November 25, 2008

Israel’s Law of Return was perhaps the country’s most profound statement of national purpose. Defining Israel’s role as a haven for the world’s dispersed Jews, it offered Israeli citizenship to “a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew, and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew.”

In recent years, a floodtide of new immigrants came to Israel under the law, escaping persecution in their homelands and contributing to Israeli society as students, soldiers, parents, and professionals — in short, as citizens. Many of these immigrants now seek a connection to Judaism deeper than the Law of Return requires and have sought conversions through the State Conversion Authority.

Unfortunately, rabbinical authorities have been able to stymie the process of conversion, creating a logjam and, perhaps worse, sending a message of exclusion and disharmony. They went so far as to dismiss the leader of the authority, the head of a prominent Orthodox yeshiva who was committed to an efficient, equitable process.

This week the umbrella body of Jewish federations, meeting in Jerusalem, passed a resolution calling on the government of Israel to “speedily redress the administrative impediments to timely conversion by assuring that conversion courts are reconstituted, that they process applicants for conversion efficiently and justly, and that they are not subverted by those who call into question these conversions.”

Submitted by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, the resolution calls on Israel to remember its Law of Return and to consider the consequences of inaction: a population divided along religious lines and increased tensions between many in the North American Jewish community and Israel’s religious establishment.

In recent years hundreds of thousands of people have returned to the Jewish fold to build a Jewish state. Israel should not be turning them away.

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