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WED. & FRI. 9 - 5 • SAT. 9- 4 • CLOSED SUN. 10 LOCATIONS To SERVE YOU The World Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis delivered its report to the prime minister last week. They rec ommended a religious compromise: a joint institute would prepare candi- dates for conversion, but only an Orthodox rabbinical court could complete the process. Thus all con- verts, whoever taught them their new faith, would be kosher. Reform leaders insisted, however, on a meeting with the Orthodox chief rabbis and their signature on the contract. The chief rabbis backed off. They would have been legit- imizing Reform Judaism. The Reform, for their part, declined to affirm the binding and literal truth of the Torah. Although no one wanted to take the blame for demolishing the Ne'eman enter- prise, an ominous timetable was closing in. The three religious parties were threatening to press an exclusively Orthodox conversion bill to a vote, even if it meant splintering Binyamin Netanyahu's ruling coali- tion, once the Jan. 31 Ne'eman deadline expired. The progressive movements were threatening to go back to the Supreme Court, which had given the Knesset until Feb. 10 to clarify the status of non-Orthodox conversions. Burg was the right man in the right place to avert an explosion between Israel and America, where the majority of affiliated Jews are non-Orthodox. As Jewish Agency chairman, he personifies the bridge between Israel and the Diaspora. His father was a wily leader of religious Zionism. He himself is a Labor peacenick who advocates a separation of synagogue and state; he wears a kippah and sends his children to Orthodox schools. Last Saturday night, Burg invited representatives of all three streams to his Jerusalem home where they worked until 3 a.m. Their agreement was signed by two Orthodox rabbis explicitly repre- senting the chief rabbinate, and Israel's leading Conservative and Reform rabbis. "We offer the Israeli public," the rabbis wrote, "a proposal which pre- serves the right of every person to be registered in the registry of residents and in one's identity card in a respectable and uniform way, and still allow access to conversion data in circumstances in which such access is required." The ID card would nowhere speci- fy that its holder was a convert, but anyone wanting to know could easily tell. The year following the yud would be different from the date of birth also recorded on the card. The type of conversion would remain confiden- tial. A copy of the conversion certifi- cate would be stored in the pop- ulation registry, but only autho- rized personnel could see it. "The fact that the other conver- sions will be rec- ognized by the state," empha- sized one of the Orthodox rabbis, "doesn't mean that the Orthodox authorities will accept them." Although Burg maintained that his proposals were "parallel" to and not a substitute for the Ne'eman framework, Ne'eman denounced it. "Technical solutions," he argued, "will perpetuate the rift among the Jewish people and create a situation where converts will be labeled." At Burg's news conference, howev- er, a reporter from a Russian-lan- guage paper could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Congratulations," he beamed, "You've done it!" For immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the formula would be a major step forward. An estimated 200,000 of them are not Jews. Under Israeli law, they came as family mem- bers of Jews, or descendants of a Jewish grandparent. Many would like to join the Jewish people, but not on the stringent Orthodox terms. For them, the Conservative and Reform movements offer a palatable alternative. And if the state accepted their conversions, they'd take the chance that their offspring might one day run up against the Orthodox rabbinate. With the Jewish Agency chairman's help, an agreement is brokered at 3 a.m. Sunday.