c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ While their war for recognition is hardly over, religiously liberal Israelis and non-Orthodox American Jewish denominations Monday (Jan. 26) appeared closer to winning a major battle in their months-long campaign for recognition from Israel’s state-sanctioned Orthodox rabbinical establishment on the controversial”Who is a Jew”issue.

A bill that would grant state recognition exclusively to Orthodox converts to Judaism now appears unlikely to pass Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, observers here are saying.

Theologically more liberal Reform and Conservative Jewish groups had warned that the proposed”conversion law”could create a dangerous rift between Israel and its predominantly non-Orthodox Jewish base of support abroad.

Instead, compromise proposals to grant limited state recognition to non-Orthodox converts _ or alternatively grant Reform and Conservative rabbis a role in the conversion process _ are now being considered by Israel’s religious and political leadership.”It’s clear today that the conversion law will not happen. The danger of a split between the Jews of Israel and the diaspora has in effect been averted,”said Knesset member Alex Lubotsky, an Orthodox politician involved in the mediation effort involving the government and representatives from the Orthodox and the liberal groups.

Lubotsky said the law sought by Orthodox groups could no longer garner a majority in the 120 member Israeli parliament.”The conversion law, in my opinion, has almost no chance of flying politically. It is off the horizon. And in that sense, there has been a major watershed change in the way that we are looking at this issue,”said a source close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Instead, two plans to find a negotiated compromise to the conversion issue were submitted to the prime minister over the weekend _ one by Israeli Finance Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, and a second one by Jewish Agency Executive Director Avram Burg.

Ne’eman’s plan, the more ambitious of the two proposals, would create a”school for converts,”run jointly by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis but leave Orthodox rabbis in charge of the actual conversion procedure.

The plan upholds strict Orthodox legal requirements, while granting limited, but still unprecedented recognition to Reform and Conservative groups, which have long been marginalized in Israeli religious life.

But while it has won the support of a number of leading Orthodox politicians _ including Ne’eman _ Israel’s top rabbis say they still have reservations about cooperating with non-Orthodox rabbis.

The plan put forward by Burg in a surprise press conference on Sunday (Jan. 25), seeks a more limited”technical”solution to the”Who is a Jew”controversy, and has already won the support of Israel’s state-appointed chief rabbis.

It would, in effect, permit the state to register all Reform, Conservative and Orthodox converts for civil purposes in population registries, along with the type of conversion they undergo.

But Orthodox religious authorities would be permitted to keep separate lists of”Who is a Jew”for purposes of Orthodox religious weddings, births and divorce, thereby excluding non-Orthodox converts from recognition for those ritual purposes.

Critics of the Burg proposal said it would create”subsets of Jews”and”pedigree lists.”But they admit the proposal has a good chance of becoming policy if the more ambitious Ne’eman plan fails to garner significant rabbinical backing.”The Burg proposal puts Band-Aids on a longtime wound within the Jewish people, which is good. But the Ne’eman committee goes a long way towards healing the wound, and creating a new reality,”said Bobby Brown, Netanyahu’s top adviser dealing with the issue. “Both proposals fulfill the bottom line goal of this administration. But our preference is for the Ne’eman proposal,”he added.

Brown said Netanyahu’s government has only a few weeks to make a decision on what proposal to adopt and the final decision will depend on the stand of key rabbinical leaders.

Already some of those Orthodox figures have said they prefer the more limited technical solution.”When I heard that they were looking for a technical solution that could bring peace to the Jewish people, I gave my approval to the discussions,”said Chief Rabbi Elihu Bakshi-Doron.

Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, an official representative of Bakshi-Doron, who formally signed off on the Burg plan said,”Personally, I think it might be good to deal with the root of the issue, but we may not be ripe for that. This technical solution may not be ideal, but it is better than nothing.” He said the protests by American Jews had persuaded the chief rabbis a technical fix would be preferable to passage of the”conversion law”bill granting Orthodox converts exclusive state recognition.”We are very worried that the Jewish identity of American Jews may be weakened if they feel that Israel has rejected them,”said Gilad.

Reform leaders also seemed to be leaning toward the Burg solution, saying it would grant them the freedom to continue performing their own conversions, rather than having to subordinate themselves to a single process controlled by the Orthodox.”The Burg plan is not my dream solution,”said Rabbi Uri Regev, the top Reform representative who signed off on the Burg document.”It is the lesser of all evils. But the advantage to us is that it allows us to continue performing our own conversions.” Regev applauded, nonetheless, the unprecedented cooperation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox leaders that has been forged through the lengthy talks on the conversion issue. He said it represents the first step toward grudging Orthodox recognition of other Jewish streams.”I don’t recall any other time in Israel’s history when the representatives of the chief rabbi and the Reform movement all met together and signed off together on the same document,”Regev said.

DEA END FLETCHER