Labor Party circles have expressed renewed optimism that the National Religious Party will soon join Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s coalition government on the basis of a mutually acceptable compromise on the Who is a Jew issue. The NRP would, first, have to obtain if not the sanction at least the non-opposition of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and the blessings of influential Orthodox rabbis abroad.
Former Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, now visiting the U.S., has reportedly met with Rabbi Joseph Soloveyitchik of Boston on the issue and the Labor Party may find out when he returns this weekend whether a compromise is possible. (Rabbi Soloveyitchik, who wields considerable influence in Orthodox circles in the U.S. and Israel told Israeli correspondents yesterday that he was not mixing in the dispute between the NRP and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate over joining the Rabin government. He also warned against the use of his name in controversial issues in Israel without his specific written permission.)
According to talk in the Knesset lobbies, the compromise that would allow the NRP to join the government is one that was raised during the last weeks of the Golda Meir regime. The Orthodox establishment is demanding amendment of the Law of Return to specify that only conversions carried out in accordance with halacha (religious law) are valid in Israel. By Orthodox interpretation, only Orthodox rabbis are qualified to perform halachic conversions. The Labor Party is now rumored to have proposed to the NRP that within a year’s time it would support a private member’s bill in the Knesset specifying conversion as “carried out among the people of Israel through the generations.”
Labor’s coalition partners, Mapam, the Independent Liberals and the Civil Rights Party would not be required to support the private measure and, the Laborites hope, would not actively oppose it. The NRP could be confident that with Labor support and some backing from Likud, the new formula would be adopted by the Knesset by a comfortable margin. Labor sources say. NRP leaders for their part, remain non-committal, at least in public.
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