Solomonia: That Israeli Conversion Legislation

Monday, July 19, 2010

I have not posted anything about this to date for a number of reasons.

First is that I tend to shy away from commenting on internal Israeli legislation and politics. It is hard enough understanding all the issues and coming to a sensible feel for the implications of our own domestic American legislative matters in a situation where I know and understand the motivations of most of the major players. How much more difficult is it to comment on internal Israeli matters, when Israeli internal politics are if anything, even more convoluted and confusing than our own? Generally, a healthy respect for the decisions of Israeli democracy is called for from those of us living abroad and little more.

Second and related is that it's exceedingly difficult to know whose description and analysis of the law and its implications and motivations to trust. Given that there are so many agendas at work, both within Israel and abroad, my choice of "narrator" for understanding the matter has been a difficult one. There are issues of Israeli coalition politics, American leftist Jewish perspectives that are well known to have an agenda pitting them against Avigdor Lieberman's party (the party sponsoring the Knesset bill), issues of the religious versus the secular... As a secular American Jew who nevertheless makes a regular case for the need for a Jewish State I've had my concerns, but I've been suspicious of the agendas of some of the hysterical dispatches I've been receiving from people in the American Jewish Community and haven't been willing to buy into that, either. Today I got another one from Nancy Kaufman, who is apparently still employed by Boston's JCRC, to the same effect. Yes, Netanyahu has come out against the legislation but, see above, this can have any number of political reasons not necessarily related to the truth of the bill itself.

So I read with great interest this posting at The Muqata that puts the hysteria into some perspective and that strikes me as a pretty reasonable-sounding explanation. This legislation does not affect diaspora Jewry at all, and in fact starts the process of prying conversion matters out of the hands of a small cabal and dispersing it closer to the people affected. That's what I'm reading, anyway. This should particularly be read by those forwarding some of the more overwrought emails I've been seeing around (and it looks like it's not going to pass anyway). Remember that many of these groups, particularly the left-oriented ("non-partisan") American umbrella groups, don't like Yisrael Beiteinu and would like nothing better than to take the opportunity to do Obama's bidding to pry out YB and substitute Kadima in its place: The Rotem Conversion Law

The Rotem Conversion Bill, an important bill, which should have been passed without any problem, has instead has become a political knife that is being used to promote various agendas and attack various people.

Unfortunately, certain people and organizations with very specific religious and political agendas are disingenuously trying to manufacture a storm by upsetting US Jewry with an issue that (a) doesn't affect them, and (b) might actually be better for them - if they moved to Israel and needed to deal with a conversion issue.

The bill was created to resolve some very specific internal Israeli issues - bureaucratic, political, and religious.

As Israel is a Jewish state, issues of Jewish law are important and central to a functioning society, as they are part of our legal system and they also prevent a permanent schism in the nation.

This law is a domestically-applied procedural law that shifts control and certification of who may perform recognized conversions in Israel - and only in Israel.

It does not change the status quo that Israel recognizes non-Orthodox conversions in the Diaspora for the purpose of the Right of Return. It does not have any affect on American Jewry or for that matter have any connection to Diaspora Jewry...

Read the rest.