With the passing of the marriage registration reform in Israel, the Ministry of Religious Services is looking ahead at the next stage in its grandiose vision of making religious services in the State of Israel more ‘user friendly’ to all. The Ministerial Law Committee on Sunday, 1 Rosh Chodesh Kislev 5774 is expected to pass the bill to move it along. The bill represents a dramatic change to the entire system of giyur in Israel today. Deputy Minister of Religious Services Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan is confident will lead to improved services for conversion candidates by creating competition, as he did with marriage registration.
This bill finds its roots in a bill presented by MK (The Movement) Elazar Stern in which he called for permitting anyone wishing to become a giyur to do so with any Chief Rabbinate of Israel-appointed chief rabbi of a city. In the existing system, only a relative few dayanim are authorized to perform giyur.
Stern envision liberalizing giyur as was just done with marriage registration, permitting candidates to shop for the rabbi of their choice Bayit Yehudi however objected to Stern’s original bill. Seeking to find common ground, Stern, Deputy Minister of Religious Services Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan and Chief Rabbis Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau have been meeting over recent weeks.
Agreement has been reached to permit moving ahead with the bill. Thirty new giyur facilities will join the existing state system and each of these 30 facilities will include three authorized dayanim. This means 90 dayanim will join the 31 nationwide who are certified for the giyur process today.
Perhaps the most significant change is the giyur candidate will have an ability to select where s/he does the giyur. The candidate will be able to select the dayan. Hence, if a dayan is known for being stringent and another lenient, a candidate may opt for the lenient one, regardless of location in Israel.
In addition, the state giyur, which to date has only been approved by the cabinet will be anchored in the legal system by being passed into law.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
2 Responses
It will be good to have a state conversion process focused on zionist ideology rather than mitsvos, since the descendants of the “converts” can not possibly be mamzerim (since only a Jew can be a mamzer) no matter how promiscuous they are (and to be honest, hilonim are not know for their chastity). Dealing with a hiloni population in Eretz Yisrael who are predominantly safek goyim is much easier than dealing with hilonim who are safek mamzerim.
I think it’s time to get a new picture of Bennet