Orthodox Leaders Deplore Defeat of Amendment to the Law of Return

Orthodox Jewish leaders deplored the defeat in the Knesset of an amendment to the Law of Return which would have added the words “according to halacha” to define who is a Jew. The Orthodox leaders also sharply criticized American Jewish religious and secular leaders who called upon Israeli political leaders to reject the proposed amendment.

The proposed controversial amendment, which would have invalidated conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad, was defeated by a vote of 62-51 on its first reading in the Knesset last Wednesday. The present Law of Return defines a Jew as a person born of a Jewish mother or converted.

The Agudath Israel of America, in a statement over the weekend, said that the issue is not “Who is a Jew” but “Who is a Convert.” The proposed amendment “would have ensured that all who enter Israel under the conversion provision were in fact converted in a manner acceptable to all Jews,” Agudath Israel said.

HALACHIC VIEWPOINT DESCRIBED

Its statement declared: “Let the halachic standpoint be crystal clear. All Jews born of a Jewish mother, whether they are observant of Orthodox Jewish practice or not, and regardless of how they label themselves, are fully members of the Jewish people. As for acceptance of outsiders into the ranks of Jewry, conversion according to halacha has always been the single acceptable means for a non-Jew to become part of the Jewish nation.”

Agudath Israel, in criticizing the American Jewish non-Orthodox leaders, said it was “shocked and deeply troubled” by a joint statement they issued last week which said, in part, that the proposed change in the Law of Return “would do violence to the principle of Jewish unity and jeopardize the sense of solidarity that binds the Jewish people everywhere to the State of Israel.”

In response, Agudath Israel said that these leaders are “promoting the fragmentation” of the Jewish people by “seeking to legitimize a multiplicity of standards in the place of one definition of Jewishness that was universally accepted by Jews through the ages.”

ANOTHER RESPONSE TO AMENDMENT’S DEFEAT

In another response to the defeat of the proposed amendment to the Law of Return, the Orthodox Coalition for the Sanctity of Israel declared in a statement that “all Jews, be they Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, secular or unaffiliated, if they are born of a Jewish mother are equal members of the Jewish people …. the amendment to the Law of Return concerns itself only with the correct procedure for conversion.”

It added that all conversions “performed by clergymen which are not in keeping with the Jewish code of law (halacha) to be invalid. The converts of such ‘ceremonial conversions’ cannot be considered members of the Jewish people.”

The statement condemned Premier Shimon Peres’ “capitulation to Reform and Conservative blackmail” and called upon “all Jews regardless of political affiliation in Israel and in the diaspora to express their outrage” at Peres’ “usage of totalitarian demagoguery in forcing members of Parliament to vote contrary to their conscience, thus preventing (the) democratic majority of the Jewish people to achieve a lawful solution to the problem of Who is a Jew.”

The statement was signed by Rabbi Isaac Pupko, chairman of the executive committee of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada; Rabbi Abraham Hecht, president, Rabbinical Alliance of America; Rabbi Zvulun Lieberman of the International Rabbinic Committee for the Safety of Israel; and Rabbi Y. Springer, chairman, Shofar Association of America.