Dr. Avner Sciaky, a National Religious Party MK, announced today that he was leaving the NRP to form his own one-man Knesset faction. Sciaky, a Sephardic intellectual and law lecturer at Tel Aviv University, has been at loggerheads with the NRP since last July when he voted with Herut and Aguda factions against the government on the “Who Is A Jew” issue. The rest of NRP maintained coalition discipline and abstained in the Knesset vote. Sciaky resigned his post as Deputy Education Minister at the time.
Sciaky explained today that he could not reconcile his conscience with the fact that the NRP was in effect agreeing not to amend the Law of Return to define a Jew as a person born of a Jewish mother or converted according to halacha. Sciaky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency_that he was writing a book on the “Who Is A Jew” issue in which he said he would detail the halachic and legal aspects of the problem.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
