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VOL.LVI,N0.29 . AB 2,5749 THURSDAY, AUGUST 3,1989
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By DAVID LANDAU
JERUSALEM — The "Who is a Jew'Vissue suddenly and dramatically resurfaced last week when Israel's highest court ruled that the Interior Ministry must register non-Orthodox converts as Jewish citizens.
Orthodox rabbis and politicians immediately called for new legislation that would reverse the court's decision by specifying that those accepted as citizens under Israel's Law of Return undergo Orthodox conversion.
Israel Sun
POLICE MINISTER Halm Bar-Lev (second from right) visited border police forces in West Bank towns of Kalkilya and Tulkarm recently. Bar-Lev is shown display of arms captured from local residents ~ knives, clubs, nails on boards — for puncturing tires.
sends envoy
But Tutwiler reaffirmed U.S. support for the Israeli proposal. She said the United States wants to "bring about dialogue between Israel and Palestinians in the; >yest Bank and Gaza to
negotiations."
Voting against the cabinet's decision to reaffirm the peace plan were the three Likud ministers who instigated the effort to add tough conditions to the peace plan: Industry and Trade Minister Ariel Sharon, Construction and Housing Minister David Levy, and Economics and Planning Minister Yitzhak Moda'i.
Also voting against the decision was Science and Development Minister Ezer Weizman of Labor, who once again called for direct talks between Israel andthePLO.
Another Labor dove, Minister Without Portfolio Raphael Edri, abstained. jta
By HOWARD ROSENBERG r andDAVit^rLANDM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration last week welconied the resolution of Israel's cbalitioh crisis and said it would dispatch a senior official to Israel this week.
John Kelly, U.S. assistant secretaiy of state for Near East-em and South Asian affairs, was to visit Israel and then travel to Egypt and Jordan, an administration official said.
Kelly was to arrive in the Middle East from Stockholm, where he would attend a U.S.Soviet meeting on Afghanistan, the official said.
State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler could not confirm the Kelly mission during her daily briefing last week. She said she was unaware of any scheduled trip, though a "get-acquainted" visit had been planned for some time.
Tutwiler also read a statement : welcoming ;:the Israeli cabinet's ' 21^ decision last week to continue supporting Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's peace initiative, without adding several tough ;new conditions adopted by the Likud Central <dommit-tee.
"We welcome the Israeh cabinet reaffirmation of its May 14 proposal for elections and negotiations, and see in this the commitment of the Israeli government to move forward a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict," she said.
Under the Israeli plan, Palestinians would elect leaders in the Administered Territories to negotiate autonomy measures with the Israelis. That could then lead to talks to resolve the final status of the Territories.
The PLC and Arab countries have criticized the plan for not guaranteeing the creation of a Palestinian state.
The same Orthodox leaders welcomed a separate High Court of Justice ruling, also issued last week, in which the justices flatly and unanimously rejected efforts by non-Orthodox rabbis to gain official status as marriage registrars in Israel.
The ruling, on a case pressed by the World Union for Progressive Judaism, reaffirms that marriages and other matters of personal status remain exclusively in the hands of Israel's Orthodox Chief Rabbinate.
While that ruling is being seen as a setback for Reform and Conservative rabbis hei^ the decision on the status of converts is a major victory for non-Orthodox movements, which have fought efforts by the Orthodox establishment in Israel to invalidate their conversion processes.
The 4-1 decision in effect reaffirms the court's earlier ruling in the case of Shoshana Miller, a Reform convert who in 1986 gained the right to be registered as a Jew on her nationality card.
In a summation of the majority decision, the court's president. Justice Meir Sham-gar, said Israel's Interior Ministry had no right by law to investigate the type of conversion undergone by a prospec-
tive immigrant.
A certificate of conversion issued by any Jewish community abroad should be satisfactory evidence for the issuance of an identity card, he said, provided there is no suspicion that it was fraudulent.
SHAPIRA ELIAHU ... High Court "dodged problem"
Israel's two chief rabbis, Avraham Shapira and Mor-dechai Eliahu, said the High Court had "dodged the problem rather than seeking to resolve it."
Summarizing his dissenting opinion, the court's deputy president, Menachem Elon, argued that his colleagues' definitions for conversion were too loosely applied. For instance, he asked, what constitutes a "Jewish community"?
In granting automatic Israeli citizenship, the Law of Return defines a Jew as "one
born of a Jewish mother or converted." Elon argued that the key word "converted" in the law ought to be interpreted according to the hala-chic norms that had prevailed in Judaism for thousands of years.
Among those norms for conversion is the immersion in a ritual bath, or mikveh, a ritual that Elon claimed many members of the Reform movement spurn.
Elon also noted that the Reform movement rejected the "born of a Jewish mother" criterion when it ruled several years ago tp expand its definition of Jews taincludeichildrf ren born of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother.
Among the petitioners were a former Toronto woman, Nancy Vered, and her husband, Ron, Reform Rabbi Uri Regev said. The couple, who were travelling abroad, applied on behalf of M rs. Vered, a convert, and three-year-old daughter Maayan because the Interior Ministry refused to register both as Jews.
Gail Moscovitz, a Reform convert who brought another appeal, told army radio that the decision ended a two-year struggle in which her status as a Jew was in doubt. "Now I'm
CONVERTS - Page 11
JWB Stuff
The state of "Palestine" exists in a few minds: those of PLO members, and those of organizers of the three-day Twelfth Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival, held recently in â– Jericho Beach park.
Among more than 200 performers was folk singer Mustafa a 1 Kurd, whose country was listed as "Palestine" in posters announcing the event. No participant was shown as coming 'rom Israel.
V/e set out quite intentionally to find someone who could speak for the Palestinians,"
highly recomended as being the most articulate and best representative Palestinian songwriter right'now. And besides, we like his music," Cristall told Pogrow.
Cristall, who is Jewish, ran in Vancouver East as one of three Revolutionary Marxist Group candidates in the 1975 provincial election.
"It is very clear. There is a Jewish state in Israel. The North Arnerican Jews must help the Palestinians get a state, too,"al Kurd told Pogrow. "They must help Israel come to an international peace conference. They must push the Likud and the
'PALESTINE'-Page 8
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[Bulletin reviewer Gary Pogrow quoted Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society direc-}or Gary Cristall as saying. "I |hink there is a great deal of Inisinformation about what is •^oing on there. People in Vancouver have never had the opportunity to culturally hear 'he testimony of the Palesti-/iian people," Cristall said. t Al Kurd, described byCris-all as "a very good singer-jpngwriter and oud player," recently released a tape â– ecording entitled The ChHelen of (he Intifada.
Cristall said he invited al Lurd to the festival because rtists are often far more
CRISTALL
informative than journalists or politicians when it comes to expressing what is taking place in their areas of the world. "What is happening in the Middle East is important. I think that the Palestinian culture has been subjected to a great deal of oppression," Cristall said to Pogrow.
He was especially interested in bringing someone from the West Bank because "we wanted someone for whom this is a daily occurrence, not someone who has been exiled and had not lived there for 10 years.
"Mustafa al Kurd comes
JUU14,15,^6,1989
• 6 Daytime Stages (Sat. and Sun.) 3 Evening Concerts (Fri.. Sat. and Sun.)
JERICHO BEACHPARK
TWO PARTS Of a poster for Vancouver Folk Music Festival showing listing of "country" of "Palestine."
HarbordTrio • Ontario BarbaraHigbie •California Horseflies • Massachusetts Inuit Threat Singers • N. W. T
KinLalat^ Guatemala John Koerner • Minnesota
Kolinda^ Hungary Mustafa al Kurd ® Palestine
Larrikins • Australia