The head of the congregational branch of Conservative Jewry accused Israel’s two Chief Rabbis of “divisive political action” and said they used their visit to the U.S. to interject “political views and concepts into a religious discussion.”
Franklin Kreutzer, president of the two million-member United Synagogue of America which represents 850 Conservative congregations in the U.S. and Canada, spoke in response to charges made by Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu, the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Chief Rabbis of Israel, respectively, that the Reform and Conservative movements “are creating a new Torah that can divide the Jewish people.”
The Chief Rabbis made their comments in a special interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here last Wednesday. They claimed that Reform and Conservative rabbis do not conform to halacha (religious law) and demanded that they “stop converting to Judaism according to their new laws.”
“The issue is not whether the Conservative movement observes halacha, as we do, but the refusal of the Orthodox establishment to accept Conservative rabbis performing religious conversions according to halacha,” Kreutzer said. “The issue is not whether Conservative rabbis observe halacha, as they do in conversions and all other religious observances, but where the rabbi obtained ordination. If the ordination is Orthodox, the procedure is accepted; however, if a rabbi with Conservative ordination follows strictly, to the very letter of the law, halachic principles, the conversion is not accepted.
“Why? The answer is obvious–politics,” Kreutzer declared. “This divisive political action on the part of the two Chief Rabbis of Israel is consistent with the Orthodox attempt to amend the Law of Return in the Knesset, which has been repeatedly rebuffed and rejected. It is ‘chutzpadik’ for the Chief Rabbis to come to America and state that ‘We ask of you, don’t divide the Jewish people’ when it is they and their Orthodox communities that are sowing the seeds of distrust and divisiveness.
“We ask only that the Chief Rabbis cease in their determination to foist Israel’s internal politics and problems upon the Jewish religion in the diaspora. If halacha is observed, then the Orthodox establishment must accept the legitimate actions of diaspora Jewry and its rabbis,” Kreutzer said.
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