Representatives of Conservative and Reform Judaism called on Israel’s Knesset and the government of Prime Minister-designate Yitzhak Shamir to reject efforts by the country’s Orthodox rabbinate to amend Israel’s Law of Return, asserting that such a change was “contrary to the interests and welfare of world Jewry.”
At a news conference in the headquarters of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), leaders of the rabbinical and congregational branches of Conservative and Reform Judaism in the United State and Canada joined in a statement assailing current attempts to change the Law of Return that would hold invalid all conversions to the Jewish faith performed by non-Orthodox rabbis.
“The change in the Law of Return would do violence to the principle of Jewish unity and Jeopardize the sense of solidarity that binds the Jewish people everywhere to the State of Israel,” the joint statement declared.
“In deciding whether a conversion performed in the diaspora is or is not authentic — basing their opinion not on how the conversion was performed, but on who performed it — the Israeli rabbinate and, if they achieve their purpose, the State, would arrogate to themselves authority over the religious lives of Jews throughout the world.”
WARN OF DANGER TO ISRAEL
Continuing, the statement said: “By explicitly rejecting the legitimacy and authenticity of non-Orthodox movements, the Knesset would be taking a Judgmental action totally beyond its competence. This would damage the capacity of the State to call upon every Jew equally for economic, political and moral support, and weaken the appeal for aliya. The State of Israel, the major unifying force in Jewish life, would thus become a force for injecting divisiveness.”
The six religious leaders, who said they spoke on behalf of the Reform and Conservative Jewish communities of the U.S. and Canada, with combined constituencies of more than three million Jews, declared that their presence together at the news conference “is an earnest manifestation of our recognition of the vital symbiotic relationship through which diaspora Jewry supports Israel and is in turn nourished by it.”
The six religious leaders signing the statement were: Rabbi Joseph Glaser, executive vice president, Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR); Rabbi Wolf Kelman, executive vice president, Rabbinical Assembly; Rabbi Morton Leifman, vice president, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS); Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president, UAHC; Prof. Gordon Tucker, director, Institute for Religious and Social Studies, JTS; and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, executive director, ARZA (Association of Reform Zionists of America.)
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