In a landmark ruling, Israel’s Supreme Court has opened the door for recognition of Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel.
In a 6-1 decision issued Sunday, the court ruled that a person who asks the Interior Ministry to be listed in a civil population registry as a Jew does not require approval from the chief rabbinate, which only recognizes Orthodox conversions in Israel.
However, the court did not explicitly recognize Reform conversions, saying that it would be up to the Knesset to pass the appropriate legislation.
Passage of such legislation, leaders of the Reform movement said, would be difficult given the expected opposition by members of the religious parties.
Nonetheless, leaders of the Reform movement hailed the ruling as historic – while Orthodox groups rejected it.
“There is no way now that anyone will be able to block the recognition of Reform and Conservative conversions in Israel,” Uri Regev, head of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center in Israel, told Israel Radio.
Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau rejected the decision, saying that the Orthodox establishment would never accept what he called “the fiction of Reform conversions.”
The court’s decision was described as a “devastating blow to the Jewishness of the `Jewish state'” by Agudath Israel of America, which represents fervently Orthodox Jew.
“By enabling the recognition of conversions in Israel by Reform rabbis, the Supreme Court ruling represents a giant step forward toward the ultimate import to the Holy Land of the `religious pluralism’ syndrome which has wreaked havoc in the United States,” Agudah’s president, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, said in a statement.
The organization’s international body, Agudath Israel World Organization, recently launched a campaign aimed at combating efforts by liberal Jewish groups to attain religious pluralism in Israel.
The Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements are all involved in an effort to erode the Orthodox monopoly on religious affairs in Israel as well as Orthodox control over personal-status issues such as marriage, divorce and burial.
The Supreme Court’s decision came as a result of petition brought by Hava Goldstein, a Brazilian immigrant who underwent a Reform conversion after marrying an Israeli.
The Interior Ministry refused her request to register her as a Jew, citing an ordinance that requires anyone who wishes to be registered as a Jew to first receive approval from the rabbinate.
The high court ruled that the ministry’s reason for refusing Goldstein’s request was invalid, because the ordinance applies only to matters of personal status, such as marriage and divorce.
It does not apply to civil issues, such as how a person is listed in the population registry, the court said.
Former court president Meir Shamgar wrote in his majority opinion: “It is possible that a man could be considered Jewish for the sake of one law, but not be considered Jewish for the sake of another law.”
He added that the court was asked to consider only whether the state’s reason for rejecting the request was wrong, not whether Reform conversions are valid.
Therefore, Shamgar wrote, the court could not state that a Reform conversion enabled Goldstein to be registered as a Jew.
Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who also voted with the majority, said the type of conversions valid for this purpose would be decided by the Knesset.
In the meantime, he added, the guidelines should be those already established for what constitutes conversion under the Law of Return.
According to that law, Reform and Conservative conversions performed overseas have been recognized as valid since 1989, but not those performed in Israel.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Zvi Tal said the population registry is not merely a “statistical service,” and that identity cards, in which the holder’s religion is listed, are issued as the basis of most civilian life.
He said a recognized government authority, until now the rabbinate, should set the criteria for registration as a Jew.
The high court is expected to take up another challenged to the religious status quo in six months, when it is scheduled to deal with a petition submitted by parents of adopted children who underwent Conservative conversions in Israel.
That ruling could affect thousands of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who are now officially classified as non-Jews.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, about 10 percent of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union are not Jewish according to Jewish religious law.
Regev was quoted as saying that thousands of these immigrants might want to undergo Reform or Conservative conversions if they were officially recognized.
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