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Conversion compromise postponed - again.

Efforts to draft a compromise agreement between the Haredi political parties and the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel over the issue of Jewish conversion will not be finished before a six-month deadline arrives at the end of this month.

Uri Regev 19/12/2017 11:16

Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu ·  Moshe Nissim ·  Conversion ·  Supreme Court

A conversion court in session

From the Jerusalem Post [link]:

"Efforts to draft a compromise agreement between the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political parties and the Reform and Masorti (Conservative) movements in Israel over the complex and encumbered issue of Jewish conversion will not be finished before a six-month deadline arrives at the end of this month.

Former justice minister Moshe Nissim, who has been tasked with formulating recommendations for a compromise, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday it would not be possible to complete his work before the end of December."

The "Who is a Jew" battle is going to erupt again.

Back in June 2017 the governmental legislative committee approved the legislation of the conversion bill dictated to the Government Coalition by the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas party and its head Arye Deri (Israel's Minister of the Interior who is in charge of registration of Jewish status and the granting of rights under the Law of Return). At the time, it was part of a larger package extorted by the ultra-orthodox parties that included the suspension of the Kotel agreement. This brought about expressions of great anger on the part of Jewish global leadership.

The question now is how soon is the Who-is-a-Jew battle going to be reignited, following a report that the State is attempting to gain more time by asking the Supreme Court to continue the freeze on all the pending Who-is-a-Jew cases in order to give more time to the committee headed by Moshe Nissim, who was appointed by Prime Minister, which supposedly intends to reach a mutually agreed upon solution to this age old conflict.

At the time - in June - Netanyahu, acting as a sophisticated and experienced "fire fighter," was focused primarily on damage control and lowering the flames. To do that he resorted to the basic tricks of the trade, namely -

The question now is how soon is the Who-is-a-Jew battle going to be reignited, following a report that the State is attempting to gain more time by asking the Supreme Court to continue the freeze on all the pending Who-is-a-Jew cases.

• Separating and distancing the potentially explosive elements (namely the Kotel agreement controversy and the Who-is-a-Jew controversy so as to eliminate the cumulative explosive effect)
• Appointing a committee and obtaining the parties' (the non-Orthodox movements and the haredi parties) agreement to freeze the situation to give the committee a chance to work towards a mutually agreed upon solution. The particular concern he faced was the numerous Who-is-a-Jew cases before the Supreme Court that were repeatedly frozen and defrosted according to the political game that was played (in some cases for more than 10 years). Everyone expected that the Supreme Court would rule shortly in favor of the non-Orthodox converts, which became further apparent both when the Supreme Court ruled on a separate case that involved the recognition of a conversion done by an ultra-Orthodox private court and a preliminary hearing in the pending non-Orthodox conversion cases. The comments of the Justices couldn't have been misunderstood. The pressure of the haredi parties to pass the conversion bill was aimed at two goals -
1. To preempt a Supreme Court ruling and block it from upholding the rights of the non-Orthodox Israeli converts according to the law of return, and
2. To block recognition of a growing phenomenon of conversions done by Modern Orthodox private rabbinic courts who stepped into this arena to counter the intransigence and growing extremism of the Chief Rabbinate's conversion hierarchy. Needless to say, the Chief Rabbinate and its political backers do not look favorably at this phenomenon and want to see it squashed.
• Nobody in his right mind should have bought into self-serving rhetoric of the Prime Minister that the committee process is aimed at reach a mutual agreement. Nor should anyone have taken seriously his demand that the freeze be granted for a period of 6 months.
1. If anyone still entertained naive hopes that this process was sincere, the appointment of Moshe Nissim (former Minister of Justice and a son of the former Chief Rabbi) made it clear that no solution acceptable to the non-Orthodox would come about under his stewardship. His uncompromising stance on religious matters is a matter of clear record.
2. Hiddush has underscored these seemingly self-evident deficiencies in real time. We stress the fact that this is a behavioral and political pattern on Netanyahu's part, and the same exercise has been played by him in the 90's when he appointed the Ne'eman Commission and asked for a freeze of all pending cases; and then in the mid-2000's when he mobilized Natan Sharansky to head a round table effort following the Rotem conversion bill controversy when once again he asked for a 6 month freeze of all cases. In neither instance was there a mutually agreed upon solution reached; and in both instances, the 6 months was not taken seriously and repeated demands for extensions were presented. So now -in the 3rd round- both the futility of the exercise and the lack of sincerity regarding the time frame should have been clear to all involved. This was not about reaching an agreement, but rather about effective damage control on the PM's part.
3. Yet the pressure Netanyahu applied on the non-Orthodox movements yielded their consent. Now that, as expected, the State will be soon asking for a postponement claiming that the committee has not completed its work, they will be facing that very challenge again. Will they inform the court that they have agreed to another 6 month postponement and no more(!) and have no faith in the process to bring about positive results, or will they be further pressured to agree to let the process play out until it reaches its inevitable conclusion, namely - nowhere?
4. The whip the Prime Minister has been using is, of course, the threat of expedited passage of the conversion bill, but it should be noted that the current state of affairs is as if the bill has already been adopted. Israel continues to refuse to recognize the entitlement of Israeli non-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox converts to their rights under the Law of Return.
• With the mounting insults and disregard for American Jewry and Diaspora from government officials, we believe that the time has come for a showdown and not for delay tactics. We believe the time has come to focus on the essence of the challenge - not merely on its symptoms. It's important to follow an approach counter to that of the Prime Minister. For too long, we have gone along with separating the issues that are truly connected at the core. Thereby, we have limited their significances and real weights. It's time to review this strategy and realize the following:
1. The need to seek a holistic, inclusive, and systemic resolution of oft-repeating clashes over issues of religion and state. This is the path Uri Regev, Hiddush's head, has taken in collaboration with leading Modern Orthodox rabbi Marc Angel in developing the Vision Statement for a Jewish and democratic Israel. A growing number of Jewish leadership from all religious and political perspectives are signing on to this Vision and we hope that this will represent the new necessary discourse, rather than focusing the scandal of the week or the crisis of the month.
2. In pursuing this path, we should fully appreciate the fact that we are resonating to the will and the desire of the overwhelming majority of both Israel and Diaspora Jewry. The only ones opposed are either those who want Israel to become a theocracy or those politicians who are willing to sell off both human dignity and civil liberties in return for political pittance.