who broke ranks with the rest of the Jewish people by unilaterally abandoning all existing rules and standards that the Jewish people had maintained for centuries. To then follow up this unilateral act by demanding that the rest of the Jewish people now accept their own, newly-invented defintion of a "Jew" is outrageous. To make this demand in the name of "Jewish unity" -- after they themselves shattered Jewish unity by discarding the Jewish people's existing standards, and adopting their own, new, private ones in their place -- is the absolute height of hypocrisy.

Suppose that I and some of my friends were to establish our own, new Jewish organization, called the "Lox and Bagels Club". Suppose further that we were to decide to adopt our own, private organizational definition of who we consider to be a Jew: Let's say that we resolve that we consider anyone who likes to eat lox and bagels to be a "Jew". Would we then be within our rights to demand that the State of Israel adopt our new definition for legal purposes?

If your answer is that our hypothetical Jewish organization should have no right to make any such demand, then why is it acceptable for the Reform Movement to do so? Why should the rest of the Jewish people be expected to accept a brand new definition of "Jew" that violates the Jewish people's fundamental religious traditions, and that a new movement simply made up only a few years ago?

Perhaps you think there's a difference between my Lox and Bagels Club and the Reform Movement. Maybe you would argue that the Reform Movement has a large number of members, whereas my Lox and Bagels Club doesn't -- and that the Jewish people should therefore accept the Reform movement's "new Jews", but not the Lox and Bagels Club's "new Jews".

I would draw your attention, then, to the fact that there are other Jewish organizations who are also vying for recognition, and who have a rather sizable membership. For example, there is Messianic Judaism, aka "Jews for Jesus". They, too, have demanded that the State of Israel and the Jewish people accept them as a legitimate Jewish denomination, with the authority to perform conversions. (Their criteria for conversion, not surprisingly, center around the acceptance of Jesus as one's lord and savior.) Should their demands be accepted too, in the name of "Jewish unity"?

Most Jews -- Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform -- would answer: "But that's different! Those people believe in Jesus, so they're not Jews. That's crossing a red line: Jewish tradition has refused to accept Jesus for the last two thousand years! These people can't come along and violate our fundamental religious tradtions, and then demand that we accept them as legitimate!"

Hmm. Sound familiar?

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The Rotem Conversion Law

This post was written by an anonymous member of the Muqata Think-Tank with some assistance from the rest of us. The author felt it is an important issue to discuss.

The link to the actual bill that the brouhaha is based on is here: http://www.knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillKnesset/342/342.pdf

There are specific minor modifications to the proposal that we don't have available online at the moment, that are referenced in the post. (Thank you to Rabbi/Dr. Jeffrey Woolf and Yisrael Medad for those documents).

The Rotem Conversion Bill, an important bill, which should have been passed without any problem, has instead has become a political knife that is being used to promote various agendas and attack various people.

Unfortunately, certain people and organizations with very specific religious and political agendas are disingenuously trying to manufacture a storm by upsetting US Jewry with an issue that (a) doesn't affect them, and (b) might actually be better for them - if they moved to Israel and needed to deal with a conversion issue.

The bill was created to resolve some very specific internal Israeli issues – bureaucratic, political, and religious.

As Israel is a Jewish state, issues of Jewish law are important and central to a functioning society, as they are part of our legal system and they also prevent a permanent schism in the nation.

This law is a domestically-applied procedural law that shifts control and certification of who may perform recognized conversions in Israel – and only in Israel.

It does not change the status quo that Israel recognizes non-Orthodox conversions in the Diaspora for the purpose of the Right of Return. It does not have any affect on American Jewry or for that matter have any connection to Diaspora Jewry.

In Israel, two groups are coupled in the conversion process (1) The (State’s) Office of the Chief Rabbinate, and (2) the Religious Courts - the official religious court system in Israel.

The problem arose that due to Israeli domestic politics, the Religious Courts have become mostly populated with Ultra-Orthodox (Chareidi) judges, as opposed to “religious-Zionist” (Orthodox) judges and Rabbis, who better represent the country’s religious needs and character.

Consequently, recently there have been cases where the Chareidi-controlled Religious Courts attempted to annul, retroactively annul, or not accept the conversion of some non-Chareidi Rabbis (a halachically questionable act in of itself), and have made it difficult, if not impossible for the non-Chareidi Rabbis to perform conversions if they don’t base it on the various criteria set by the Ultra-Orthodox (a combination of religious philosophy, and strict interpretation and application of certain safeguards - Chumrot - built into halacha).


This bill proposes to decentralize the conversion process and remove direct oversight and control from the Religious Courts, while decentralizing and localizing the process down to the community level.

It places the conversion process into the hands of Chief Rabbinate-appointed community leaders - the officially appointed and recognized local Rabbi of Israel’s towns and cities.

These Rabbis will be trained and certified in Conversion law, and will create special local courts trained and certified to handle conversions at the local level.

These local conversions will automatically be recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, the official Rabbinate of the State of Israel, and thus the State of Israel for all relevant matters.

The concept is that local Rabbis are more likely to know and have a relationship with the potential convert living in their community - perhaps even being involved with the conversion studies of the applicant, than a Chareidi Religious Court’s Rabbi in Jerusalem, and will hence be in a better position to assist the potential convert in the Conversion process, as well as better equipped to decide if a potential convert should or should not be accepted into the Jewish nation - it is not, nor should it be an automatic process.

Furthermore, the bill does not limit the certified Rabbis and Courts to their own community members. If any Israeli citizen, permanent resident (similar to a US Green Card holder), and according to one version of the bill, a foreign citizen who gives explicit permission, wants to go to a specific community’s authorized Rabbi and Court for conversion, they will be allowed to.

This decentralization bill should actually make it easier and perhaps faster for more people to convert. It will be particularly helpful to segments of Israel’s large Russian population who are not Jewish, but want to officially join the Jewish nation.

The law also creates a special Conversion Oversight/Appeals Court whose sole responsibility is to oversee and decide on questionable or problematic cases of the local Rabbis, should any such problems arise. It specifically requires that the Oversight/Appeals court make all decisions within 30 days, so that no case will drag on for months or even years – a problem that can exist today.

This is a reform (not Reform) bill that should help improve, smoothen and perhaps even speed up the conversion process in Israel.

The opposition to the bill is coming from two quarters.

The bill was introduced by the Yisrael Beiteinu party. This party primarily represents the secular, Russian, Zionist population in Israel. They would be among the primary beneficiaries of this bill. The bill happened to have been introduced by a religious member of the party, with full support and backing of his party.

On the political side, in the Knesset, a number of MKs and parties want Yisrael Beiteinu out of the coalition or at least knocked down a few notches. This currently includes Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud party who are seriously fighting with their coalition partner over a number of issues. Other parties outside the coalition are involved too, as they want the current coalition government to collapse, which it could as a result.

Furthermore, this bill is a two-prong bill. The second part that Yisrael Beiteinu is working on is a Civil Marriage bill for those who cannot marry under Jewish law. If the first bill falls, the second will certainly never be introduced or passed.

On the religious side, IRAC (an organization which receives funding from the NIF), the activist arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, is leading the fight. The Reform movement does not have much in the way of a significant number of constituents or followers in Israel, just a lot of money from various funds.

Just like the bill will prevent the Religious High Court from interfering with conversions, it will also make it harder for Israel's judicially activist secular Supreme Court to bypass the government, and overturn long-existing laws regarding conversion in Israel. A key project IRAC has been working on for years.

IRAC has been trying for a while to destroy the carefully balanced status quo, ensconced in law, not by convincing the public (which they’ve failed to do over the past 2 decades), but rather by attempting to bypass the government and the people, by going through the Supreme Court, which happens to share a similar world view to them on this matter.

So to reiterate, this bill is primarily being introduced to help resolve the issue of the many non-Jewish Russians in Israel who want to join the Jewish nation, generally ease the conversion process, and resolve the problem of potential intermarriage that could otherwise split the nation.

The bill's opponents oppose it due to coalition politics, or because it blocks their attempts to destroy the religious status quo that would otherwise split our one nation in Israel apart.

The opponents are trying (in a very organized fashion) to obfuscate and inflame the discussion to promote very specific agendas (both religious and political) through hysterical polemics, half truths, and false insinuations.

But when it comes to facts on the ground, this is a very good bill that will help resolve some serious issues in Israel.

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