Leaders of Jewish federations across North America overwhelmingly endorsed a strongly worded resolution Thursday imploring Israel to remove the so-called “Who Is a Jew” issue from its political agenda.
“The issue, with its ideological, moral and communal implications, should not be decided in the context of political accommodation or to ensure the maintenance or downfall of a particular government,” the Council of Jewish Federations. General Assembly said in a resolution adopted after a fiery debate here Thursday morning.
“World Jewry should not be divided by a political approach” to the Who Is a Jew issue, the assembly said.
While simultaneously affirming its “continued total support for Israel,” the body of some 3,000 delegates also sternly warned Israeli leaders “not to underestimate the strength of feeling on this matter” in the Diaspora.
“We direct the leadership of CJF to convey to the political leadership in Israel, in the most vigorous, immediate and continuing way possible, that they must not risk dividing the world Jewish community as they seek now to form a government and thereafter,” the assembly stated in the resolution.
Following the adoption of the resolution Thursday, a task force of representatives from CJF, the United Jewish Appeal, the United Israel Appeal and UIA-Canada convened and decided to take the following courses of action:
A high-level leadership mission representing the four organizations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee will leave late Sunday night or Monday for Israel to meet with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli Knesset members and journalists.
Local federations across North America will organize their own series of trips to Israel during the next few weeks to lobby Israeli leaders.
A major petition drive on the issue will be launched across North America with the cooperation of synagogues. The petition is to be handed to Shamir by Chanukah.
MEETING WITH THE REBBE
Meanwhile, Morton Kornreich, national chairman of the UJA, will seek a meeting on the issue with the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who has been the driving force behind the efforts to amend the Law of Return.
The CJF resolution, drafted and revised only a few hours before it was presented Thursday morning, was adopted mainly intact after a vociferous and sometimes raucous debate on the subject, at a plenary session that originally was scheduled to be devoted to an entirely different subject: the quality of Jewish life.
At issue is an agreement Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has made with four Israeli religious parties — in exchange for their support — to win Knesset adoption of an amendment redefining who is considered Jewish in Israel.
The amendment would bar those converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis from qualifying for automatic Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.
The Reform and Conservative movements, who represent some 90 percent of affiliated Jews in North America, consider the amendment an affront to their legitimacy.
What became clear Thursday was that the vast majority of delegates here feel such a change in the law would be an affront to the entire Diaspora.
“It is an attempt to disenfranchise from the Jewish body politic the majority of North American Jews,” Mendel Kaplan, chairman of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, exclaimed in a passionate speech introducing the resolution.
The proposed amendment “tampers with the unity of the Jewish community,” Kaplan argued. “It jeopardizes the concept of the centrality of Israel for every single Jew.”
Despite his strong language, and the uncharacteristic stridency of the resolution, delegate after delegate argued during a debate on the document that CJF should take a tougher stand.
URGES STRONGER MESSAGE
Annette Dobbs, president of San Francisco’s Jewish federation, argued that the General Assembly should send a stronger message to Israeli leaders saying, in effect, that passage of the amendment would seriously weaken American Jewish philanthropic support for Israel.
She said that in her own community’s federation campaign, “major contributors, in the six and seven figures,” are already threatening to withdraw their donations if Israel makes such a change in the law.
Sources close to federation campaigns in other cities, including New York, have expressed similar fears.
But delegates rejected proposals to toughen the language of the resolution. And Shoshana Cardin, immediate past president of CJF, told delegates in a steely reproach that they do not deserve to be Jewish community leaders if they cannot stand up to the “terrified, frightened, disenchanted Jews whose support for Israel is wavering.
“This is not the time to defect, to become hysterical,” she said.
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