THE TELEGRAPH: Israel has been warned it risks alienating the Jewish diaspora with controversial proposals to redefine who has the right to be called a Jew.
The row has left Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as an unwilling arbitrator in a stand-off of potentially historic proportions between American Jewish leaders and senior figures in his own coalition.
There are growing fears that the dispute could lead to a major schism in world Jewry and the prime minister is facing a choice between further isolating his country or the possible collapse of his government. Mr Netanyahu said this week that the proposed law could “tear apart the Jewish people”. He has received tens of thousands of emails of protest from American Jews, who have been urged to contact him by their rabbis.
At the heart of the controversy is the age-old question of identity and the growing influence of ultra-orthodox rabbis in Israel, whose views on the subject are often seen as doctrinaire by Jews outside the country.
Matters came to a head earlier this month when a committee in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, narrowly approved legislation that could result in many foreign Jews being denied the right to settle in Israel. The so-called “conversion bill”, which still has to be passed by a full session of the Knesset before it becomes law, has caused fury in the United States.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a million Russian-speaking immigrants have moved to Israel. But, because they either had only a Jewish father or married into the faith, almost 350,000 of them are not recognised as Jews in their adopted homeland. That includes 90,000 who were born in Israel.
According to Orthodox doctrine, only those whose mothers are Jewish can be officially classed as Jews. >>> Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem | Friday, July 23, 2010
