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Two conversion plans - each flawed
Berger bashing bashed
Editor:
I would like to respond to the letters published in last week's Bulletin (Jan. 30) where Mr. Kyle Berger was personally bashed for his Jan. 23 article covering the JCC Sports Legacy Dinner ("NHL stars carry JCC sports dinner.") I am curious to know if any of these respondents noticed that word "opinion" which was boldly standing out right above Mr. Berger's story. Opinion, according to one dictionary, is "what one person thinks or feels." That is exactly what Mr. Berger was doing when writing his article.
If I am not mistaken, I believe the reason for the harsh criticism toward Mr. Berger's article was because what was written did not correspond with what the organizers and volunteers of the dinner wanted to hear. Instead, although the stoiy did acknowledge the success of the charitable evening, it also voiced some negative feedback on the organizational aspect of the event This lack of organization was not only mentioned by Mr. Berger, but supported in one of the letters to the editor where it stated that the dinner has had problems similar in the past.
I don't think that any of the respondents would have had a problem with Mr. Berger talking about his personal experience at the dinner had it been a completely positive one. By individuals making comments such as "star-struck cub" and attacking him not only professionally but personally as well, I would be inclined to say that those people are far more childish than the "young Mr. Berger" as one respondent called him.
I noticed that included in last week's Bulletin was a follow-up story done by Mr. Berger on the Sports Legacy Dinner. This factorial was what I think the angry respondents were initially looking for. One suggestion for the Bulletin would be to have included both the factorial and the opinion articles in the same issue.
One final comment to those "cub bashers" who responded to Mr. Berger's article so subjectively: Everyone is entitled, to their own opinion; just as you have obviously been entitled to voice yours by writing a letter to the editor, Mr. Berger was equally entitled to voice his.
Josh Ail Richmond
HERB KEINON THE JERUSALEM POST
The country, seemingly overnight, has gone from not having any solution to the conversion convmdrum to a situation where there are two concrete proposals on the table.
The Neeman Committee plan calls for the establishment of a joint conversion institute - to be run by the three major streams of Judaism - that will teach prospective converts, and the establishment of special rabbinical courts that will perform the actual conversions.
Under this plan, the Reform and Conservative movements will forfeit their right to perform conversions here, while the Chief Rabbinate would be implicitly giving its recognition to Reform and Conservative Judaism.
Simply put, the Neeman Committee plan is a deal in which the Orthodox establishment gets a monopoly over conversions, while the Conservative and Reform movements get their longed-for recognition. Monopoly over conversions is exactly what the conversion bill, which was the impetus for the committee's establishment, would legislate.
The plan, however, is a deal that the Orthodox rabbinic establishment mil be unable to accept. "Judaism,'' said MK Avraham Ravitz (United Torah Judaism) soon after its details were released, " is absolute."
The rabbinical establishment, by taking part in an institute in which different streams of Judaism are being taught, would be putting Reform and Conservative interpretations of Judaism on an equal footing with their ovra. This they will not do, which explains why the chief rabbis have said they accept the second part of the Neeman report, dealing with the establishment of special conversion courts, but not the first part, dealing with the institute.
The other proposal, the Burg plan, does not tiy to get to the crux of the conversion matter, but tries to skirt it with a technical solution. It views the conversion issue as a political problem, and offers a bureaucratic solution.
According to this proposal, the letter "yud," for Yehudi (Jew), will be placed on the ID cards of all Jews, both those bom" Jewish and those who have converted, regardless of who performed their conversion. Converts, however, would have Usted as their date of birth not their biological birthday, but rather the day on which they were converted.
Information on individual conversions would be stored in the population registry, and made accessible to "representatives of authorities to be determined."
This solution enables the Reform and Conservative movements to perform conversions as they wish, while sparing the rabbinate fromhaving to give them any
Marriage could be the next battleground in the conversion debate.
legitimacy or recognition. That two of the four men who agreed to this solution are close to the rabbinate indicates tliat the solution is acceptable to the chief rabbis.
In the trade-off between giving recognition to the Conservative and Reform movements, or allowing them to perform their own conversions, the rabbinical establishment is leaning toward the latter. The result will be that the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements will each have separate conversion courts, and all will be recognized by the state for bureaucratic purposes.
MK Alex Lubotzky (Third Way) likened the difference between the two plans to the different approaches to peace with the Palestinians.
"The Neeman plan," he said, "is the new Middle East; the Burg solution is a separation of the populations."
While the Neeman plan must be approved by the Chief Rabbinate before it can be implemented, something very few people believe will happen, the Bur;g proposal does not need the rabbinate's consent Rather, it \vill entail a change in the Population Registry Law, a move that will require legislation.
But a number of MKs and legal commentators said that Mr. Burg's proposal wall most likely not hold up in court, because it makes a clear and public dis-
tinction between converts and other Jews.
As such, another solution is being bandied about in back rooms - that tlie nationality section on the ID cards just be eliminated, and a registry of who was converted by whom be stored in the population registry.
Tliis, like Uie Burg proposal, would enable the Reform and Conservative movements to cany out conversions without needing an official sanction by the rabbinate.
Both the Burg proposal and the idea of doing away with the nationality listing do not deal with the crux of the issue —the Chief Rabbinate's recognition of the liberal streams of Judaism.
Rather these plans simply shift the batr tie to another issue -most likely marriages. Under either of these proposals, the type of conversion that a proselyte underwent would be listed in the population registry, and marriage registrars will surely have access to the information.
It is not at all far-fetched to imagine rabbis refusing to perform weddings for certain converts.
This could lead to court challenges by the liberal movements, and - in turn — a marriage bill that would stipulate that the state only recognizes marriages performed by Orthodox rabbis. □
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