A controversial "conversion institute" that allows members of
the Reform and Conservative movement to participate in the
conversion process has begun operating in the northern
Galilee town of Carmiel.
The Institute for Judaic Studies, founded by the Jewish
Agency for Israel and the Israeli government, started its
first program with 37 students, all from the former Soviet
Union.
Many of the immigrants are non-Jews married to Jews, who had
been eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return, which
grants automatic citizenship to all Jews when they move to
Israel.
They will study Judaism for 440 hours--three times a week
during a one-year period. In actual terms, the hours
translate into just over 18 days before these people are
stamped as Jews.
Uri Regev, a Reform spokesman, said the new institute in
Carmiel will be "irrelevant" to the Chief Rabbinate. In
addition, he said, the institute's launch does not change the
fact that the Ne'eman Committee has failed. The committee,
headed by former Finance Minister Ya'acov Ne'eman, was
created two years ago by the government to seek a compromise
to the conversion issue.
It was the Ne'eman Committee that proposed the institute as a
compromise solution to the conversion issue.
All Orthodox leaders rejected the Committee and its
recommendations. In addition to the Reform, the Conservative
also announced that it considered the Committee a failure,
but, like the Reform, it was nonetheless willing to cooperate
in the conversion institute as a partial achievement of its
goals.
The crisis was caused by the Reform and Conservative
movements' efforts to break the decades-old status quo by
seeking court rulings favorable to their cause.
The Israeli Reform and Conservative movements--which, by all
accounts have a negligible following--have managed to use the
courts to push their agenda down the throats of the Israeli
pubic. In one extremely controversial decision, the court
ruled that Reform and Conservative "conversions" must be
recognized by the state. That ruling prompted the proposed
conversion bill in the Knesset.
