A danger from within

Editorial

This was probably inevitable. The “who is a Jew” debate, which comes to a head every time external threats to Israel let up, is back, this time with a vengeance.

A Knesset committee approved a bill that critics say would give a small group of Charedim exclusive control over determining who is a Jew, with ramifications for marriages, births and burials, as well as for aliyah under the Law of Return. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he will not support the bill, but it is being put forward by a member of Yisrael Beiteinu, a coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Diaspora Jewish leaders are outraged, and rightly so. The vast majority of Diaspora Jews – about 85 percent – are not Orthodox and would be considered not Jewish unless proven otherwise under this law.

The issue of who is a Jew – and who makes that determination – has been conflicted territory since the beginning of the state of Israel. The founders of the state opted for a Solomonic ambiguity between the secular and religious tendencies in their society when, in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, they expressed their trust in the “Rock of Israel.” This term could be interpreted by the religious to refer to God or, by the non-religious, as being seen to refer to the ancient and dry terrain upon which the “old-new land” was created.

This kind of wisdom is wholly lacking in the new bill. Some commentators are correctly suggesting that the bill has little to do with religiosity itself and more to do with the efforts of a tiny number of powerful Israeli rabbis to concentrate even more power to themselves.

David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee, slammed the bill in the Jerusalem Post. “The excessively deep entanglement of religion and politics in Israel has been bad for politics [and] worse for religion,” he wrote. “When religion finds daily expression in political parties, horse-trading and budget battles, religion is distorted, openly inviting cronyism and, often, corruption.... For those seeking to keep the Jewish people whole and the Israel-Diaspora [relationship] intact for generations to come, such moves are downright dangerous, with potentially profound implications.”

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Alana Newhouse, editor of Tablet magazine, wrote cogently about the bill’s potential. “Lest one imagine that this is just another battle between the more progressive Reform and Conservative denominations and the more observant Orthodox, it must be noted that the criteria used by the rabbinate are driven by internal Charedi politics, not observance. According to the Jewish Week, at one point, the number of American rabbis who were officially authorized by the Israeli rabbinate to perform conversions was down to a few dozen. Even if you are Orthodox – and especially if you are Modern Orthodox – your rabbi probably doesn’t make the cut.”

Jewish Israelis are also on the firing line. In a column on YNet, Rivkah Lubitch, an Orthodox lawyer who advocates for women’s justice, offered some real-life examples of what would be possible under the new law. Not only would the marriage registrar be “required to send every convert, or every person whose parents were married abroad, to the court for a determination of whether or not s/he is a Jew – he can, if he wants, send a person for an official inquiry into one’s Jewishness even if his parents were married by a rabbi who is [a] licensed Israeli marriage registrar,” Lubitch wrote.

“In the same way ... marriage registrars can send a person for a determination of whether or not he is really Jewish if his parents were married abroad, even if they were married by a community rabbi whose name is on the official list of Diaspora rabbis recognized by the Chief Rabbinate.... Even if you didn’t go to register for marriage, and even if you didn’t go to a rabbinic court for any reason, and even if you didn’t pass by a rabbinic court when you walked down the street – the rabbinic court can summon you, conduct a hearing about your Jewishness and revoke it,” she warned.

This issue is destined to provoke Jews the world over, at the precise moment when Israel needs all the support it can get. The revival of the “who is a Jew” debate is especially disconcerting, given the divisions at the official level between Israel and the United States. To seek to impose even stricter ultra-Orthodox control of Jewish and Israeli identity seems deliberately aimed at degenerating Zionist enthusiasm among the most important external constituency Israel has: Diaspora Jews.

At a time in which the existential and immediate threats against us are many, this bill should send a chill down our spines.

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