Orthodox organizations today assailed the Reform and Conservative movements for interfering in Israel’s political structure and for questioning Israel’s religious authorities. These reactions by the Rabbinical Council of America and the Committee for Jewish Survival were in response to a statement last Thursday by six Reform and Conservative groups opposing a new coalition government in Israel which would accede to the demands of the National Religious Party which would deny the validity of conversions by non-Orthodox rabbis anywhere in the world.
Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the Rabbinical Council, stated: “Whereas we do not question the rights of Jews residing outside of Israel to question Israel’s religious authorities, we express chagrin at the public pressure applied on Israel’s political leaders. it is precisely at this time when unity is imperative that we feel unwarranted interference in Israel’s political process by non-resident Reform and Conservative leaders is damaging to the interests of Israel even within the American Jewish community.”
Rabbi Bernstein stated that it is the Conservative and Reform movements that “have broken the ancient Jewish tradition with wide deviations from fundamental principles of Jewish religious laws.” He pointed out that Premier Golda Meir recently informed the American Jewish community that if they wished to change Israel’s laws and to influence its political system they must come and reside in Israel. He urged American Jews, at a time when Israel is beleaguered and its future is at stake, to offer Israel “warm support and offers of assistance, not pressures and criticism.”
Yosef Wilenkin, general secretary of the Committee for Jewish Survival, a group involved in campaigning for the halachic definition of who is a Jew, and for conversion according to halacha, castigated the Conservative and Reform movements for introducing politics into the conversion issue. “The essence of conversion is a religious act, and must, by its very concept, adhere to religious principles,” he said. “The introduction of political overtones is, in effect, itself a political ploy.”
Wilenkin, referring to the Reform-Conservative statement that the majority of Jews in the world are non-Orthodox, said that while this may be so “the majority of Jews would not recognize non-halachic conversions, and, indeed, would not have their children marry converts whose sole criterion in being Jewish is having undergone a meaningless (non-halachic) ceremony devoid of religious value and commitment. It is precisely the Reform and Conservative which have removed the standards that have stood the Jewish people in good stead for thousands of years.”
AJ CONGRESS RAPS NRP
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Congress urged Mrs. Meir to reject “pressures” by the NRP to disqualify Conservative and Reform rabbis from performing valid conversions in exchange for the NRP’s participation in the coalition government now in formation. In a cable to Mrs. Meir, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, president of the AJ Congress declared: “We are profoundly disturbed by political pressures now being exerted to coerce changes in the Law of Return, These pressures seek to disqualify Conservative and Reform rabbis throughout the world from the performance of valid conversions, even such conversions as may be in all substantive respects in perfect accord with halachic requirements.”
He noted that an identical effort failed of passage in the Knesset in 1970. “The current attempt seek to achieve by political force what could not be achieved by political consensus,” Rabbi Hertzberg said, adding: “It could not be more ill timed or more damaging to the maintenance of world wide Jewish solidarity imperative both for the security of the State of Israel and the dignity of the Jewish people.” The efforts of one group to assert “exclusive access” to religious conscience must not be given “the sanction of legislation,” and “divisive attempts to disparage large segments of the Jewish people everywhere be repudiated.” Rabbi Hertzberg said.
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