Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana held a series of meetings with American Orthodox rabbis last week to roll out his proposed reforms to Israel's state conversion process and drum up support.
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However, in a blog post published overnight Monday in the Times of Israel, a number of rabbis spurn the plan, saying they cannot back it.
Signatories to the blog post by Rabbi Leonard Matanky, co-president of Religious Zionists of America, include Rabbi Binyamin Blau, president of the Rabbinical Council of America; Rabbi Michael Taubes of REITS-Yeshiva University; and Moshe Bane, president of the Orthodox Union, among other prominent figures.
The letter writers make it clear that while they support adaptations to Israeli conversion, Kahana's proposed reforms go too far.
The post calls the meeting "productive" and "valuable, as the issues that he [Kahana] is trying to address are significant," but says, "Ultimately, we left the meeting unable to support his legislation as presently written."
The post expressed the rabbi's concern about the challenges facing the Jewish state, but said they were very worried by the possible ramifications of the legislation for both Israel and Diaspora Jewry.
Admitting that the issue of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews living in Israel poses a problem, the rabbis say that Kahana's proposed reforms will not solve the difficulties, but will create another "equally severe" set of issues.
According to the post, Kahana's proposal to empower local rabbinical courts to carry out conversions will provide conversion services to "only a small percentage" of the relevant population, since even the most liberal courts will require converts to adhere to "some level of commitment to Torah observance."
Meanwhile, they argue, it could come at a high cost: Different, possibly contradictory, standards of conversion, and situations in which those who convert in more liberal frameworks are not fully accepted as Jews.
The TOI post suggests that Israel study the example of US Jewry and points out that until 20 years ago, any US rabbi could perform conversions based on their own standards, resulting in a "complete lack of trust and transparency." Because Israel's Chief Rabbinate will not accept "unrecognized" conversions, they say, individual rabbis are less likely to handle conversions on their own.
Moreover, the signatories to the post argue, the fallout from Kahana's reforms, if they were adopted, would not be limited to Israel. "The Israeli benchmarks enabled us to establish ours in the US. If Israeli guidelines are internally conflicted, we will quickly lose the ability to maintain a standard in our own communities," they write.
The rabbis say that the Chief Rabbinate is an "important component" of the Jewish state, and while it needs improvement, they are concerned by possible changes that might fix the problems at the expense of "sidelining the institution."
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