JERUSALEM (RNS) Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers promised to fight any state funding for non-Orthodox conversion institutes after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Reform, Conservative and Orthodox conversion programs must receive the same funding.
The ruling is groundbreaking because the government has never before granted money to non-Orthodox religious institutions such as synagogues, insisting it is legally authorized to fund only Orthodox religious institutions, services and rabbis.
Tuesday’s (May 19) ruling, issued in response to a 2005 petition by the Israeli branch of the Reform movement, says that the state cannot fund private Orthodox conversion courts while refusing to support its non-Orthodox counterparts.
Israeli law stipulates that potential converts must study in a conversion institute before appearing before an Orthodox rabbinical court. Only Orthodox conversions are recognized by the authorities.
Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox parliamentarian and head of the Knesset Finance Committee, said the court had “blatantly interfered in matters that are solely within the jurisdiction of parliamentarians.”
In an interview in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, Gafni called members of the Reform movement “a bunch of treacherous backstabbers to Judaism. They are jokers who operate without hierarchy and without rules.”
Jews may practice their faith any way they choose in Israel, but the law grants sole authority over religious matters — including conversion, marriage and divorce — to the Orthodox.
Reform and Conservative Jews hope the ruling is the first step toward greater state recognition of non-Orthodox institutions, and that it will eventually result in state recognition for their converts.
“The verdict talked about the principles we’ve been waiting to many years to hear: equality and pluralism,” said Anat Hoffman, director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center, which filed the petition. “The judges view Orthodoxy as a movement, just as we are a movement, and not head of the Jewish people. They recognized the value of our core work: religious services.”
In its decision, the court said the state “is obligated by the principle of religious freedom and pluralism” to provide people with a variety of options and not to discriminate between them.
“The State’s obligation to pluralism is not merely a passive one. It has an active aspect to it as well, obligating the State, wherever it decides to support one stream, to support the other as well,” the court said.
