At a press conference which he convened on Wednesday (15
Teves), director general of the rabbinical courts Rabbi Eli
Ben Dehan stated that in the year 2000 the number of
converts in Israel dropped by a few percent, due to a lack
of funds. The Vaad HaRabbonim Haolami LeInyonei Giyur headed
by HaRav Chaim Kreiswirth countered that an increased budget
can't transform non-Jews into Jews.
Rabbi Ben-Dehan presented a number of statistics. He said
that during this past year 9153 couples divorced, a rise of
4.5% as opposed to the previous year. He also said that 28%
of the married couples in Israel divorce. The highest
divorce rate was in Tel Aviv, where there were 733 divorces,
while in Jerusalem there were 622, and there were also
sizable amounts in Ashdod and Netanya.
Ben Dehan also related that in the year 2000, 36 agunos
were freed from their shackles. In a number of the
cases, the husbands were located by the special unit for
handing the problems of agunos in Israel and abroad.
Twenty five husbands were located in Israel, 10 in the
United States, one in Africa, and one in Brazil. Today there
are still 14 recalcitrant husbands in Israel who refuse to
give their wives divorces. Six of these are in prison and
two were even placed in solitary confinement for five days.
A number of doctors and lawyers who refuse to divorce their
wives are unemployed after their licenses were revoked.
In the year 2000, efforts to upgrade the efficiency of the
rabbinical courts continued. At the end of the year, 77,719
files were open, as opposed to 90,758 which were handled and
closed. The number of waiting days between the first hearing
in a case and the time of the opening of the file was 77
days on average. 44% of the cases are adjudicated one month
after their opening, and 70% are closed within three
months.
Ben Dehan relates that the rabbinical courts opened a number
of branches in the countries of the C.I.S. in order to make
it easier for immigrants and to arrange their conversions
and personal status. Concurrently, Ben Dehan said that the
number of converts during the past year was lower than that
of the previous year, due to a lack of funds. All in all,
last year 2906 people were converted in the special
conversion courts, and 175 in the rabbinical courts. "Last
year, a drop of 800 converts was recorded. This occurred
mainly due to the temporary halting of the activity of the
conversion ulpans under the aegis of the Education
Ministry," Ben Dehan said.
When asked about the relatively small number of conversions
in relation to the large number of immigrants who are not
Jewish, Ben-Dehan noted that not all of these immigrants are
interested in conversion. Many, he said, are elderly, while
others, who were already married, see no reason to become
Jewish.
The spokesman of the Vaad said that the problems of the non
Jews who immigrate to Israel can't be solved by enlarged
stipends for the establishing of conversion factories.
"The number of serious conversion candidates among the
immigrants from the C.I.S. is very meager, since one cannot
expect that people who have been detached from any form of
religion whatsoever, should want to take on a religious way
of life and the total observance of Torah and mitzvos, the
sine qua non of conversion, even
bedi'eved."
The spokesman of the Vaad also said that increased subsidies
can't change non-Jews to Jews. The Vaad once more called to
the Chief Rabbinate to place only yirei Shomayim in
charge of the conversion systems, from the beginning of the
study program until the end of the conversion. Today, many
conversion courts are directed by a joint committee of
Conservatives and Reform, and the graduates of these ulpans
are treated warmly in the rabbinical court of Rabbi Chaim
Druckman in Or Etzion, who has already converted many of the
graduates of the joint ulpans.
The spokesman for the Vaad also mentioned that the branch
offices of the beis din in the former Soviet bloc are
not qualified to deal with conversion matters. A recent
official release from the Jewish Agency confirmed that the
purpose of these conversion efforts in the C.I.S. is in
order to expedite the conversion process by reducing the
hours of study required in Israel for the conversion
process.
