Converting in Israel

...I began studying with a rather tedious and expensive rabbi in Kiryat Shmoneh, but it soon became evident that the process would take at least two years, ending either in my conversion or failure before the dayanim (which would mean starting from the beginning again...

...Although the Israeli Declaration of Independence stipulates freedom of religion and conscience, there exists no constitutional authority to maintain the separation of religion and the State...

...I have two conversion certificates to prove it...

...I have not mentioned the deep layers of graft and corruption that I encountered in the Israeli rabbinate, nor the amazing ignorance of many top rabbinic officials...

...On the other side, I have not mentioned the deep respect I felt for Rabbi Goren, a dignified, understanding man in an unenviable position...

...Only when it was disnn^MimnrrritiiMi rJ—ii nl rthtnriTrr er that fhey-wrmwt*^^3BWish, did the government and the rabbis smother their protests...

...But feeling myself truly a component of the Jewish people, and not wanting to exist marginally in the Jewish state, I decided to convert...

...I love Judaism and Israel and have fought on the battlefield for this love...

...Today in Israel, the maintenance of this system is just as important to the Moslem, Druze, and Christian communities as it is to the Jewish community...

...Because of the perennial pluralistic religious makeup of the Middle East, there evolved a tradition antedating the Ottoman Empire called the millet system, whereby a minority religion could insure its existence by being allowed to govern its community in all matters of religious rites and personal status...

...Perhaps this man even considers himself a Jew but is not legally a Jew according to halachic law...

...The Orthodox are active against women's rights (witness their recent efforts to block the hiring of women as bus drivers...

...Perhaps his father was Jewish, but his mother was not...

...The personal disillusion, frustration, and bitterness generated by my experiences with the Israeli rabbinate—while perhaps interesting—are merely splinters from a much more serious quandary, the wounds of which will be faced by Israel in the coming years...

...came under fierce abuse by fellow officers and my comrades, and finally, news of the "scandal" reached a high ranking general who notified Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and applied pressure on the rabbinate...

...the rabbis were faced with a shouting, desk-pounding young man in uniform demanding to marry the woman he loved...

...Recently, a disturbing number of Russian immigrants to Israel (some of them ¦nridrntfi nf .Karmiel, where I the rabbinate fiercely fleiHMfflocfl this defection, laying most of the blame on Christian missionaries who were helping these people to leave...

...I have not described the bureaucratic nightmare I labored through, the fruitless hours in gray corridors, nor the degradation of giving statements to the dayanim concerning my religious practices which were false and which they knew to be false, but which I had to say anyway for the benefit of their consciences...

...His years as Chief Rabbi of the Army exposed him to the robust variegation of Israel's citizenry, and erudition led him to realize the dangers involved in allowing the evolutionary pliancy inherent in Jewish legal tradition to become fossilized...

...The poor CO...

...thus halachah discourages proselytization...

...Thus the halachah is silent on adoption, for adoption is inconsistent with family...

...l^ae^SBftwdBK tradition by its insistence on rigid interpretation of laws meant for a different place and a different time...

...And there, under the compassionate tutelage of Rabbi Rosenberg, I was converted—converted enough to return to Israel as a new immigrant and be immediately inducted into the Israeli army...

...To receive this certificate I studied a prayer book and a simplified digest of halachic (Orthodox) law...

...The freedom of religious communities took precedence over individual religious freedom...

...Modern Zionism, so determined to negate the unhealthy, exclusivist elements of traditionalism, has allowed some of the most coer/•ivf gdiv^te rtf r>rtfif»H/vry tr...

...The Orthodox have, through the legislative powers of the rabbinate, the rabbinic councils and the regional courts, gained authority over such matters as which foodstuffs are proper to market, the regulation of public transportation (which affects only the poor, since the wealthy have their own cars), and the uses of public beaches and other bisexual places of recreation...

...I also underwent a barrage of tests by Israel's dayanim (rabbinical judges), a "drop of blood" symbolic circumcision (I had been circumcised in infancy), and a ritual bath (mikveh...

...perhaps he is a product of "adultery"— his mother divorced, but not according to halachic law, or his widowed mother remarried without permission from her dead husband's brother...

...But another, and less benign, is that conversion represents a possible dilution of the blood bond...

...He said that he was already Jewish, and that a piece of paper wouldn't make him more so...

...In Israel today, obstacles placed before converts are larger in the case of women...

...Soon thereafter he discovered that he was ineligible for certain rights and benefits because he was not a Jew according to halachah...

...I was transferred from my battalion in the Negev to a large base near Tel Aviv—a move which I despised since it meant exchanging the camaraderie of the "field" for the disciplinary restrictions inherent to large military bases...

...Exasperated...

...But I only knew that I was not to appear before the dayanim, and that soon I would have been discharged from the army, meaning that my uniform would no longer provide leverage with the rabbis...

...In Israeli politics, the conglomerate Labor Party, which has led the country through its 29-year history, has always been secular in both ideology and character...

...There were other complications, too, the most aggravating of which was my new commanding officer's inability to fathom my problem...

...It is highly reminiscent of the position of Jews in the Diaspora who were often forced to convert to Christianity in order to obtain certain civil liberties and positions...

...Rabbi Rosenberg converted me because I had lived for a time in Israel, was fluent in Hebrew, and had a respectable knowledge of Judaism and, most important, had genuinely chosen to consider myself Jewish—to graft myself to the Jewish people—regardless of official sanction...

...My conversion odyssey began when—as a book-nourished Judo-phile and Zionist—I entered a Galilean kibbutz to work and study Hebrew...

...My conversion was consummated soon thereafter, and I married...

...A young rabbi offered him a quickie conversion, but the youth refused...

...During this period I fell in love with a native-born girl, and we decided to marry...

...But the root of the difficulty is that the race is propagated through maternal blood lines...

...While in the army, I went with my fiancee to the rabbinical courthouse in Tel Aviv to register for marriage...

...If an individual was allowed by the State to marry or divorce without community authorization, the community felt itself deprived of its inherited rights...

...The point is simple: the hala-?hah was intended to be pliant, the law becoiiiLj>TuMBHM3 T^tiMil if the law becomes fossilized— quite apart from what that says about a partnership with God in Jaw .up .Luuifluafe...

...The transfer was necessary in order for me to attend a three hour daily "intensive Judaism course" given under the auspices of Rabbi Goren in Tel Aviv...

...There I was informed that my Reform conversion was "no good," and that we still could not marry...

...He thought that I had somehow fabricated the conversion problem in order to be taken out of the field and receive a daily pass to Tel Aviv...

...This brief delineation of my conversions to Judaism is not the whole story...

...When my course was extended, he simply refused to issue any more passes, against the explicit direction of the army rabbinate...

...these are occurrences which make a man, according to halachah, a legal bastard, eliminating him as a candidate for marriage to another Jew...

...I married a Jewish woman and raise my sons as Jews...

...Rabbinic attitudes on these and many other matters are often deeply resented by IsnivSr" suc-utar^bmsSBiK occurred periodically...

...thus the halachah holds that ties of blood can never be loosened, whether the individual Jew wishes to loosen them or not...

...The halachah was evolved as a guide to that partnership, but much of it evolved in order to meet the concrete needs of a people in exile...

...One explanation for Judaism's reluctance to engage in proselytization is, of course, that Judaism is liberally disposed towards the truth of other approaches to God...

...At the time, I did not realize that the delay was due to the upcoming rabbinical elections which might possibly lead to Rabbi Goren's becoming Chief Rabbi of Israel...

...This coalition allows the rabbinate to have final say in all matters of personal status— since it demands, and receives, control of the Ministry of Interior—such as citizenship, marriage, divorce, and so on...

...In a countryTjurdcnuiS jwSH harsh problems of security and economy, the most fiery issue in the last election campaign, prior to the Yom Kippur War, was the issue of religion in the State, embodied in the question "Who is a 3fesv...

...but I was a non-Jew, and because Israel does not offer the alternative of civil marriage, we could not marry...

...The traditional laws of Judaism have jplay^l far too importantsl role in to dismiss them as obscure or outmoded...

...To him I was in the army and therefore Jewish...

...went on strike, refusing to participate in my duties and leaving the base without permission...

...I was angry...

...Israelis thus come into contact—whether they like it or not—with a variety of religious officials and laws which are buttressed by the State...

...the necessity of my compliance with the "formality of conversion...

...We considered flying to Cyprus, as many have done when faced with similar problems, and, on the surface, a Cyprus marriage was a tempting solution—it would have allowed me to remain in Israel as a "resident," I would not be obligated to serve in the army, and our children would be Jewish since maternal blood is the deciding factor...

...Many Israeli gentiles and nonhalachic Jews have been forced to suffer the degradation of unwanted conversion in order to marry or gain some other basic right...

...Even Russian Jews have arrived in Israel from the persecutions of the Soviet Union only to discover that whereas they may think themselves Jews, and whereas the Soviets treated them as Jews, they are not Jews according to halachah...

...But in order to retain its power, the Labor Party has been forced to coalesce with the major religious party, thus giving the latter far more power than warranted by the number of popular votes it receives...

...Following several days of adamant refusal to admit the invalidity of my Reform conversion, and after an unfruitful interview with the Chief Rabbi of the Army, Mordechai Piron, I finally acquiesced...

...while every existing Arab state's official religion is Islam, and while Arafat's secular, democratic state is an obvious propaganda catchphrase, it remains a provocative challenge to Israel's present system— and it cannot be defused by febrile apologetics alone...

...Rabbi Goren and the dayanim converted me because I had a respectable knowledge of Judaism and because I was an embarrassment to them...

...Several years ago, a Dutch-born youth, whose father was Jewish but whose mother wasn't, immigrated to Israel and lost both legs while serving in the Israeli army...

...ffite 'Jttilratds^utew'J^aa-troversy stems from The deniahof individual Tights: for instance, a man is denied the right to marry the woman he loves because he is not a Jew...

...In exile, boundary maintenance was a major problem, and the law that was developed to protect the boundaries that Jews sought to draw suggests the centrality of race, of family, finally of blood...

...where converting, I had been told, is easily accomplished...

...Following my conversion, he appeared on Israeli television to express his liberal thoughts on the matter, using my case as an illustration...

...I know that I'm Jewish...

...Yasir Arafat speaks of establishing a "secular, democratic" state in Palestine...

...The rabbis claim that this is because it is the woman who is responsible for the home and for "family purity...

...it is a religion that demands partnership in creation...

...He had recently been under fire because of his liberal views concerning the "who is a Jew" question, and my "quickie" conversion at this juncture would not be opportune...

...But Judaism is a religion of life, of the concrete here and now...

...All this does not mean that the halachah is irrelevant...

...I was hustled up to the offices of Rabbi Goren, who sorrowfully stressed Kenneth Jones, whose article on the Israeli Army appeared in our February-March issue, is a student at the University of the Pacific and a resident of Karmiel, Israel...

...Originally the course was to last for three months, but at the end of that time my appearances before the dayanim were suddenly postponed and the course was extended indefinitely...

...perhaps his maternal grandmother wasn't Jewish...

...Here is more proof: a certificate of conversion typed in Hebrew and signed by the then-Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Shlomo Goren (currently Chief Rabbi of Israel...

...We were eager to marry, leave the kibbutz, and begin our life together, so I flew to the U.S...

...To receive this certificate I studied the Torah, the writings of Leo Baeck and others for three months— studies which augmented several years of surveying Jewish history and thought on my own...