American Orthodox groups are, in effect, reading Israel’s National Religious Party out of the Orthodox fold for its abstention, with one exception, in the vote for a halachic conversion bill in the Knesset last week. The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada said in a statement issued here yesterday that they were “compelled to notify Jews all over the world that the NRP leaders in Israel are not representatives of religious Jewry.”
A similar statement was issued in the names of the presidents of the Rabbinical Alliance of America and the Metropolitan Board of Rabbis and the chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the Syrian and Near Eastern Jewish communities. “We are notifying all our members that the Mizrachi in Israel is not the representative and spokesman of Orthodoxy,” the statement said. The NRP represents the Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi movement.
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