An interview with IRAC Director Anat Hoffman

December 15, 2008 by nicola 

Anat Hoffman was interviewed by the magazine, Reform Judaism. We reprint the article with thanks.

Rebel With a Cause

The young champion swimmer who brought down Israel’s Goliath telephone monopoly now fights injustice, intolerance, and ineptitude throughout the land.

Anat Hoffman is executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel. Previously she held a seat on the Jerusalem City Council, where for fourteen years she stood in opposition to the policies of the city’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox administration. She was interviewed by the Reform Judaism editors.

How did you become such a fighter for social change and justice?

My drive to take on tough challenges, tough opponents, goes way back to my childhood. For example, when I was nine, a swimming team coach from Tel Aviv saw me performing a gymnastics routine at a Jerusalem community center and said, “Can you swim?” “Sure!” I said, and into the pool I went, dressed in my leotard, kicking around in the water. I didn’t know how to swim. “Do you want to be a champion?” he asked me, and I answered, “Yes.” “I’ll teach you how to swim,” he replied, “and you’ll become a champion.” He did just that. In my teens I became a champion swimmer, competing in the Maccabiah games representing Israel. I held titles in nine events. The demands of swimming took a toll on my schooling, of course, but that didn’t stop UCLA from recruiting me for its swim team.

Is that where you got involved in Jewish activism?

Yes. First I organized the Israeli Student Organization in Southern California to do “Israeli things” together—Israeli folk dancing, song nights, movie nights. I was a totally secular Jew—the choice I’d seen in Israel was to be Orthodox or nothing—and there was a general agreement among us Israelis that we didn’t do “Jewish stuff.” But my attitude changed when my husband and I got involved with the Westwood Free Minyan, which met at UCLA Hillel. It opened our eyes to the fact that rabbis could be friendly and accepting. I also learned that there is more than one way to be a Jew, and returned to Israel with a strong desire to be a religious-pluralism activist.

Is that how you got involved with the Israel Religious Action Center?

Yes. In 1987 I proposed to IRAC director Rabbi Uri Regev that we open a complaint hotline: “Call Us When You’re Right.” He loved it, and we got started. Soon the complaints came pouring in from all over the country in many languages—Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Amharic (the Ethiopian language).

Quickly a pattern emerged. Many of the complaints concerned BEZEQ, Israel’s national telephone company. People weren’t getting itemized bills and didn’t know what they were paying for. So we recruited the many callers into the BEZEQ Afflicted Clients Association and started to fight the telephone monopoly. We organized conferences—the ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, rich, poor, everybody aired their grievances. A chair was always set aside for Zvi Amid, BEZEQ’s director general, but he never showed up. Then we published a consumer’s guide on how to defeat the phone company in court and won 43 out of 46 cases. Eventually Zvi Amid resigned, the telephone monopoly was broken up, and for the first time ever, Israelis began to get itemized phone bills.

My high visibility during this period—I was often on TV—and the realization that I could actually achieve social change led me into politics. I ran for the City Council of Jerusalem and held a seat for fourteen years.

What happened in year fifteen?

I decided not to run for re-election. I never forgot an article I’d written ten years earlier demanding the retirement of the then councilman Dov Rabinovitch, who had been on the job for twenty years, and calling him an ineffective has-been because he didn’t know when to move on. My article was entitled, “When You’re Furniture and You Don’t Know It.” So I took my own advice, resigned, and looked for another job—fortuitously just as the position of IRAC director opened up.

You must have been a shoo-in.

Not exactly. The search committee wanted to know if I, a maverick city council member, could work with a steering committee comprised of representatives from six different Jewish organizations—WUPJ, IMPJ, ARZA, ARZENU, URJ, and HUC-JIR. “Yes,” I said, “do you want references?” Someone replied with a laugh, almost a dare, “Bring one from Ehud Olmert.” The mayor and I had an adversarial relationship, and as a councilwoman I had initiated thirty court petitions and four police investigations against him. But I accepted the challenge. Olmert wrote a letter of recommendation and called some members of the search committee on my behalf. Basically he said that he regretted that I was rarely on his side. I got the job on my birthday, April 1, 2002.

What were IRAC’s priorities then?

Advancing religious pluralism and fighting for social justice and tolerance towards minorities in Israel—including, of course, Reform Jews. Our mission hasn’t changed, but we’ve now broadened our scope, writing new legislation, teaching about social responsibility on the grassroots level, catalysing 50+ social action programs in congregations of all denominations, and doing tzedakah for Israel’s neediest populations.

How do you aid poor Israelis?

We’ve created a fund called Keren B’Kavod which works with different organizations to supply packages to those who can’t afford food for the holidays. Volunteers from Israeli Reform congregations collect food, clothes, and other goods and arrange for their distribution to families in thirty cities and towns throughout the country. Last year we set a new record, collecting seven tons of dry goods.

We donate to anyone in need. This year, in preparation for Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim feast that concludes the month of Ramadan, local Arab youth from Acco and Jewish high-school students from the Leo Baeck Educational Institute in Haifa assembled food packages that we distributed to 350 poor Israeli Muslim families. For Christmas, seventh graders from Congregation Kol HaNeshama in Jeru­salem put together packages which we disbursed to more than 300 needy Christian families. We also provide humanitarian aid to hundreds of newly arrived refugees from Darfur.

The beneficiaries of this program are not only the poor people we serve, but also the local shopkeepers. So, for example, to help the besieged residents of S’derot, which is being constantly hit with missiles from Gaza, we buy up everything in the city’s grocery stores. We walk in and say, “We’ll take all the tuna, all the corn, all the diapers, etc, and we’ll pay in cash.” We absorb the thirty percent markup, but since we save twenty percent for transportation because we’re buying locally, it ends up being ten percent above the wholesale price. Still, it’s worth it to support these grocery stores because we enable them to help their customers by extending credit, and that’s why they love the Reform Movement. I can’t tell you how many times the local shopkeepers will pull out their record books and say, “You see this? She doesn’t pay because she’s handicapped. This one I carry, he’s my neighbor, I don’t have the heart….”

How is the program paid for?

Donations. Of the one million shekelim ($300,000) it takes to run this project, 30% comes from Reform Israelis and their friends and families, 30% comes from Reform congregations and affiliates in North America, and the balance is raised from foundations. The Union for Reform Judaism provides ongoing support and contributes significant funding through its Reform Movement-wide Israel Emergency campaigns.

We also use the funds to support our advocacy efforts, such as securing passage of legislation requiring that hot meals be served in Israeli public schools. We are lobbying for a “Good Samaritan” law which would allow businesses to donate leftover food without fear of litigation. We are also part of coalitions which advocate on behalf of disadvantaged groups such as single mothers, people with special needs, and Darfurian refugees seeking asylum in Israel.

What is IRAC doing to try to break the Orthodox monopoly on religious affairs?

IRAC confronts this monopoly on multiple levels. Legally, through our Resource Allocations Monitoring Project (RAMP), we track the amount of money allocated to Orthodox institutions and rabbis as compared to non-Orthodox organizations and then use the evidence we find of unjust and unequal government funding to prove discrimination. This becomes the basis for our cases concerning Reform synagogue buildings, Reform representation on local Religious Councils, and recognition of Reform rabbis in Israel. We also use litigation when Orthodox communities or institutions abuse their power, such as taking over synagogues or forcing gender segregation on some public buses.

Simultaneously, on the advocacy front, we support the passage of bills that will promote a more pluralistic and democratic Israel, such as the creation of a civil marriage option. And our staff is constantly blocking a barrage of proposed bills that would further enshrine Orthodox party power, such as a proposed law that would have made it mandatory for all government committees to have an ultra-Orthodox representative.

I’ll be the first to admit, however, that even with all of our legal and advocacy work, it is difficult to make headway.

Why is that?

In large part because neither the left nor the right has been able to gain a clear majority in the Knesset. After every election the ruling coalition is dependent on the Orthodox voting bloc, which demands full control of Israel’s Jewish religious institutions as the price of joining the coalition—and the Reform and Conservative Movements thus are sold out.

Another reason is that North American Jews have been too passive about demanding their full religious rights in Israel.

Maybe we’re just realistic—we don’t have the numbers to constitute a swing vote in Israel.

That’s a false, Orthodox argument. Not long ago the Minister of Religious Affairs said to me, “We’ll talk when you bring a million Reform Jews to Israel.” “If we were to bring a million Reform Jews to Israel,” I told him, “then one of our leaders would be the Minister of Religious Affairs—and not you.” In a democracy it’s the minority’s rights that must be protected. If Israel claims to be the state of the Jews, with Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish world and the Western Wall the holiest site of the Jewish people, then Israel has to adopt practices that reflect the realities of the larger Jewish world. Let’s not buy the line: “When you make aliyah en masse, we’ll talk.” We must speak out now so we are heard now.

Why do you think Reform Jews are so reluctant to speak out?

They have been conditioned to sacrifice their desires and needs for the sake of Jewish unity: “Don’t stir up trouble; don’t rock the boat. Israel has much bigger challenges to deal with right now.” Well, in all this time there’s never been a quiet moment for Israel, so that line of thinking is simply a copout. If we believe Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Eric Yoffie when he says that what happens in the Jewish state determines what’s going to happen in the Jewish world as a whole, let’s go fight for the future of the Jewish world by demanding that Israel be a pluralistic, egalitarian, and tolerant society. If the largest stream of Judaism in North America makes a nuisance of itself with the Israeli public, decision makers, and government policymakers, it will be heard in Israel—and that’s political power. That’s how change happens.

Let me add here that the Reform Movement in North America has been very influential for us in other ways.

How so?

One of IRAC’s leading strategies, which we’re putting into practice in our “Just Communities” (Kehillat Tzedek) project, was actually taught to us by your Rabbi Jonah Pesner [director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s “Just Congregations” project]: organizing for social change by getting to the root of the problem and joining forces with other stake-holding groups. Also, with the guidance of Rabbi Richard Address [who heads the Union’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns], we’ve implemented Kehillat Tzedek caring community programs in more than fifty congregations across Israel. And when I say “we,” here I mean Reform, Conservative, secular, and Orthodox activists—ten Modern Orthodox communities have joined the group. This diversity of activists working together in Israel is a very hopeful development and, I believe, emblematic of Reform Judaism’s unique contribution to Israel: social action in a religious setting.

One of our projects is a used-clothing store for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) single mothers in the development town of Beit Shemesh. A Reform congregation of only thirty families, Kehillat Tzur-Hadassah, proposed the idea, took our training course, received seed money from IRAC, and implemented the program. To start, congregants solicited donations from every town resident and collected over a ton of clothing. Everybody—paid staff, kindergarten parents, the rabbi—was involved in washing and repairing the clothes. Drivers then went out and ferried the single moms to the store, located inside the synagogue. The “customers” filled large plastic bags with the clothes they needed for themselves and their families—as well as garments they would later resell for about 380 shekels ($75). When we asked these women, among the poorest in Israel, what they planned to do with their “profits,” one of them said, “Oh, we want to do like you. We want to give to the poor.” And that’s exactly what they did—give half the money to needy people like themselves. I asked one single mom what she thought of this unlikely relationship—a Reform congregation involved with a haredi group—and she said, “Oh, we didn’t know Reform Jews were such good people.”

How does IRAC safeguard the rights of new immigrants?

We help them through difficulties pertaining to proving their Jewish status. On the one hand, Israel is working to bring as many new Jewish immigrants to Israel as possible; and at the same time, these newcomers face a bureaucratic minefield. Even within different government agencies there isn’t agreement on who qualifies as a Jew.

One example is the case of Anastasia Zakolodkin and her family. Anastasia came to Israel on one of the Jewish Agency’s programs geared to teenagers from the former Soviet Union. As part of the aliyah process, the teenagers complete their secondary school education in Israel, serve in the military, and then continue their lives as Israelis. Eventually, the families of the students follow the path toward aliyah. At the beginning of the process, an Israeli representative in the home country of the prospective oleh (immigrant) conducts research to determine an applicant’s religious status. If the applicant is from the FSU, identity records on religion and ethnicity can be retrieved from government archives.

A year ago the Zakolodkin family needed the services of the Ministry of Interior. During this process, a review was made of their original documentation and the clerk decided that a document indicating that Anastasia’s grandmother was Jewish was forged. As a result, after years of living as Israelis, in a matter of days the citizenship of Anastasia and her family was revoked and they were ordered to leave the country immediately.

Unfortunately, these kinds of difficulties happen all the time, and although it is against the law, the responsibility to re-demonstrate proof of their Jewishness is put on the olim themselves. This is even more galling when you understand that the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel were responsible for bringing these olim to Israel in the first place.

Yes, Israel must protect itself from those who would abuse the Law of Return, but the process of document review and citizenship revocation is unclear, complicated, and unyielding when Jews from the FSU don’t have the documentation proving their Jewishness because they’d deliberately destroyed it in order to escape Soviet persecution.

In the case of Anastasia and her family, we went to court against the Ministry of Interior and argued that the responsibility of investigation is on the government, not Anastasia’s family, and it has not been proven that their documents are fake. The Ministry has agreed to recheck the documents and to meet with the family. One of our attorneys will be there with them when they do.

What proof of Jewishness does the Ministry consider valid?

They’ve asked our clients: Do you speak Yiddish? Can you present a letter from an Orthodox rabbi who knew your parents and grandparents and can declare that they/you are Jewish? Can you furnish a public document that shows you’re Jewish? What foods do Jews typically eat on Shavuot? Do you have a photograph of a tombstone of your grandmother in a Jewish cemetery? Compile a list of five Jews who can prove that you/your parents are Jewish. And—in cases where the father is not Jewish—can you prove that your mother did not convert to another religion? I don’t know many Jews who could pass such a test.

Are these kinds of questions asked of every Jew who wants to make aliyah?

Yes. To receive citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, you have to prove that your mother was Jewish, or, in case you have converted to Judaism, that it was done under the auspices of either an Orthodox rabbi or the Rabbinic Court recognized by the Orthodox-controlled Ministry of Interior. That’s the political reality in Israel today.

Where does IRAC stand on this?

We say that the law should recognize as a Jew anyone born of a Jewish mother or father (so long as she or he has not converted to another religion), any person who has converted to Judaism by any ordained rabbi, or anyone who has been persecuted because of anti-Semitism. Ironically, under the law, someone like Pavel Friedman, the young man who wrote the now well-known poem “There Are No Butterflies Here” while in the Terezin concentration camp, would not have been considered a Jew, even though he was murdered in Ausch­witz as a Jew.

You see, Pavel’s father was Jewish, but his mother was not. I learned this while working on a project initiated by two American Reform Jews, Sue and Jimmy Klau, to honor the memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children who died in the Shoah. Sue envisioned collecting that number of butterfly drawings from young people around the world and putting them on permanent display in Israel. She wanted a member of the Friedman family present at the project’s launch; our task was to locate a Friedman. The telephone directory was not much help, as Friedman is the eighteenth most common name in Israel. So we hired a historian, who not only found a document confirming that Pavel was killed in Auschwitz in 1942, but also discovered, through the Terezin archives, that he was not a young boy as everyone believed, but a 22-year-old man. Not only that—Pavel was married at the Terezin concentration camp to a woman named Adina Schnitzer, who survived, settled in Israel, and now at age 84 lives on Kibbutz Ginnegar. The Klaus and I went to meet Adina Schnitzer, and she told us that Pavel’s mother was not Jewish. So it turns out that perhaps the most famous Jewish boy of the Shoah was not a boy but a man, and not a Jew according to halachah (Jewish law). And, by the way, Adina added that Pavel taught Hebrew in the concentration camp; that’s how she became attracted to him. The first word he taught her was ahava, love—a word which should figure prominently into Israel’s modern immigration policy.

Did the butterflies catch on?

Thus far we’ve received more than 36,000 drawings. Some are from preschool students around the world. Some are unexpected—like the one from a boy named Adolf in Cologne, Germany and a thousand butterflies from Palestinian prisoners.

What are your other initiatives?

In 2006 we petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing that Rabbi Miri Gold, a Reform rabbi from Kibbutz Gezer, should be recognized as an official rabbi for the Gezer Municipality and be paid for the services she provides to her community, leading regular and holiday prayer services as well as performing b’nai mitzvah and funeral ceremonies. This may sound strange, asking for the government to pay the salary of the rabbi, but in Israel salaries for Orthodox rabbis are paid by the government. Because non-Orthodox rabbis are not recognized by the state, if you’re a Reform Jew in Israel you have to pay double for religious services: first you pay taxes that go toward the salaries of Orthodox rabbis and their synagogue buildings; then you pay again for your unrecognized rabbi and your unrecognized building. We say, if the government uses tax dollars to pay for rabbis, then our rabbis should be similarly paid from state funds as a matter of equality. Currently Israel’s several hundred municipal rabbis are all Orthodox men, even though the vast majority of the population in almost all municipalities, including Gezer, are non-Orthodox. To strengthen our case, we have asked the government to supply us with a report that shows, for example, how many of the municipal rabbis on the government payroll actually live in the municipality they serve, what services they provide, to whom, and how often. We believe that in regions like Gezer where there are few Orthodox residents, these rabbis do very little, whereas Rabbi Gold is constantly busy meeting the spiritual needs of the local people.

Do you expect to win?

Yes, we’re making inroads elsewhere. After a six-year legal battle—short by Israeli standards—we secured state funding for six non-Orthodox synagogues—the first time in Israel’s sixty-year history that the government recognized the religious needs of non-Orthodox Jews and provided them with a sacred place to pray. What a change: in the past we haven’t even been able to get permits to establish a Reform synagogue, let alone receive assistance in actually building one. Hopefully, this will be but the first step in securing full and equal government funding for the Reform Jewish presence in Israel. Our country desperately needs a Jewish movement like ours that promotes humanistic, egalitarian, and democratic values—a spiritual Judaism that can not only help to heal the world, but to heal Israel.

So, you see, if we keep up the pressure year after year, eventually we will win. We’ve got to.

 

 

 

To Learn About

·  IRAC Keren B’Kavod food and humanitarian aid program

·  IRAC’s legal & advocacy work

·  IRAC “Just Communities” project

·  IRAC’s championing of Israeli

·  immigrants’ rights

Contact www.irac.org, Rachel@irac.org.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2008 Union for Reform Judaism.

 

 

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Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism offers new education programs

December 12, 2008 by nicola 

RICH EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING MARKS ISRAELI MOVEMENT’S NEW SCHOOL YEARThe education department of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism kicked off the 5769 (2008-09) school year – at scores of movement-affiliated preschools and three elementary schools – with a diverse program of studies and activities for both students and education professionals throughout the country.

 

As the beginning of the school year coincides with the beginning of the Jewish calendar year, preschoolers began with a focus on the High Holy Days and “visited synagogues, listened to the shofar, ate pomegranates and apples with honey, and made Rosh Hashanah cards to be mailed home,” says Iri Kassel, the IMPJ’s executive director. There were also joint ceremonies with parents. At the preschools held at the World Union’s Mercaz Shimshon/Beit Shmuel campus that it shares with Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, children marked the new year, says Kassel, by “[letting] balloons and doves fly, symbolizing the desired return of captive soldier Gilad Schalit. Other preschools had symbolic tashlich ceremonies, and before Yom Kippur the children tried to do good deeds and learned about forgiveness.” In Tel Aviv, the preschools at Congregation Beit Daniel marked a decade of activities with a special ceremony for the entire congregation.

Two movement-affiliated elementary schools, one on the campus of the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, the other established by Kehilat Yozma in Modi’in, are now in their second year of operations. “In these two schools, guided by rabbis and educators with a deep sense of commitment, an exciting educational atmosphere is forming, enriching the students’ Jewish experience,” says Kassel. “I have visited both these schools and have been deeply impressed with their extraordinary educational work.” They join the movement’s veteran Tali elementary school, which has now moved from its longtime home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bayit V’gan to the adjoining neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel. The school will have two rabbinical students from HUC-JIR working with the faculty this year.

Other IMPJ education activities now underway include a long-running bat mitzvah program for girls in secular public schools, held in cooperation with local Progressive congregations; a program called “Mothers and Daughters,” which features study sessions and discussions on issues ranging from the maturation process to women’s empowerment; special lectures and mini-courses led by local rabbis; and seminars and ongoing in-service training programs for public school teachers.

Click here for further information on the IMPJ’s education programs.


Israeli girls celebrate their bat mitzvah at Or Hadash, Haifa, through a public school program implemented by the education department of the IMPJ.


The Israeli Progressive movement brings Jewish education to public schools, as demonstrated by these second graders who learn about reading from the Torah on Rosh Hodesh at the Tali Reform elementary school in Jerusalem.

[Reprinted with thanks to the IMPJ and WUPJ Newsletter]

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IRAC wins on ‘Women in Advertising’ campaign

December 10, 2008 by nicola 

IRAC victorious in defending equal rights

Wake-Up Jerusalem-Yerushalmim (WUJ-Y) is not only a call for the residents of Jerusalem to take action; it is a movement which seeks to bring a new generation of leaders to politics. Like any other political movement during elections, WUJ-Y sought to advertise across the city’s public buses. In Israel, a typical political campaign advertisement involves the name of the movement, its slogan, and the pictures of its top candidates. While WUJ-Y’s advertisement fits this mold, their ad was refused just two weeks before the municipality elections (held on November 11). The reason: their ad displayed the faces of two women.

A representative of Cana’an advertising agency of Egged Bus Company claimed that displaying faces of women on the sides of public buses might offend Egged’s Orthodox passengers, leading to possible vandalism.

In disbelief, the leaders of WUJ-Y turned to the Israel Religious Action Center for help, receiving assistance from the head of IRAC’s legal department, Attorney Einat Hurvitz and legal intern, Tamar Adelstein Zekbach. With the elections just around the corner, IRAC took immediate action. First, we called on Egged to insist that Cana’an use WUJ-Y’s original advertisement- including the women’s pictures. This effort was unsuccessful, as both Cana’an and Egged kept pointing the finger at the other in regards to who was at fault in this blatant discrimination against women.

Then, IRAC filed an injunction with the Chairman of the Elections Committee, Eliezer Rivlin. The Chairman could order Egged to stop its discrimination against one political movement’s advertising campaign. Rivlin argued that regulating the content of an advertisement was not under his jurisdiction and therefore, he ruled against the injunction. IRAC legal intern Tamar Adelstein Zekbach noted that this however is not the case, “if discrimination of any kind exists, the law states that the chairman should interfere.” Unfortunately, time was not on IRAC’s side and still no progress was made.

On the day before the election, IRAC took one last measure and filed a plea with the office of the Supreme Court against Chairman Rivlin. Judge Edmond Levy along with two other justices took the case and, understanding the importance of time, heard the case immediately. In court, Judge Levy established that neither Egged nor Cana’an had official policies against the advertisement of women’s portraits.

Unanimously, the justices ruled in favor of IRAC and WUJ-Y. The verdict stated that WUJ-Y’s advertisement be printed and posted as quickly and efficiently as possible. Both Egged and Cana’an were criticized for allowing this issue to go on as long as it did; and that in future advertisements, women’s faces are permitted.

In an interview with IRAC Attorney, Einat Hurvitz, “it is clear that this case sets an important precedence.” Hurvitz notes the upcoming national election, “there will be a woman [Tzipi Livni] running for prime minister. Imagine if she could not advertise in Jerusalem… This victory guarantees equal rights among women in political campaigns.” She continues that “this decision reinforces the rule of democratic law, and not one of religious agenda - a struggle that IRAC continuously faces.”

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Israeli Courts to perform secular conversions which bypass rabbinate

December 10, 2008 by nicola 

By Shahar Ilan

The Knesset caucus for secular Judaism and organizations from all streams of Judaism have created a coalition of conversion courts independent from the Chief Rabbinate. The coalition, which was approved last week, is being coordinated by PANIM for Jewish Renaissance, an advocacy group for pluralistic Judaism.The goal is to create two new tracks in Israel for conversions to Judaism, one secular and one national-religious, both independent from the Chief Rabbinate. These come on top of the conversion courts of the Reform and Conservative movements, which produce about 300 converts a year.

Converts of the new coalition will not be permitted to marry through the rabbinate, but rather in accordance with a ruling by the High Court of Justice that these converts will be registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry’s Population Registry.

 

 

 

One of the coalition’s main innovations is the inclusion of Ne’emanei Torah Vaavodah, a moderate Orthodox movement, in a forum that recognizes Reform, Conservative and secular conversion. The chairman of Ne’emanei Torah Vaavodah, Yonatan Ben Harosh, said at the forum’s latest meeting that his movement plans to establish independent conversion courts “in close cooperation with two other organizations: Mavoi Satum (Dead End) and Kolech, Jewish Woman’s Voice.”

 

The forum’s founding document explains that “300,000 of the immigrants to Israel who are eligible under the Law of Return are not recognized in Israel as Jews in the Population Registry. Most have integrated into Israel and have forged a covenant of fate but are not accepted by us into the Jewish people, with all that entails: the stripping of citizenship rights, alienation and rejection.”The organizations in the forum say that “the opportunity given by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel by the state to respond to the challenge of conversion in Israel has been exhausted. [The rabbinate's] monopoly must be taken away from it.”

The main obstacle to mass conversion is the demand by the Chief Rabbinate and Conversion Administration that converts conduct a religiously observant lifestyle and send their children to religious schools. The crisis between the national-religious public and the government’s conversion system was created by a ruling by the Great Rabbinical Court seeking to void even conversions carried out by the head of the administration, Rabbi Haim Druckman.

The Reform and Conservative movements, like the Conversion Administration, require potential converts to complete hundreds of hours of instruction in Judaism. The secular Judaism institutions might very well do the same, but they will not demand that converts change their lifestyle.

 

 

 

The secular Knesset caucus is headed by outgoing Meretz MK Yossi Beilin, a pioneer of the idea of secular conversion. Currently the only secular organization initiating a secular conversion process is Tmura, the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. Rabbi Sivan Maas, a director and assistant dean of Tmura, said the organization’s first conversion course is scheduled to begin in January.Rabbi Gilad Kariv of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center told Haaretz that the organizations recognize that a secular convert is part of the Jewish people. However, secular converts who want to join a Reform congregation may be asked to make up for gaps in their conversion.

Yelena Vaganov, 46, migrated from Russia two years ago and is preparing for her conversion at Haifa’s Or Hadash Reform congregation. She views this as joining the Jewish people. She says she heard about Reform conversion from her life partner, an immigrant who converted to Judaism in South Africa.

Yelena says she wants to convert because “I want a family that is more Jewish because I always felt Jewish, and that’s why I’m in Israel. It’s more harmonious for me.” Her father, she says, was a Jew, and when she was a child he took her to events in the Jewish community. “During World War II he was a boy, and his whole family was killed. That’s another reason why it’s important to me to be Jewish.”

 

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UPJ Conference report - read it here

December 3, 2008 by nicola 

In her parting message, Dorey said,” I hope that in bringing our communities closer together, we have grown and promoted our vision of a shared future of powerful possibilities I believe we have had many successes and wonderful achievements of which we can all be truly proud; while I also know that there is still so much more that we can and will do into the future, under the leadership of David and our incoming Executive. May we continue individually and collectively to achieve our vision and goals over the coming years with renewed passion and commitment.  We are one people, speaking many tongues, with different and equally important stories to tell and to hear, and many dreams to bring to fulfillment. Our common language is our love for our Judaism! Let us all live those dreams together!”

On accepting the presidency Robinson noted “The election of a new Executive brings about new ideas, new energy and new expertise. The election of a President from outside of the main centres of the region is both exciting and challenging. Being based in a country (New Zealand) with only 8 000 Jews in total and at least 2500km from nearest large Jewish community gives one a sense of what an isolated community feels like”He said future challenges include overcoming the sense of isolation felt by some member congregations; Building on the legacy created by previous UPJ Presidents Philip Bliss, Penny Jakobovits and Phyllis Dorey; Exploring and developing future leaders to ensure the continued strength of the UPJ well into the future; and developing a positive attitude amongst all members of UPJ”

 

 

He felt that this can be achieved by increasing understanding of the issues facing individual congregations and developing ways of helping them move forward. Establishing specialist reference groups to develop and deliver effective programs to members and developing closer ties with WUPJ and encouraging members to explore the many programs and opportunities offered. In concluding he noted “The theme our recent regional conference was “Yachad Kol Haderech” - “together all the way”. We aim to live this by working together for the benefit of Progressive Judaism locally, regionally and internationally”.     

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