Hardline rabbis rule thousands are not Jewish

Published on Friday 2 May 2008 23:37

ISRAEL'S highest rabbinic court has ruled that thousands of Israelis who converted to Judaism in recent years are actually not Jewish.

The ruling by the Great Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem invalidates all conversions made by a state authority set up by the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, in 1999. One of the aims of the authority was to make it easier for non-Jews among the flood of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to arrive in Israel during the 1990s to become Jewish

Unlike Islam and Christianity, orthodox Judaism does not encourage conversion and those wishing to become Jews must undertake a rigorous process of study and preparation.

In Israel, where there is no separation of church and state and no civil marriage, orthodox Jewish law prevails on a variety of personal status issues. Being considered non-Jewish makes it impossible to marry a Jewish spouse legally without leaving the country and also precludes being buried alongside Jews.

Purist rabbis have long charged that the conversions conducted by rabbi Haim Druckman, head of the authority, are lax and do not uphold requirements that the would-be convert practises all of the "divine commandments". Some rabbis are so strict that they require married couples of a would-be convert and a Jew to separate and then live together again only after they are married following the conversion.

The three-rabbi panel found that a woman converted by rabbi Druckman was not Jewish since she did not observe the commandments and declared that all of the conversions he conducted were "invalid."

Susan Weiss, a lawyer who heads an institute that combats rulings of the rabbinic courts which discriminate against women, said: "Thousands of people will find themselves to be gentiles."

"We are talking about people who consider themselves Jews, who got married after their conversions and had children," said Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv "It is terrible and it is unprecedented in Jewish history that rabbis would cancel (orthodox conversions] through a judicial process"

Rabbi Druckman argued the ruling should not be viewed as binding, saying: "It has no connection to justice." He and politicians of prime minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party are now looking to the chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, to find a way to defeat the ruling.