Israeli Official to Reform: Pluralism Taking a Back Seat

Advocates of religious pluralism in Israel have long regarded Haim Ramon, Labor Party star and Israel’s interior minister, as an ally.

So when Ramon made it clear to a visiting group of 55 Reform rabbis this week that he will push aside the cause of religious pluralism if it means that Labor has a better chance of winning the upcoming government election, they were taken aback.

The rabbis met with Ramon, as well as Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Likud opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu in separate meetings Sunday, as part of their weeklong trip to Israel and Egypt, which was organized by the Association of Reform Zionists in America.

In what ARZA’s executive director, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, described as “a rather stormy meeting,” Ramon emphasized his opposition to efforts to make non- Orthodox conversions and marriages legal in Israel because it would cost the Labor Party the support of the Orthodox parties in the elections.

The religious parties, needed by the Labor Party to win re-election, have made it clear that the price of their support is an end to efforts to legislatively erode Orthodox control over conversion, marriage, divorce and burial.

I will “not support our losing the election over the issue of permitting Reform conversions to Judaism,” Ramon was quoted as telling the rabbis.

“If we lose the elections, Netanyahu will be prime minister and then my child may have to fight in Gaza and die there,” he said, alluding to the possibility that Netanyahu would reverse the Labor government’s peace policies.

“Because you want Reform conversions my child will be killed? I cannot agree to that,” he said. “That is my order of priorities and I am ready to pay the price of no Reform conversions for another five to 10 years.”

In Hirsch’s view, Ramon’s statements “indicated a lack of deep understanding of Israel-Diaspora relations. He could use some education about Diaspora Jewry.”

Peres told the rabbis that he would establish “some kind of forum where these issues would be negotiated and resolved satisfactorily,” though he did not elaborate, Hirsch said.

Netanyahu pledged his private, personal support for religious pluralism, said Hirsch, but urged the Reform rabbis to view the process as one of “gradual evolution, not revolution.”

Peres and Netanyahu are reportedly getting significant financial support from Reform and Conservative Jews abroad.

Hirsch said that even though Reform Jews would “aggressively support the peace process irrespective of any answer they give us relating to matters of religion and state,” his group made clear that “we will oppose you with every fiber of our institutional being if you seek to reopen the `Who is a Jew question and create a chasm in the Jewish community.”

The “Who is a Jew” debate severely strained Israel-Diaspora relations when the Orthodox establishment in Israel unsuccessfully sought to change the Law of Return to exclude Jews converted abroad by non-Orthodox rabbis.

Public support among politicians for religious pluralism in Israel is “a simple political calculation,” said Hirsch, adding that ARZA’s plan to introduce into the Knesset a bill that would permit civil marriages in Israel would also be carefully calculated.

Hirsch said Ramon’s opposition alone would not kill plans to introduce the bill, but moving the elections forward to the spring as the prime minister has reportedly urged could set back ARZA’s plans.

The Reform movement will initiate “a vast public education campaign” and “we’re not clear whether the peace issue is so predominant that our message would be drowned out by the sheer volume of the rhetoric if we unleash it now,” Hirsch said.

The $400,000 that ARZA has raised from American Reform Jews to finance to effort “is there,” he said. “It’s simply a strategic question of when to do it.”