c. 1997 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Israeli government officials have reached what may be a historic agreement with leaders of Judaism’s Orthodox, Reform and Conservative movements to sponsor negotiations between the three rival streams over the controversial”Who is a Jew”issue.

The agreement may avert a major crisis between the Jewish state and its largely non-Orthodox American Jewish base of support over Israel’s treatment of Conservative and Reform converts to Judaism.

Under the terms of the agreement, a joint team of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox representatives would seek to resolve by October 1997, the controversial question of how to register non-Orthodox converts in Israel’s Population Registry, according to Orthodox Knesset member Alex Lubotzky.

Lubotzky was one of the leaders of the government team that met late Tuesday evening (June 17), with a delegation of Reform and Conservative rabbis from the United States and Israel to hammer out the agreement.

The Conservative and Reform rabbinical delegation met earlier in the day with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and received his support in principle for the agreement.

Until now, Israel’s state-appointed Orthodox authorities have generally refused to register as Jews those Israelis who undergo non-Orthodox conversions in Israel _ although non-Orthodox converts from abroad have been registered after lengthy court battles.

The state-sponsored talks to resolve such disputes would accord Israel’s tiny Conservative and Reform movements an unprecedented form of recognition in the Jewish state, where personal status affairs of birth, death, marriage and conversion have long been the exclusive domain of Orthodoxy. “It’s potentially a historic moment,”said Rabbi Uri Regev, a representative of Israel’s Progressive (Reform) Movement.”Of course the proof of the pie will be in the eating, and the proof of the agreement will be in the ability of the process to reach a mutually agreed-upon solution. But I think that the closeness of minds and the will that we have seen is unprecedented.” Reform and Conservative converts to Judaism have over a dozen appeals pending in Israeli courts over the refusal of government authorities to register them as Jews in Israel’s population registry. Israel’s Supreme Court had ordered the government to either register the non-Orthodox converts as Jews by the end of June, or pass legislation expressly forbidding such a move.

Meanwhile, Orthodox religious parties, who are key members of Netanyahu’s ruling political coalition, have threatened to topple his government is such legislation was not passed by the June 30 deadline.

The prospect over enshrining Orthodox hegemony over the conversion issue into Israeli law has caused an uproar among American Jews, some of whom have threatened to withhold major financial contributions to Israel.

On Sunday, a delegation of top Reform and Conservative leaders arrived in Israel to seek a way out of the impasse, and held a series of unprecedented meetings with government authorities and Orthodox religious figures.

According to the compromise agreement reached Tuesday, the Reform and Conservative movements would freeze their court appeals for a two-month period while the committee of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox leaders appointed by Netanyahu seeks a way out of the impasse, said Lubotzky.

Lubotzky, who has led the effort to find a solution, said that the negotiations with the Reform and Conservative leadership would probably center around”answering the question of who will receive citizenship, rather than the question of who is a Jew.” So far, he noted, various proposals have been put forth for altering or eliminating any religious designation on Israeli identity cards so as to eliminate the basic Orthodox objection that non-Orthodox converts to Judaism are being designated by the state as Jews.”This is not a final agreement. But it’s an agreement on a procedure for getting to an agreement,”said Lubotzky.”The prime minister will appoint a committee, which will include representatives of the Conservative and the Reform movements. And we will look at all of the ideas that are circulating.” Rabbi Jerome Epstein, one of the four U.S. Conservative and Reform leaders here for the high-level meetings, said that the vociferous American Jewish expressions of concern had helped make the agreement possible. “I think that this is not just a credit to Israel and the people of Israel but to the Conservative and Reform Jews of North America who raised their voices to a concern that transcends the politics of the state of Israel, and moves to the concerns of Jewish peoplehood,”he said.

Said Lubotzky:”What happened in the last two days of this visit was that Israelis began to understand that there was a crisis in the broader (Jewish) world over this issue. The delegation succeeded in bringing it to the public’s attention and the Israeli religious (Orthodox) authorities began to understand that they have to deal with this.”

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