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Israeli religious conversion bill on hold
JERUSALEM, A controversial bill in Israel to allow Israelis of mixed religious parentage to convert to Judaism is on hold for six months for a re-draft, officials said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to freeze the proposal after progressive and conservative movements said they would suspend court challenges, Haaretz reported.
The bill was meant to ease conversion for 300,000 Israelis who moved to the country from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and are not, by Orthodox rabbinical law, considered Jewish because they come from mixed parentage, The New York Times reported.
The law would have granted conversion powers to local rabbis across the country, considered closer to their communities. But after objections from ultra-Orthodox Jews, the bill placed conversion authority with the chief rabbinate and declared Orthodox Jewish law the basis of conversion.
During the freeze, a committee will be established to draft agreements that will allow the legislation to move ahead, Haaretz reported.
"The change in conversion laws in Israel must be done by wide consensus because of the need to avoid a rift in the Jewish people," Netanyahu said. "Unity is a prime national interest in Israel and among the Jewish people, and I am determined to guard this principle."
JERUSALEM, A controversial bill in Israel to allow Israelis of mixed religious parentage to convert to Judaism is on hold for six months for a re-draft, officials said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to freeze the proposal after progressive and conservative movements said they would suspend court challenges, Haaretz reported.
The bill was meant to ease conversion for 300,000 Israelis who moved to the country from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and are not, by Orthodox rabbinical law, considered Jewish because they come from mixed parentage, The New York Times reported.
The law would have granted conversion powers to local rabbis across the country, considered closer to their communities. But after objections from ultra-Orthodox Jews, the bill placed conversion authority with the chief rabbinate and declared Orthodox Jewish law the basis of conversion.
During the freeze, a committee will be established to draft agreements that will allow the legislation to move ahead, Haaretz reported.
"The change in conversion laws in Israel must be done by wide consensus because of the need to avoid a rift in the Jewish people," Netanyahu said. "Unity is a prime national interest in Israel and among the Jewish people, and I am determined to guard this principle."
