c. 1997 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ A government-brokered compromise between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewish religious streams over the controversial”who is a Jew”issue has exploded into a full-fledged political crisis for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The political controversy, which erupted anew Monday (Oct. 13), threatens both the stability of Netanyahu’s religious-right wing government coalition and Israel’s relationship with its predominantly non-Orthodox base of Jewish support in the United States and elsewhere.

Orthodox politicians, enraged over recent revelations of a proposal to grant limited recognition to Reform and Conservative Jewish rabbis, have threatened to leave Netanyahu’s government within a month if he fails to back laws barring non-Orthodox groups from performing conversions in Israel or participating in municipal religious councils.

Netanyahu said Tuesday (Oct. 14) he would, prompting outrage from American Reform and Conservative officials.”This is a major rupture in Israel-diaspora relations,”Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, director of the Association of Reform Zionists, said in New York.”American Jews will see this as a direct attack on their Jewishness … And who is doing this? The very government of Israel, the state that claims to be the spiritual homeland of all Jews.” The compromise on the thorny conversion issue was reached by a seven-member committee appointed by Netanyahu and headed by Israel’s justice minister, Ya’acov Ne’eman, himself an Orthodox Jew. The committee _ which included five Orthodox rabbis or lawyers and two Reform and Conservative officials _ was charged this past summer with finding a conversion formula acceptable to all three Jewish streams.

The committee succeeded in coming to an agreement-in-principle on a far-reaching proposal to grant limited state recognition to Reform and Conservative rabbis in Israel, while leaving the actual supervision of conversion rituals in the hands of the Orthodox establishment.

According to the proposal, a new educational institute for would-be converts would be jointly administered by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform leaders. However, only Orthodox rabbis would actually perform the conversion ritual.

To sweeten the package for the Reform and Conservative movements, Orthodox members of the committee agreed to push for legislation to recognize marriages performed by non-Orthodox rabbis _ as long as they were supervised by Orthodox authorities.

The committee’s proposal began to unravel Sunday when Ne’eman brought it to Israel’s two Orthodox chief rabbis for their tentative approval, as well as to ultra-Orthodox leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Shas, a religious party of Middle Eastern Jews. All three immediately nixed it.

Orthodoxy has had de facto control over Israeli Jewish life ever since the nation’s founding. However, in recent years, non-Orthodox Judaism _ largely through the efforts of American Reform and Conservative Jews _ has fought for equal status in Israel, something the Orthodox have strenuously resisted.

Currently, Orthodox rabbis here recognize neither conversions nor marriages performed by their non-Orthodox counterparts, who constitute a small minority of Israeli Jews, even though they account for the vast majority of American Jews.

But while Israeli marriage laws give clearcut power to Orthodox authorities, the laws concerning conversions are more vague. Following a recent series of court appeals, the government was ordered to either recognize Conservative and Reform conversions, or legislate explicitly against them.

Netanyahu, meeting with the group of 23 Orthodox parliamentarians Tuesday, promised to begin moving the proposed law on conversion through the Knesset (parliament) when its winter session opens later this month _ while also continuing the search for a compromise formula.”If this law goes into the wastebasket, then there is no basis for the coalition,”said National Religious Party official Shaul Ya’alon, an Orthodox parliamentarian, warned following the meeting with Netanyahu.”What’s at stake here is the interests of Israel as a Jewish state, and the non-separation of religion and state.” In New York, the center of the American Jewish community, Reform and Conservative leaders issued a joint statement charging the Israeli Orthodox establishment with being”unwilling to accept religious pluralism or take any action that would grant even a small measure of legitimacy to the non-Orthodox movements.” They also said they would now proceed with court cases _ which had been put on hold _ designed to gain legal acceptance for their movements in Israel. In addition, the non-Orthodox leaders said they would mobilize their followers in the United States.”The plan is to activate a wide coalition of American Jewry; the protest will be loud and be felt,”said Rabbi Uri Regev, leader of the Israel Progressive (Reform) Movement’s Religious Action Center, and the Reform representative to the Ne’eman committee.”If the (Orthodox) conversion law passes, this will amount to a declaration of war by the state of Israel against the Jewish people in the diaspora,”added Rabbi Ehud Bandel, president of Israel’s Masorti (Conservative) movement.

But some politicians said they saw the crisis as a potential opportunity to trigger a reshuffling of Netanyahu’s battered government coalition _ a reshuffling that could lead to the creation of a national unity government between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the liberal-left Labor opposition.

In Israel’s quasi-parliamentary system, the prime minister is elected once every four years, but he needs the support of 61 of Israel’s 120 Knesset members to govern, or else new parliamentary elections must be called.

Centrist members of Netanyahu’s government have been quietly holding talks with both Labor and Likud in a search for a formula to bring Labor into a”unity government”_ largely in order to regenerate the peace process.”I really believe this compromise proposed by the Ne’eman committee on the conversion issue is eventually what will happen _ and if we get a unity government out of it as well, so much the better,”said Alex Lubotsky, a member of the centrist Third Way and an Orthodox Jew who has backed dialogue with the non-Orthodox streams.

Lubotsky, an internationally acclaimed mathematician, said the compromise was the”only logical formula”on the conversion issue, and that it completely conformed to Orthodox Jewish law.”On every issue in which here is question of Jewish law, which is a red line for the Orthodox, the Conservative and Reform movements would concede. On the other hand, the Orthodox would have to give on the legitimacy of the non-Orthodox movements, which is what the Conservative and Reform most need.”It’s quite rare that recommendations of public committees are accepted immediately _ but eventually the dialogue is influenced by them,”Lubotsky said.

DEA END FLETCHER