Reform Conversion Procedures Under Serious Consideration in High Official Circies

Basic reforms that would modify the rigid control exerted by Israel’s Orthodox chief rabbinate in personal areas such as marriage, divorce and conversions are under serious consideration in high official circles. The need to reform conversion procedures has become a matter of special urgency in view of the still small but growing immigration of Jewish families from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, many of them with a non-Jewish spouse. The Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Itzhak Nissim, has drafted new conversion guidelines which reportedly would abolish the compulsory one-year waiting period that prospective converts must endure before their applications are acted upon. Rabbi Nissim also reportedly favors continuation of the “Vienna conversions” but under new, properly constituted rabbinical courts, under the supervision of a rabbi sent from Israel for the purpose. Most Soviet Jews enroute to Israel stop off at Vienna where non- Jewish members of their families–mainly wives–have been undergoing conversion by the local Bet Din (religious court) in order to guarantee the Jewish status of their children when they arrive in Israel. Israel’s Orthodox establishment has split over whether to recognize the Vienna conversions.

The National Religious Party is ready to accept them in order to expedite immigration even if they do not satisfy all Orthodox demands. But the Israeli rabbinical courts have denounced the conversions and have charged that some of the rabbis performing them are not “qualified”–meaning Orthodox. Rabbi Nissim’s proposals to be submitted to the chief rabbinate council next Wednesday, may satisfy the rabbinical courts. But most observers here believe they are doomed to failure as long as the rabbis insist that conversions must comply strictly to Orthodox interpretation of halacha (religious law) and must be motivated by religious convictions. Meanwhile, a special “think tank” established by Israel’s Labor Alignment has reportedly come up with proposals that would go a long way toward giving Israelis freedom of choice in religious matters. The team, which includes one rabbi, wants to amend Israeli laws to permit civil marriages for persons who wish them and to give non-religious persons recourse to civil courts for divorce. They also want to end the Orthodox monopoly of religious life in Israel by extending equal rights to Reform and Conservative Judaism. The proposals will be discussed at the forthcoming Labor Party convention. The religious establishment is expected to offer desperate opposition to these proposals.