Jewish Agency To Create ‘Conversion Courts’ for Immigrants
Image by getty images
Image by getty images
The group’s board of governors overwhelmingly voted in favor of the plan at a meeting in Tel Aviv Wednesday. Under the plan, the agency will send rabbis to work with the courts and help local rabbis ensure that their conversions will be recognized in Israel.
In recent years, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has been increasingly unwilling to recognize many Orthodox conversions performed overseas and has increased requirements for prospective converts.
In a news release describing the plan, the Jewish Agency said it was taking the move “to help ensure the unity of the Jewish people and in recognition of the existence of many interfaith families in various Jewish communities.”
The agency, according to the news release “wishes to facilitate these families’ full integration into the Jewish people via conversion, as well as through the possibility of Aliyah,” or immigration to Israel. The resolution pledged to “accompany the converts through their process of preparing for Aliyah.”
Rabbi Seth Farber, the founder and executive director of ITIM, a nonprofit that helps people navigate Israel’s religious bureaucracy called the Jewish Agency’s move “an important step in saying that the Chief Rabbinate does not have a monopoly in determining who is a Jew,” Haaretz reported.
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky told Haaretz that the agency has received many requests from Jewish communities in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Colombia” to help facilitate conversions.
The Chief Rabbinate has not yet responded to the announcement. It is not clear whether Jews by choice who convert through the Jewish Agency court will be recognized as Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate or eligible for the Law of Return, which permits all Jews to become Israeli citizens.
The Chief Rabbinate’s increasingly strict conversion requirements have spurred several Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora to stop performing conversions or to themselves impose stringent requirements, discouraging many prospective converts, Farber said, according to Haaretz.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
