US non-Orthodox hail 'incredible win'
By Sam Ser
Mar. 31, 2005

Reaction to the High Court's ruling on non-Orthodox conversions varied widely among American Jewish groups, ranging from warm (Reform) to tepid (Conservative) to stone-cold (Orthodox).

"This is an incredible victory for the State of Israel, not just for the Reform and Conservative movements. From the perspective of the American Reform movement, though, it is definitely to be celebrated," said Rabbi Stanley Davids, president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America and the spearhead of the Zionist platform in the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis.

"We are now approaching Passover – moving from avdut (slavery) to herut (freedom) – and this is a movement toward freedom. A major, major step forward."

It is also, he said, "a sign that the Israeli justice system is robust and functioning well."

Davids added, however, that "this struggle over conversion rights is just beginning."

"This is a step," he said, "but it is only a step. The battle is far from over."

Indeed, marriage and burial are the "inevitable" next fronts in the battle for recognition of non-Orthodox movements in Israel, according to Rabbi Joel H. Myers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly.

"The numbers of our people who want to be married by a conservative rabbi are tremendous," Myers said. "My own daughter and son-in-law, who live in Israel, couldn't have me or another Conservative rabbi officiate at their wedding. But it's not the ritual that's the issue. It's more of who is being recognized as a religious authority."

As Myers explained it, the Conservative movement's concern in attaining that recognition is less a matter of imposing pluralism than it is a matter of being recognized as halachic.

"We believe very strongly that our conversions are done fully according to Halacha," he said. "And we would happily agree to standards for conversion. But what is not acceptable to us is the exclusion of non-Orthodox rabbis sitting on the rabbinical board that oversees conversions."

Myers, who was part of the negotiations in the Neeman Commission that set up the Joint Institute for the Study of Judaism, said he was disappointed that legal recourse was necessary.

"We had great hopes that the Neeman Commission would be successful in helping the work with a number of non-Jewish individuals who had come on aliya, particularly from the former Soviet Union. At the same time, we in the Conservative movement never lost sight of the need to fight for the right to convert," he said. "We are continually disappointed at the Chief Rabbinate's reluctance and foot-dragging, at its failure to fully back the institute and its work."

Unsurprisingly, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America – better known as the OU – issued a statement saying it was "deeply concerned" by the court's ruling.

"We support the Israeli Chief Rabbinate in condemning this decision of Israel's Supreme Court, which ignores the historical realities of the State of Israel," OU president Stephen Savitsky and executive vice president Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb said in the statement.

"We are concerned that in issuing its decision, the Supreme Court has transcended its jurisdiction and has trespassed into the domain of the religious authority of the Chief Rabbinate. The decision of the Court may eventually lead to the division of the People of Israel into two camps. There will be a group of halachically valid Jews and a group of people who are Jewish only by the ruling of the Supreme Court. The consequences of this ruling will be tragic."
 

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