Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post reported this past week on perhaps one of the most chilling pieces of legislation perhaps to pass the desks of the Knesset.
The office of the Sephardi Chief Rabbinate has proposed a bill amending the Law of Return, the chok ha'shuvah which allows all Jews a place in Israel. Under the new terms of the law:
"This draft legislation proposes… that conversions - Orthodox, Conservative or Reform - will no longer give the convert an automatic right to citizenship. Rather, the convert will be allowed to naturalize in accordance with objective criteria of citizenship."
And what of the Law of Return itself?
The main element in the bill is a change in the clause defining a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return.
At present the clause defines a Jew as a person born to a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism.
The bill proposes that an the only individuals recognized as Jewish by the Law of return will be those born to a Jewish mother.
So I can be totally frum, with more hechsherim on me than a bottle of Israeli mehadrin wine, go to Israel and be told I'm "not a Jew"?
Wow! I feel totally Ethiopian now!
So now everyone from Avraham ben Avraham (the "Righteous Convert" of Vilna Ga'on fame) to Onkelos, the prophet Ovadia, Shemaya and Avtalyon — under the new legislation, none of them Jews. Whereas previously, non-Orthodox conversions were unrecognized due to halachic violations and other Judaism-based reasons, this is to "close the loophole" in the Law of Return that "allowed foreign workers to convert in order to receive Israeli citizenship."
This bill was supported by the National Religious Party.
My mashgiach from Ohr Somayach in Israel, when encountered by Ashkenazi-on-Sephardi racism in yeshiva, screamed at a bochur who was saying racist slurs against Sephardim, "The only reason you have blonde hair and blue eyes is because a Kossack raped your great-grandmother!". While extreme, it was meant to bring out a point: much of the Ashkenazi elite of Israel are descendents of gerim. (Hence the expression, "pure Sephardi".)
(And let's not forget that in September 2005, a beit din was sent to India to convert many of the B'nei Menashe of India — under the authority of the Chief Sephardi Rabbi's office.)
The Brooklyn Syrian-Jewish community has gained notariety — or perhaps infamy in some circles — for its across-the-board disallowance of gerut and non-recognition of gerim. One notable example of this was a chastisement given by R' Ovadia to the community for refusing to marry a couple because they were both converts. (R' Ovadia himself was mesader kiddushin.) And, of course, the Torah says, "There shall be one Torah for the convert and for the native-born of Israel."
A convert would have to immigrate as any non-Jew would, and would most likely, as the bill places "the Chief Rabbinate" (and let us not forget that this is a political office — chosen by election) "sole authority over conversions", have to convert under Rabbanut auspices. Not Bada"tz, not the thousands of other Torah authorities in Israel, no one except the Rabbanut.
I'm simultaneously fuming angry and depressed. I gave 13 months of my life to convert, and years of Torah learning both before and after, to feel part of the Jewish people. In Europe, a convert can learn for five to eight years before seeing a mikva. In London and Amsterdam, the beit din requires prominent families to vouch for a prospective convert, which requires the convert to integrate himself into the Jewish community, and can take years on top of the actual conversion process. The halachic convert to Judaism has to affirm — repeatedly — his loyalty to the Jewish people. Ostensibly, this would also mean to Israel.
Such a divorce from the foundations of Judaism and the Jewish people — as the Talmud says that the only reason Jewish people are displaced throughout the nations is so "converts could be added on to them" — would be impossible to deal with for the hundreds of thousands of gerim in the world and should be impossible to deal with for religious Israeli Jews in general.
Were a bill like this to pass, I would find it hard to see a case against Neturei Karta or some similar organization's ideals. (Obviously, sitting with terrorists is disgusting. I'm talking in principle.) If Israel isn't a Jewish "homeland", then what is it? And why is it, in effect, making thousands of Jews home-less?
