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The Conversion Crisis: Preserving the Jewish Character Of Israel The The Conversion New Crisis: Preserving the Israelis Jewish Character of the Jewish State: By Jonathan Rosenblum he founders of the State of Israel understood that in order In a May 16, 2003, interview with The Jerusalem Post, That vision is a dangerous one. One may speak of a million T to preserve its authentic Jewish character and maintain the unity of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon admitted that one of the new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, as Sharon the people, personal status had to be determined by the Chief Rabbinate. reasons for his decision to leave Likud’s traditional Chareidi does, or one may pay obeisance to the idea of a Jewish state However, at the present time, the so-called status quo is under attack allies out of his government coalition was his desire to bring (however defined), but it is pure cynicism to claim to favor from all sides, and concomitantly, national unity is seriously threatened. another one million immigrants from the former Soviet both. Fast-track conversion does not provide the magic means The last tidal wave of Russian immigration and the miniscule Union to Israel. “Without the Chareidim in key positions for reconciling these antagonistic goals and can only bring a dictating policy on this issue, there is a chance for greater number of negative consequences in its wake. immigration of the Bnei Menashe provide two quite different exam- immigration,” said the prime minister. ples of absorption into Israeli society. The Bnei Menashe allege to be Two months later, in response to Absorption Minister A Million New IsraelisÑA Mixed Blessing descendants of the tribe of Menashe and are sincerely interested in Tzippi Livni’s statement that more “Jews” emigrated from the leading observant Jewish lives. In order to resolve former Soviet Union to Germany last year than to Israel, Sharon lashed out at the Chief Rabbinate for being insuffi- the questions concerning their ancestry, members ciently lenient in converting new immigrants from the former The mass aliyah of the 1990s was indeed a blessing for of the group are undergoing full conversion. The Soviet Union. (The prime minister chose to ignore the fact Israel and the Jewish people. More importantly, it reunited Russian émigrés on the other hand, have for the that Germany offers much more generous immigrant benefits hundreds of thousands of Jews, who had lived their entire lives most part, little interest in Judaism, and many of than Israel is currently able to, as well as greater economic almost totally cut off from the rest of world Jewry and unable to practice their religion, with the main body of the Jewish them are not Jewish. It is widely felt that the opportunities and freedom from the daily threat of terrorism.) Finally, at a ceremony inducting the new chief rabbis in people. Nearly 10,000 children from Russian-speaking homes Russians émigrés need to be integrated into Israeli early September, Sharon called on them to shorten the learn today in a variety of religious school systems, such as society by some form of conversion. process for conversion. The same week he announced the Shuvu–which means return–that cater to their special needs. In Jonathan Rosenblum addresses some of the critical appointment of Rabbi Chaim Druckman as supervisor of addition, the large-scale immigration helped fuel the economic problems that the Russian immigration presents as well as inadequate solu- conversions in Israel, with the specific mandate to increase boom Israel enjoyed throughout most of the ’90s. the number of annual conversions. But if the mass immigration of the ’90s was a blessing for tions that have been proposed. Miriam Kitrossky and Ira Dashevsky illustrate Behind all these statements of the prime minister lies a the Jewish people, it was not an unmixed one. Along with the a successful method for Russian absorption and conversion. Rabbi Shabtai clear vision: mass immigration from the former Soviet Jews returning to Zion from the former Soviet Union came Rappoport explains the basic halachic requirements for conversion. Jonathan Union remains the key to Israel’s precarious demographic hundreds of thousands of non-Jews, including the immediate Udren presents the story of the Bnei Menashe. situation, and that immigration depends upon making con- family members of Jewish immigrants. Many others had more version easier for new immigrants. tenuous connections to the Jewish people—some gained entry by virtue of a long-dead Jewish grandparent, others by virtue Mr. Rosenblum, a resident of Jerusalem, is the director of Am of a familial relationship to someone married to a Jew and still Marina (with baby) lights a chanukiah at the Absorption Ministry Immigration Hall at Ben Gurion Airport (where immigrants are processed when they land). Echad, a coalition of Jews from across the spectrum of others through the purchase of false identity papers. Marina was one of 200 new immigrants who arrived from the Ukraine on December 4, 2002. Photo: Israel Sun; Russian immigrants arriving in Israel; Orthodoxy committed to genuine Jewish unity and continuity. Experts in the field place the number of non-Jewish Bnei Menashe immigrants davening at the Western Wall. Photo: Michael Freund. He is the author of several biographies and writes a weekly col- immigrants to Israel in the ’90s at half a million or more. umn for The Jerusalem Post; he also writes for Maariv. By the end of the decade, the vast majority of new immi- Winter 5764/2003 JEWISH ACTION Winter 5764/2003 JEWISH ACTION grants from the former Soviet Union were not halachically Agency’s annual budget at the time. Because the level of those who saw in the Russian-speaking immigrants the means of finally reaching a place of Jews, and we find ourselves liv- Jewish. According to official government statistics, which United States government support is linked to the number to change the nature of Israeli society. Dov Kontorer, a senior ing opposite a family of Ukranian anti-Semites.” typically understate the problem, nearly two-thirds of the of immigrants, emissaries feel the heat to keep up the num- editor at Vesti, the largest Russian-language daily, wrote that new immigrants were not Jewish. Worse, the Jewish immi- bers. From the point of view of those emissaries, it is easier the Jewish Agency emissaries have “fully internalized the ideol- grants were almost all elderly while the immigrants who to round up those with little or no Jewish connection than ogy of creating a new Israeli nation, for which Slavs are prefer- were of childbearing age or younger were overwhelmingly to concentrate on the smaller pool of remaining Jews. able to Chareidim and Moroccans.” As one of those emissaries Not only do many of the Russian immigrants feel no non-Jewish. “The Jewish Agency sometimes gets into the mind-set told the right-wing weekly Makor Rishon, “Israel lacks sane, connection to the Jewish people, they harbor extremely neg- Ironically, when then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak went to Ben that they must have a certain number of immigrants, so non-religious, leftist people. There are several ways to solve the ative feelings about Jews. The Russian-language press recent- Gurion Airport to greet the one-millionth new immigrant, there they end up scraping the bottom of the barrel,” says Eli problem. One is to bring in goyim and create a new nation.” ly reported on a veteran teacher in Haifa who was trying to were almost no Jews on the flight. In October 1999, the Knesset Kazhdan, the former director general of Yisrael B’Aliya, the Yuli Tamir, the absorption minister in the Barak government, teach a class of recent Russian immigrants about the heard testimony that of a recent group of 1,004 immigrants from Russian immigrant party. One consequence, as Natan praised the Jewish Agency policy of maximizing immigration Holocaust, which none of them had ever heard of. When he Khabarovsk, only thirty-eight were Jewish. Returning from a 2001 Sharansky noted, is that Israel has become a haven for crim- for maintaining “the secular character of the State.” asked the class how they explained anti-Semitism, the bored trip to Moscow and Kiev, then-Diaspora Affairs Minister Michael inals from the former Soviet Union. As a means of limiting the influence of the religious pop- students suddenly perked up and eagerly offered their expla- Melchior lamented that on visits to Israeli embassies, “we could ulation on Israeli life, the large-scale Russian immigration nations: “Jews will sell you down the river for even a penny”; not find Jews.” Waiting to immigrate instead were “. people . A Failed Effort at Social Engineering has been a smashing success. Prior to 1990, the percentage “Jews are greedy, crafty people, who think they have all the with no connection to Israel or the Jewish people.” Typical was of Shabbat observant Jews in Israeli society was steadily ris- intelligence and that everyone else is stupid.” one family of eight that “had a grandfather who was a quarter ing due to the far higher Orthodox birthrate. As a conse- As one secular teacher in Karmiel put it recently: “They Jewish and who died twenty years ago.” quence of the one million new immigrants in the ’90s, that are simply another people. I see in them a contempt for In short, if Prime Minister Sharon realizes his dream of one mil- As an experiment in social engineering, the import of trend has dramatically reversed. Jews and Judaism that has no parallel among Israelis.” A lion new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, we can be fair- half a million non-Jews from the former Soviet Union has In the years to come, the large number of non-Jews will guide at the Diaspora Museum was shocked when a Russian ly certain that at least ninety percent of them will not be Jewish.
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