If the National Religious Party decides to join Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s coalition government, adding its ten Knesset votes to Rabin’s present paper-thin majority of one, the decision in all probability will be made in New York, not Israel. New York is where Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren is currently visiting on behalf of the Israel Bond Organization. Last week, the Labor Party’s own spiritual mentor, Rabbi Menachem Hacohen, left quietly for the U.S. to meet with Rabbi Goren apparently in the hope of selling him on a formula that would permit the NRP to join the Rabin government.
It is no secret that Labor wants the NRP in. Its experience in the Knesset since the Rabin government took office has been precarious in the extreme. The casual absence of only a few Labor MKs could very easily cause the government to be toppled by Likud and the NRP working in concert as an opposition bloc. That could have happened last week in the close vote on the national budget.
Secret talks have been held in recent weeks by a Labor Party committee headed by Justice Minister Haim Zadok and NRP chiefs Dr. Joseph Burg and Yitzhak Rafael. The three cabinet portfolios traditionally held by the NRP — Welfare, Interior and Religious Affairs — are being kept open in the event agreement is reached.
The issue is the Who is a Jew question. The NRP insists on a government commitment to amend the Law of Return so that only conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis are recognized as valid in Israel. The NRP’s agreement to enter the last Golda Meir cabinet earlier in the year without such a commitment brought it the wrath of the Chief Rabbinate. Now the religious party keeps the Chief Rabbinate — meaning Rabbi Gore — informed of every move and will not enter the Rabin government without its approval.
GOREN MAY CONSULT U.S. RABBIS
The problem is to find a formula acceptable to both the Orthodox establishment and Rabin’s vigorously secular coalition partners — the Independent Liberal Party and the Civil Rights Party. Shulamit Aloni, the CRP leader and a Minister-Without-Portfolio in the Rabin Cabinet, has already made it clear that her faction would leave the government if the NRP joins.
Labor is pinning its hopes on the acceptability of a rather vague “temporary” formula which Rabbi Hacohen is reportedly to discuss with Rabbi Goren. It states that a person is a Jew who has been converted in accordance with the practices of Judaism accepted in Israel over the generations. This skirts the Orthodox demand that the Law of Return be amended to specify conversions by halacha — religious law — which in the Orthodox view rules out conversions by non-Orthodox rabbis. The Labor Party proposed further that while this formula is in effect, a special committee would search for a permanent solution to the problem. Labor wants to give the committee one year for the task. The NRP has insisted on a six month deadline.
The question is whether Rabbi Goren will go along with the formula. He in turn is expected to seek the advice of two prominent Orthodox rabbis in the U.S.– the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, of Boston. (By Yitzhak Shargil)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
