Ehud Olmert pledged to solve an Israeli conversion crisis prompted by a rabbinical dispute.
The prime minister on Monday gave the government four months to address a recent decision by Israel’s Rabbinical High Court to fire Rabbi Haim Druckman as head of a state-sponsored Conversion Committee.
In dismissing Druckman, who was considered relatively lenient by the standards of Orthodox conversion, the court said it would annul thousands of conversions of immigrants from the former Soviet Union that he had approved.
Israel Radio quoted Olmert as saying in a statement that such immigrants “include the best of our soldiers, the cream of our academia, and so the issue of conversion in Israel tops the national agenda.”
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