Jewish leaders sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging the withdrawal of a proposed conversion bill it called “disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”
The letter, signed by the leader of the Jewish Federations of North America and the heads of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements and their rabbinical arms, says the proposed conversion bill will fail to ease the bottleneck in the conversion process that affects thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and “will dangerously alter the Law of Return by consolidating conversion power in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate in ways that would be disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”
Granting the power of conversion to the Chief Rabbinate, which is Orthodox, disregards the conversions of 85 percent of diaspora Jewry, the letter says. “It will undoubtedly alienate many North American Jews from Israel, widening an already precarious and growing rift that should concern us all,” it says. — jta