Rabbi I. Usher Kirshblum, chairman of the Committee for the Preservation of Tradition and Diversity, a dissident group within the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, said a telegram was being sent yesterday to Premier Menachem Begin, asserting that the Assembly “never authorized its president to combine forces with the Reform movement” to oppose amendment of Israel’s Law of Return.
The reference was to the departure yesterday for Israel of Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz, RA president; Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, RA executive vice president; Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, RA executive vice president; Rabbi Ely Pilchik, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform rabbinical association; and Rabbi Joseph Glaser, CCAR executive vice-president.
At the invitation of Begin, the four rabbinical officials will meet with the Premier in Jerusalem Wednesday in an effort to induce him to drop his personal commitment to the National Religious Party and the Agudath Israel bloc to seek in the Knesset to have the Law of Return amended in a way which would reject conversions by non-Orthodox rabbis.
The amendment would add the phrase “according to halacha” to the identification of Jews in the Law of Return as those either with a Jewish mother or those converted to Judaism. The Orthodox interpret that phrase as nullifying conversions performed by non-Orthodox rabbis.
The four rabbinical officials were members of a delegation which met with the Premier in New York during his July visit to this country in an effort to persuade him to drop his backing for the amendment. At that time, he invited them to meet with him in Israel for further discussion on the issue.
Kirshblum, of Kew Gardens Hills, N.Y., said the committee’s cable to Begin also said that the committee supported adoption of the disputed amendment. The dissident committee was organized soon after the RA Committee on Law and Standards approved inclusion of women in a minyan at the option of member congregations, opposing that ruling. Kirshblum said the committee has 131 members.
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