B'nai B'rith
Michigan Regional Council
And
Adat Shalom MEn's Club
Invite you to a....

Legitimacy Battles
Rage In Israel

na4, yeitr/s ive 94tit

Sun. Dec. 31 at 8:00p.m.

Aitt

,

s titittost rutffirpe

The struggle for Israeli Reform and
Conservative Judaism surged forward.

Come Party With Us!!!!
559.00 Per Person Includes...
*Elaborate Hors D'oeuvres*

ERIC SILVER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

*Cocktail hr. Entertainment features Marsha Rofel*

*Elegant Sit-Down Dinner*

I

* Lavish Sweet Table*

*Open Bar & Champagne Toast*
*Special Party favors & prizes!*
*Dancing to the music of Bill Meyer Orchestra*

Harvey Olson, Event Chairman
Adat Shalom MEn's Club
851-5100

Jerry Olson, Event Chairman
B'nai B'rith Council
855-8580

Name

Address

E)
r

City

I

V LV

RS.V.P. by Dec.15
Return with check to:

Zip

No.Persons

B'nai B'rith

Phone

Please seat us with:

Enclosed is our check for $

31600 W. 13 Milt Rd_ Suite 120

Farmington Hills, MI. 48334-2165

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HOLIDAY CHARITY GIFT BAZAAR

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Northwest Child Rescue 1"j7omen, Jr. League

Sunday, Dec. 3 and Monday, Dec.4
10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.

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at the

Jewish Community Center- Maple at Drake

West Bloomfield

FREE ADMISSION

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*Art * Jewelry * Antiques
*Hand Painted Clothing and Accessories
*Hand-Made Sweaters
*UniqUe Gifts for Moms, Dads, Teachers, Babysiffers

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srael's Reform Movement
chipped away another pin-
nacle of the Orthodox mo-
nopoly. After the trauma of
Yitzhak Rabin's assassination,
it was back to "Who is a Jew?"
business as usual.
In a landmark decision, the
Supreme Court ruled by a ma-
jority of six to one that Israeli cit-
izens converted to Judaism by a
Reform or Conservative rabbi in
Israel must be registered as
Jews — even though the Ortho-
dox Chief Rabbinate does not
recognized them as such.
It could open a way for hun-
dreds of gentile spouses of Russ-
ian Jewish immigrants to
convert without having to accept
the rigorous
Orthodox lifestyle demanded
by the rabbinate.
The justices stopped short,
however, of granting converts
the right to marry in Israel,
where the Orthodox establish-
ment retains its monopoly until
or unless the Knesset legislates
otherwise. "It is possible," wrote
the recently-retired Chief Jus-
tice Meir Shamgar, "that a per-
son could be considered Jewish
for the sake of one law, but not
be considered Jewish for the
sake of another."
The case had been brought on
behalf of Eliane (Havah) Gold-
stein, a Brazilian Christian who
came to Israel as a tourist and
married an Israeli Jew, himself
as it happens an immigrant from
Brazil. They were married in a
civil ceremony at the Brazilian
embassy. In a previous ruling,
the court declared their mar-
riage valid in Israel.
After an extensive study
course, Eliane was converted by
an Israeli Reform rabbi, but the
Interior Ministry declined to reg-
ister her as Jewish in the pop-
ulation registry. Her case was
supported by the Reform move-
ment.
Rabbi Uri Regev, director of
the Reform movement's Israel
Religious Action Center, wel-
comed the decision as "a revolu-
tion of historic proportions." But
the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yis-
rael Lau, condemned the ruling
as "endangering the future of the
Jewish people and of Israel as a
Jewish state."
The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem,
Eric Silver is a senior writer for
the Jerusalem Report.

Yitzhak Kolitz, confirmed that
Orthodox rabbis would not mar-
ry Reform or Conservative con-
verts, even if the Interior
Ministry registered them as
Jews. They would not be Jewish
according to Halachah, Jewish
law, he insisted.

Rabbi Uri Regev:
Welcomed the decision.

Reform rabbis warned that
the case could provoke the
biggest confrontation on Jewish
identity between Israel and the
diaspora since overseas resis-
tance forced the then Prime Min-
ister, Yitzhak Shamir, to back
down from narrowing the defin-
ition of "Who is a Jew?" during
coalition negotiations seven
years ago.
It has taken the non-Ortho-
dox streams a decade of litiga-
tion to reach the point where the
courts recognize their conver-
sions, whether carried out in Is-
rael or abroad. They are in no
mood to stop there, but the Or-
thodox establishment is deter-
mined to defend every inch of its
turf— and Israel's secular politi-
cians remain reluctant to alien-
ate the religious parties, on
whose votes they may depend,
by voluntarily changing the law.
Reform Jewry recorded its
first gain in 1985, when the At-
torney-General ordered the In-
terior Ministry to register Susan
(Shoshanah) Miller, an Ameri-
can immigrant converted in the
United States, as Jewish in the
population registry. The
Supreme Court vetoed a pro-