American Jews Confront Aide to Shamir on ‘who is a Jew’

A top aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir took the brunt of North American Jewish leadership’s anger over the “Who Is a Jew” issue Tuesday during a closed-circuit television broadcast from Jerusalem.

Yossi Ben-Aharon, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, could do little to assuage the indignation of leaders who called in to the two-hour program, carried over the Council of Jewish Federations’ satellite network to federations across North America.

In fact, Ben-Aharon inflamed passions with declarations that a proposed change in the definition of who is Jewish — or, in its most narrow interpretation, who is a convert — is not an issue of “disenfranchising anybody.”

The sometimes heated exchange indicated that a distance exists between how American and Israeli Jews perceive the consequences of the “Who Is a Jew” controversy.

Despite Ben-Aharon’s inflexibility, former CJF President Shoshana Cardin insisted on the broadcast that a delegation of North American Jewish leaders that arrived in Israel on Monday had “had an impact” in conveying the Diaspora’s distress over the issue. The delegation, led by Cardin, met with Shamir Tuesday morning.

Cardin said Shamir would give no commitment that the issue would be excluded from his Likud party’s negotiations with the religious parties on forming a new government. The four religious parties, whose participation is necessary if Shamir is to form a narrow-based coalition, have been demanding assurances of a change in the Law of Return in exchange for their support.

‘NOT A QUESTION OF DELEGITIMIZING’

The law currently grants automatic Israeli citizenship to Jewish immigrants to Israel. The religious parties want to exclude from automatic citizenship those converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis.

Reform and Conservative Jews say the move would serve to delegitimize their movements and alienate their cohorts in the United States and elsewhere.

But for Ben-Aharon, who spoke on behalf of Shamir, the “Who Is a Jew” amendment “is not a question of delegitimizing or depriving any Jew his status as a Jew.”

“It is not for us to recognize or not,” he explained later in the broadcast. “The question pertains to what happens in Israel and Israel alone. And today, questions of personal status — marriages and the like — are delivered to the rabbinical courts and them alone.”

Ben-Aharon’s assertions that North American Jews only perceive “Who is a Jew” as something more than an internal issue for Israelis led to a storm of protest from callers.

“Yossi, you must understand that the issue, as you articulate it, is perceived as the disenfranchisement that we are talking about,” said George Caplan, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. “The issue so narrowly stated ignores the concerns of American Jews.”

“I am distressed by the remarks of the director general,” said Lou Weinstein, a former president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. “You said that ‘rabbis are rabbis.’ Well, Jews are Jews, and we’re not going to take any nonsense!”

Ben-Aharon was asked by one caller what he would tell a little girl who had been adopted and then converted by a Conservative rabbi.

ISSUE OF AMERICAN STANDARDS

“If she is considered Jewish by your community, then she is Jewish,” said Ben-Aharon. But under the “Who Is a Jew” amendment, “if she wants to move to Israel, she will have to go through a confirmation procedure by the rabbinical court.”

A question on halachic standards of conversion led Ben-Aharon into a statement that seemed to reflect Israeli dissatisfaction with the religious pluralism of American Jewish life.

In America, said Ben-Aharon, someone who is not accepted by one synagogue or community can go next door and find another.

“But we are not just another community, but a state. We have security concerns. We have to know who comes into this state.

“Theoretically, someone who wanted to exploit the Law of Return and doesn’t want to become a Jew could take an easy conversion, and come in for reasons against the security of Israel,” he said.

Responding directly to that statement, Annette Dobbs, president of San Francisco’s Jewish federation, said, “It is unacceptable, totally unacceptable what you just said. The soul and unity of the Jewish people is at stake, and we cannot stand idly by,” she added.

Morton Kornreich, national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, closed the broadcast by thanking Ben-Aharon and by urging the North American Jewish communities to “remain calm.”