MI

Conversion:
The Final Battle

Chairman Resigns
From jubilee

Jerusalem (JTA) — The chairman
of the organizing committee for
Israel's 50th anniversary celebra-
tions resigned after two months
on the job.
Yitzhak Modai'i was said to
have stepped down over differ-
ences with Tourism Minister
Moshe Kat7av and frustration
that not enough money was being
allocated for the celebrations.
Those planning the celebra-
tions have confronted numerous
obstacles, from organizational
problems to controversial propos-
als that included a call for a gen-
eral amnesty for prisoners.
Some 150 criminals were
reported to have gone on a
hunger strike to press their
demand for clemency. President
Ezer Weizman came out against
the idea.

Avraham Burg: A solution found?

A last-minute compromise by Avraham Burg
could end the verbal civil war of the Jews.

ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent

A

n Israeli professor friend of
mine married an Indian
woman while teaching
abroad. He brought her
home when he joined the faculty at
TelAviv University, but she never con-
verted to Judaism. On the application
form for her identity card she wrote
"Hodi," Hebrew for Indian, in the
space for national affiliation.
Assuming she'd made a mistake, a
kind clerk added the Hebrew letter
yud, making it "Yehudi" (Jewish).
She had joined the Chosen People.

With the deadline expected to be
met this week for the Ne'eman
Commission to solve the crisis rack-
ing the Jewish world over non-
Orthodox conversions, Jewish
Agency chairman Avraham Burg has
come up with a "yud" bail-out.
All Jewish ID cards would carry a
yud, instead of Yehudi, with the year
of birth (for those who were always
Jewish) or conversion added, regard-
less of which kind of rabbi carried
out the conversion. The state would
register local Conservative or Reform
converts as Jews, something it has
stubbornly refused to do for half a
century, but the Orthodox establish-

ment would continue to treat them
as suspect if they wanted an
Orthodox marriage or burial.
Converts' children would also be
identifiable, though exactly how has
yet to be fine-tuned.
It is, Burg admits, an interim
rather than a definitive answer. But
with the Orthodox chief rabbinate
and the Israeli Reform movement
reluctant to go the last mile, it may
fend off the apocalypse.
The Ne'eman Commission met
more than 50 times over seven
months under the chairmanship of
the Orthodox Finance Minister,
Ya'acov Ne'eman. Its panel of seven

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1/30
1998

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