Conversion breakthrough?: Israel court OKs some converts but draws the line

jerusalem | After 22 years of living as an Israeli, Justina Hilaria Chipana can finally consider herself a full-fledged member of the Jewish state.

The 50-year-old native of Peru was one of 17 petitioners who won High Court of Justice recognition of their non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism last week, in what the Conservative and Reform movements hailed as a breakthrough for efforts to introduce more religious pluralism to Israel.

Orthodox rabbis and politicians disagreed.

By a vote of 7-4, the High Court ordered the state to recognize "leaping converts" — so called because they study in Israeli institutes but then convert with Reform or Conservative rabbis abroad — as eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return.

The ruling was a small step in a decades-long controversy in Israel over who is a Jew, who can turn a non-Jew into a Jew and who can decide whether that process was done correctly.

Last week's ruling also broadened a 1989 decision recognizing immigrants who arrive having gone through the entire non-Orthodox conversion process abroad; those immigrants are considered to be Jews and the Law of Return applies to them.

But the ruling did not endorse Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel. An endorsement effectively would end Orthodoxy's de facto hegemony in the Jewish state and could stir up a government crisis.

In response to a demand presented by the religious Shas Party and signed by 25 legislators, the Knesset will be meeting in special session to debate the court decision.

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai called the ruling an "explosives belt that has brought about a suicide attack against the Jewish people," according to Ha'aretz.

The Orthodox rabbinate, which controls the observance of lifecycle events in Israel — including births, weddings and funerals — also cried foul.

"There aren't two movements or three movements in Judaism. There is only one Judaism," Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar told Israel Radio. "Whoever doesn't go through a conversion is not a Jew."

Yet with many Israelis increasingly concerned about the lack of a unifying religious identity in the country — where some 300,000 citizens are non-Jews from the former Soviet Union — the Conservative and Reform movements remained confident that their more lenient conversions would provide a solution.

"We believe that with this precedent, it is just a matter of time until alternatives to Orthodox Judaism are fully recognized," said attorney Sharon Tal of the Israel Religious Action Center, a pro-pluralism lobby associated with the Reform movement.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the Reform movement was unsatisfied that the court did not issue a more far-reaching decision, and plans to bring another petition in hopes of forcing the state to recognize Reform conversions performed in Israel.

The only way for the Orthodox to counter last week's ruling would be to have a new law passed defining their stream as the only legitimate form of Judaism in Israel. But repeated efforts to mount such legislation in the past failed to muster majorities for even preliminary Knesset readings.

The High Court ruling is immediately binding on the government. That's a relief for Chipana and her fellow petitioners, who filed their suit in 1999.

"I always dreamed of really belonging to the country," said Chipana, who first came to Israel in 1983. In 1993 she converted at a Reform congregation in Argentina and filed the lawsuit in 1999. "Now perhaps it can really happen."

But should she want to marry her Israeli-born boyfriend, Yosef Ben-Moshe, she will have to go on waiting or do it abroad: The chief rabbinate in Israel remains exclusively Orthodox, and its grip on lifecycle events remains unchallenged.