OPINION

CONTENTS

'Rabbinical Perestroika'
Needed For Soviet Olim

YOSEF GOELL

Special to The Jewish News

T

he Soviet Jewish dele-
gation to the interna-
tional conference of
Jewish journalists which
convened in Jerusalem a few
weeks ago was led by
Mikhail Chlenov, who is also
the recently elected head of
the council of Jewish com-
munities and organizations
in the Soviet Union. As such,
he is the closest thing to an
official head of Soviet Jewry
extant today.
I met Mikha Chlenov in
Moscow two years ago. Pro-
fessionally, he is a leading
social anthropologist who
specializes in the tribes of
Indonesia. But at the time,
he was described to me by
the small group of activists
among the refuseniks and

Special
arrangements are
being made to set
up special
conversion courts
and procedures for
the large number of
non-Jews among
the olim, but no
coercion will be
used

clandestine students of Heb-
rew as "the leading Hebrew
teacher of us all."
For those familiar with
Zionist history and street
names in Tel Aviv, his name
should also strike a bell, for
he is the grandson of Yehiel
Chlenov, nne of the early
Zionist leaders of pre-World
War I Russia.
One of the new vintage
ba'alei tshuva (newly re-
ligious) who described
Chlenov to me as a foremost
activist in the Hebrew study
circles in Moscow, also
hastened to add, "but of
course, to me, for all his
prominence in those ac-
tivities, Mikha Chlenov re-
mains a non-Jew."
For Mikha Chlenov, the
current leader of the newly
emerging Soviet Jewish
community, and the grand-
son of one of the founding
fathers of Zionism, is the son
of a non-Jewish mother, and,
to boot, is married to a non-
Jew. In his personal situa-
tion he exemplifies a large
proportion of Soviet Jewry.
Recently, Eli Ben-Dehan,

the director of Israel's rab-
binical court system,
estimated that about one
quarter of all the olim who
would be coming from the
Soviet Union are non-Jewish
according to the rabbinate's
criteria. He added that an
unknown but equally large
proportion of the wives of the
Soviet olim were non-
Jewish.
This picture is a fact of life
in a Soviet Jewry that has
been cut off from the Jewish
mainstream for the 70-odd
years since the 1917 revo-
lution. But it is also a grow-
ing fact of life for the largest
diaspora of them all, North
American Jewry, where the
rate of intermarriage has
been growing from decade to
decade.
Slightly over a year ago, a
major rift between Israel
and American Jewry was
averted at the last moment,
when Prime Minister Yit-
zhak Shamir, who had al-
ready given in to Agudat
Yisrael's demand for an
amendment to the Law of
Return stipulating the ex-
clusivity of Orthodox con-
versions, went back on his
written commitment in re-
sponse to an anguished out-
cry from American Jewry.
The problem of Who is a
Jew, in the context of the
new social realities which
will be highlighted by the
large wave of Soviet aliyah,
will become more intense
than ever. The interesting
and frustrating aspect of the
Who's a Jew flap of
November 1988 was that, for
the average Israeli politician
and man in the street, it was
over a largely symbolic and
theoretical issue.
The ever-pragmatic Israeli
asked himself, how many
American Jews who have
been converted by non-
Orthodox rabbis actually
come on aliyah? A handful
or so a year? For that, the
average Israeli politician
was not going to topple
governments and endanger
coalitions.
But when that pragmatic
question will be asked in the
context of the massive Soviet
aliyah that is already with
us, the answer of course is
that dozens of thousands of
them will be held to be
technically non-Jews by the
rabbinate. This will not be a
theoretical problem and it
will be impossible to avoid
the need to meet it head on.
The Chief Rabbinate and

Continued on Page 10

CLOSE-UP

Please
Don't Forget Me!

24

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Forty-two hours
at the Home for Aged.

47

BUSINESS

The Gold
Medalist

KIMBERLY LIFTON
Architect Kenneth Neumann
is making a name for himself.

PURIM SPOOF

Selling The Wall

24

50

and other assorted jokes
in a pulling-your-leg
section for Purim.

63

SPORTS

Dedicated

HOWARD ROSS
Cable TV's Jim Shafran
is up there in the rafters.

71

ENTERTAINMENT

Hollywood
Economics

STEVE HARTZ
A "Wonder Years" star
ran to the silver screen.

89

FINE ARTS

Selling
47 The Arts

VICTORIA BELYEU DIAZ
For five years, the politics
of art have been her passion.

100

LIFESTYLES

Sport Detroit

CARLA JEAN SCHWARTZ
Michael Stein's success
has followed two paths.

DEPARTMENTS

56
102
104

Synagogues
Engagements
Births

Single Life
111 Classified Ads
132 Obituaries

106

CANDLELIGHTING

50

6:14 p.m.
Friday, March 9, 1990
Sabbath ends March 10 7:16 p.m.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

7

