Israel Agrees Not to Refer Immigrants to Religious Courts

The Israeli Interior Ministry has agreed not to refer new immigrants to rabbinical courts in order to deter- mine their Jewishness for purposes of civil registration.

It is seen as a victory for champions of the separation of religion and state here, while the fervently Orthodox are calling the development a dangerous one.

The Ministry agreement was presented by the Attorney General to the Supreme Court last week in response to a petition filed by the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center here.

The petitioners alleged that the Ministry’s Population Registry was making the referrals to the rabbinical courts, which are illegal.

In documents, David Efrati, director of the Registry, declared his division had not referred and would not refer new immigrants to the religious courts.

And the head of the rabbinical courts, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Dahan, submitted affidavits agreeing that the rabbinical courts had no jurisdiction in the matter.

The Supreme Court “has long established the principle” that the Law of Return — which grants certain rights to immigrants determined to be of Jewish descent — and the population registry are civil matters, said Rabbi Uri Regev, head of the Reform center.

As such, they are not based on halachah, or Jewish law, and halachic definitions of who is a Jew, he added.

Regev said he had been seeking redress on the matter from the Attorney General’s office for more than two years.

Regev has maintained that the rabbinical courts only have the “incidental authority” to judge Jewish status in matters squarely under their jurisdiction, such as marriage.

Meanwhile, the fervently Orthodox press greeted the legal agreement with strong criticism. It said a “red line” had been crossed in the increasingly difficult effort to determine the Jewish status of immigrants.

It should “cause sleeplessness to all Jews” concerned about the “enormous assimilation of gentiles into the Jewish fold,” the World Rabbinic Committee on Conversion was quoted as stating.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court last week dismissed as unnecessary another petition aimed at reining in the rabbinical courts.

The petition called for the religious courts to be forced to obey a High Court ruling last February ordering them to apply civil, rather than religious, law to the division of property in divorce cases.

According to reports, the Supreme Court last week granted that the chief rabbis stated the rabbinical courts would not rule “according to any instructions which contradict halachah.” But the Court also noted that the chief rabbis had not yet officially determined that the High Court ruling was contrary to halachah.