November 17, 2008

by Cnaan Liphshiz

It was a smooth voting session yesterday at the resolutions meeting that concluded the Jewish Agency's annual assembly in Jerusalem - for a whole 15 minutes.

The meeting quickly hit its first road bump after the 120-strong plenum heard a proposal to call for Israel to immediately recognize all conversions to Judaism by all religious streams.

The proposal, brought forth by a representative from Los Angeles, was eventually rejected.

The plenum voted instead to amend and eventually pass a less comprehensive proposal on the same subject by Professor Yaakov Ne'eman, the head of a state committee on conversions, "to urge the government of Israel to recognize and accept as Jews all individuals who have converted to Judaism under the supervision of Rabbinic authorities associated with Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist movements." In so doing, the assembly reaffirmed previous resolutions on the matter.

The assembly also voted in favor of calling for the State of Israel to form an independent authority which would review conversions and oversee them. Although the Prime Minister's Office this year formed a body on conversions, currently only the rabbinical court system - which follows ultra-Orthodox principles - is authorized to bring converts into Judaism.

Referring to the original proposal, assembly participant Jeffery Blau said that to approve it would be to "destroy" all the achievements which the Ne'eman Committee has brought about in years of facilitating compromises between ultra-Orthodox, secular and modern-Orthodox Jews.

"Conversion is an issue that regularly comes up at Jewish Agency assemblies, but I don't recall hearing such a sweeping proposal as this one," Kenneth Bob, President of Ameinu, a New-York based nonprofit promoting "liberal values" in Israel, told Haaretz.

The assembly, which convened at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and preceded the United Jewish Communities own General Assembly, which opened yesterday evening in the capital, also passed a resolution to call on all Jewish organizations to "remain committed" to the absorption of Ethiopian immigrants, and to bringing the former Soviet Union's remaining Jews as well as to promote all Jewish immigration to Israel.

"This proposal has absolutely no chance of succeeding in the current Israeli climate," Assembly member Solly Sachs told the voters before the original resolution was rejected. "If we pass this resolution, it will give them [ultra-Orthodox] an excuse not to move forward with the conversion process."