Right-wing lawmakers harshly criticized Tuesday Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana and the conversion reform he spearheads.
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"The destruction and devastation of the Chief Rabbinate and Jewish religion that Religious 'Destruction' Minister Matan Kahana leads is unprecedented. The conversion system is the very soul of the Jewish people and harming it would lead to vast assimilation," MK Yoav Ben-Tzur, from the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, said.
Yakov Margi, also from Shas, concurred.
"They've learned nothing from the reform movement and how it destroyed a large part of the Jewish people due to mass assimilation, since the terrible Holocaust we have not grown numerically," Margi told media. "We have lost no fewer Jews to assimilation than to the Holocaust."
United Torah Judaism MK Uri Maklev said the bill is "a gift to the gentiles" and a show of disrespect "to the Jewish nation."
"They despise and uproot everything," Maklev said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kahana revealed his proposed changes to the process of converting to Judaism to Israel Hayom.
As part of the legislation, municipal rabbis will be able to establish conversion courts to allow them to act to convert tens of thousands of Israelis who are of Jewish descent but are not Jewish according to halacha (Jewish law).
The bill, which Kahana plans to bring to a vote in the coming weeks, was reached in close coordination with prominent rabbinical elders from the religious Zionist community.
"One cannot claim this is a Reform framework that will encourage assimilation because the greats of religious Zionism are involved, and they expect the Chief Rabbinate to adopt it," Kahana said.
Labor MK Gilad Kariv, who is also a Reform rabbi, welcomed "the end of conversion monopoly in Israel."
He stressed that "the condition for any further legislation in this matter is that it would not harm the recognized status of non-Orthodox converts. The proposed outline deals with conversion procedures that take place within the framework of the Orthodox rabbinical establishment alone. Given the Chief Rabbinate's strict policy on this matter in recent decades, it is doubtful whether its continued control over the conversion institutions will allow for a real breakthrough."
Orly Erez-Likhovski, head of the Israel Religious Action Center, said, "The Reform Movement offers an inclusive conversion, in the framework of which hundreds of men and women convert every year.
"These conversions are recognized under the Law of Return and the population registry and we will insist that the recognition of these conversions not be harmed within the framework of the new conversion legislation," she said.
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