by AP/Zoom 77

Time To Compromise?

In October; Israeli
President Ezer Weizimin
and government advisor
Bobby Brown shook
hands, with Reform rab-
bis Asher Hirsch and Joe
Vernick looking on, seal-
ing establishment of the
Ne'eman Commission.

ERIC SILVER

Israel Correspondent

\

T

he conversion bill, which
threatened to divide
Diaspora Jews from. Israel, is
dead. An overwhelming
majority of Knesset members who first
backed it now oppose it.
Despite resistance from the
Orthodox rabbinate, Binyamin
Netanyahu's government is deter-
/mined to implement the compromise
thrashed out by Finance Minister
Ya'acov Ne'eman's commission, which
for the first time brought Orthodox,
Conservative and Reform rabbis
around the same table to seriously
seek to bridge their ideological divide.
In recent weeks, more than 80 of
the 120 legislators from all sides of the
/ `,Knesset have signed a motion support-
ing the Ne'eman report. In a rare ges-
ture, Netanyahu signed up and
encouraged his ministers to follow
suit; seven complied. Signatories
included five out of nine National
Religious Party representatives. This is
a significant rift in the Orthodox

\

Israel's controversial conversion
bill bites the dust.
What's next?

political front, which may herald a
return to the Zionist NRP's historic
role as a bridge between religious and
secular Israelis.
"Considering that seven months
ago the conversion law had a clear
majority," argued Bobby Brown, the
prime minister's cheerleading Diaspora
affairs advisor, "we are seeing a
tremendous change in favor of Jewish
unity."
Many Knesset members visited the
United States in recent months to hear
American concern over the proposed
law. The message got across. In Israel,
the progressive movements are mar-
ginal, while the Orthodox parties can
make and break governments.
Stateside, they account for up to 80
percent of affiliated Jews.
Alex Lubotzky, an Orthodox Jew

representing the secular Third Way
party, is one of the heroes of the res-
cue operation. The 41-year-old,
Israeli-born, mathematics professor
lives in Efrat, a West Bank commuter
township midway between Jerusalem
and Hebron. It is no coincidence that
many of his neighbors are religious
nationalist immigrants from the
United States.
One of them, Rabbi Shlomo
Riskin, has offered to set up a joint
institute of Jewish studies to prepare
candidates for conversion. This was a
key component in the Ne'eman pack-
age, one that the Orthodox rabbinate
damned last week, but did not explic-
itly reject.
Instructors would be drawn from
all three streams of Judaism, but can-
didates would be converted by a spe-

cial Orthodox beit din (rabbinical
court).
Israel's chief rabbinate agreed to
establish such a court and Ashkenazi
Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau empha-
sized that Orthodoxy didn't care who
taught a candidate, only whether he or
she was qualified and sincere. If the
beit din does its job, all Israeli con-
verts would be recognized equally by
synagogue and state.
Lubotzky claims that the chief rab-
bis encouraged him to go ahead,
despite their continued contempt for
Reform and Conservative Judaism.
"It may be that Ne'eman will try to
put his solution into effect by setting
up a joint institute," said Rabbi
Reuven Hammer, who heads the
Conservative conversion court in
Israel. "We might be able to partici-
pate, but this would not be accompa-
nied by a pledge to stop separate con-
versions of our own."
Up to now, rabbinical courts have
tried to impose a strictly Orthodox
lifestyle on converts, including send-
ing their children to religious schools.
The Ne'eman Commission's

2/20
1998

37

