Finally, all converts to Judaism must be called Jews in ID cards By Ha'aretz Daily, but why? Isn't being Israeli enough!

By Moshe Reinfeld and Gideon Alon

People who undergo non-Orthodox conversions in Israel must be registered as Jewish on their Israeli identity cards, the High Court of Justice ruled yesterday in a landmark 9-2 decision.

At the same time, the 11-justice panel unanimously upheld a law extending the current system of draft deferrals for yeshiva students for another two years.

The conversion decision was written by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, with Justices Shlomo Levin, Theodor Or, Eliyahu Mazza, Tova Strasberg-Cohen, Dalia Dorner, Dorit Beinisch and Eliezer Rivlin concurring. It stemmed from the High Court's ruling seven years earlier that the Orthodox monopoly on conversions in Israel was illegal. At the time, the court refrained from explicitly ordering the state to recognize non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel - though it has accepted non-Orthodox conversions performed abroad ever since the court ordered it to do so in 1986.

But in 1998, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that the Interior Ministry must also register local Reform and Conservative converts as Jewish. The state then appealed that decision, and yesterday's ruling was the result both of that appeal, and of several petitions by non-Orthodox converts that the High Court had repeatedly postponed hearing over the last seven years.

Barak said his verdict was based on a 40-year-old ruling that defined the Interior Ministry's Population Registry as strictly "a gatherer of statistical material," whose decisions regarding what to write on a person's identity card carry no weight as evidence. The outcome of this definition is that a ministry clerk, unlike a judge, has no authority to decide whether the information given him by an applicant is true: He must record whatever the applicant tells him, unless it is blatantly false.

The Population Registry Law defines a Jew as someone born of a Jewish mother or converted, but does not define the term "converted." Furthermore, no court has ever ruled on whether non-Orthodox conversions do or do not qualify under this law. The question of what qualifies as conversion is therefore unresolved, Barak said, so a non-Orthodox convert's declaration that he is Jewish cannot be termed blatantly false. This means the clerk must accept the convert's declaration that he is Jewish, even if the clerk believes non-Orthodox conversions do not meet the law's criteria.

Therefore, Barak continued, the court does not need to decide whether non-Orthodox conversions in fact qualify as conversions under this law. Similarly, the ruling does not constitute recognition of local non-Orthodox conversions for the purpose of securing citizenship under the Law of Return: That issue will be discussed in a separate case.

The court also based itself on its earlier ruling requiring the state to recognize non-Orthodox conversions performed overseas. That ruling said a convert must be registered as Jewish if the conversion was accepted by the community that performed it. Based on this principle, Barak wrote, any conversion recognized by any community, whether in Israel or abroad, should entitle the convert to be registered as a Jew in Israel.

The two dissenting justices, Izhak Englard and Yaacov Turkel, argued that whether the ministry registers a person as "Jewish" is not a mere matter of statistics; it implies that the person so recorded in fact meets the definition of a Jew, and is therefore a deeply controversial ideological decision of the sort in which the court should not be involved.

Predictable reactions

Reactions to the decision split along predictable party lines. Orthodox spokesmen were outraged, saying the decision would divide the Jewish people by creating a situation in which certain Israelis would be recognized as Jewish by the state, but not by many of their fellow Israelis.

Shas immediately submitted a bill that would effectively reverse the decision by requiring all Israeli conversions to be approved by the Chief Rabbinate. The ultra-Orthodox party, which currently controls the Interior Ministry, is also debating how to instruct its clerks to act. One possibility it is considering is to register non-Orthodox converts as "Reform Jews" or "Conservative Jews" rather than merely as Jews.

The secular right was also upset by the decision. MK Naomi Blumenthal (Likud), for instance, warned that the court "has opened a Pandora's box, which will make things harder rather than easier." Even Housing Minister Natan Sharansky - a representative of that very Russian immigrant community whose members are the main consumers of non-Orthodox conversions - said it is "unfortunate that we have reached the stage where the High Court is deciding value-laden issues of religion and state that have a decisive impact on the continued partnership of all sectors of the nation." However, he blamed the Haredi parties for the ruling, saying it was prompted by their success in torpedoing compromise legislation in the Knesset.

In contrast, the secular left was delighted by the decision. "This is a great day for thousands of citizens who until now were held hostage by the rabbinate, but have now received the right to choose their Judaism," said MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor).

Rabbi Uri Regev, head of the Reform Movement in Israel, said the decision "strengthens Jewish pluralism in Israel." But Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the worldwide Reform Movement, stressed that the ruling, though a welcome step forward, represented only partial recognition of Reform conversions. For instance, he said, the Orthodox rabbinate could still refuse to accept a Reform conversion for purposes of marriage.

The draft decision

In the yeshiva draft case, the court was ruling on the validity of a law passed in response to its 1998 ruling declaring the current system of deferrals, whereby the defense minister automatically grants a draft deferment to any yeshiva student who declares that "Torah is his profession," to be illegal. In that verdict, the court said yeshiva deferments had become so numerous that only the Knesset, as opposed to the defense minister, could authorize them.

At the time, the court delayed implementation of its ruling to give the Knesset time to enact legislation on the subject, should it so choose. But a proposed legislative reform known as the Tal Bill encountered numerous snags, and had still not been passed two years later. At that point, the court said it would not grant any further extensions, so in March 2001, the Knesset passed a law continuing the current system for two years to give it time to enact the Tal Bill. Several petitions were then filed against this law, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it violated the fundamental principle of equality.

In their ruling, the 11 justices said they decided to uphold the law for two reasons. The first was the fact that it was strictly temporary, and would expire automatically in March 2003. The second was the justices' impression that the Knesset, which until last year had not applied itself seriously to the Tal Bill, was now working "more energetically, out of an understanding that it must bring the bill for a second and third reading in the near future." They therefore decided to give the Knesset time to complete the legislation - even though permitting the current system of deferrals to remain in force for this purpose accords with the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty "only with great difficulty."

But the justices stressed that they were not taking any stance on the appropriateness of the solution proposed in the Tal Bill, thereby leaving open the possibility that should it pass, they might still declare it unconstitutional. To a large extent, the bill perpetuates the current system: It grants yeshiva students automatic draft deferrals until age 23, after which they can take a "year of decision" to work or attend college without being drafted. At the end of that year, they can either be drafted or return to yeshiva; should they choose the latter, they would once again receive automatic draft deferments.

Though the court's ruling disappointed some opponents of yeshiva draft deferrals, others praised the justices' restraint. Pines-Paz, for instance, said that while he favors drafting yeshiva students, this is clearly a matter that ought to be resolved by the Knesset.

It is still not clear when the Tal Bill will finally be enacted. It was originally slated to be passed before the Knesset recesses next month, but last week, the chair of the ad hoc committee preparing the bill, MK Yossi Katz (Labor), froze the proceedings because leading Haredi rabbis ordered their representatives to boycott the panel.

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