U.S. Orthodox leaders urge adoption of conversion bill

JERUSALEM, Jan. 13 (JTA) — A delegation of some 75 American Orthodox leaders are lobbying Knesset members to support a controversial conversion bill that would codify into law the Orthodox establishment’s control over conversions performed in the Jewish state. At a news conference Monday, the Am Echad delegation, which is spearheaded by the fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, said it was impractical to think a compromise on conversion could be reached. During a meeting with Knesset members the following day, delegates told members of the Likud caucus that compromises could only be reached in business matters, not in religious affairs. The head of the delegation, Rabbi Moshe Sherer of Agudah, said it was inconceivable that an individual undergoing the conversion process within the Reform movement could be expected to follow halachah, or Jewish law. “You can’t expect a candidate to go to a Reform rabbi who will tell him to observe Shabbat and kashrut when the Reform rabbi himself doesn’t observe kashrut,” Rabbi Sherer said at the news conference. The visit comes as a committee appointed by the prime minister to craft a solution on the conversion issue that is acceptable to the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative movements approaches a Jan. 31 deadline to submit its recommendations. Members of the committee, headed by Finance Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, have encountered serious difficulties along the way. Reform members have said the representative from the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate failed to cooperate with the efforts and warned that no compromise could be reached without a genuine effort by all sides. The delegation also met with members of the Yisrael Ba’Aliyah Party, whose Russian immigrant constituency could be seriously affected by the decision on the conversion issue. Knesset member Roman Bronfman of Yisrael Ba’Aliyah said that if the Ne’eman Committee fails to come up with a compromise, his faction will work to “ensure that it gets another extension.” Yisrael Ba’Aliyah’s support on the conversion issue is so crucial that some commentators have suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to appoint the party’s leader, Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky, to take over the Foreign Ministry portfolio after the recent resignation of David Levy. Meanwhile, opposition leader Ehud Barak said his caucus would vote against the conversion bill if it is brought before the Knesset. Netanyahu created the Ne’eman Committee after the Knesset took a first step in April toward passing the conversion legislation. In a related development, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron verbally approved the recommendations of another committee dealing with the conversion in Israel of children adopted abroad. The head of the committee, Rabbi Haim Druckman, a former National Religious Party Knesset member, said the committee had recommended that after the children undergo conversion, the families not be required to adopt a religiously observant lifestyle. This requirement had prompted parents of some of the adopted infants to arrange for their conversions at the Conservative movement’s Kibbutz Hannaton. After the Interior Ministry refused to recognize the babies as Jewish, several families took their dilemma to Israel’s High Court of Justice in 1995. A court decision is still pending.