Summary
If this bill passes, Newhouse warned, future historians will inevitably wonder why...Israel chose to tell 85 percent of the Jewish diaspora that their rabbis weren't rabbis and their religious practices were a sham, the conversions of their parents and spouses were invalid, their marriages weren't legal under Jewish law, and their progeny were a tribe of bastards unfit to marry other Jews. Expressing a view being heard more and more among thoughtful American Jewish observers, Siegman concluded: Who would have believed that an Israeli government and its Jewish citizens would seek to demonize and shut down Israeli human rights organizations for their lack of 'patriotism,' and dismiss fellow Jews who criticized the assault on the Gaza Flotilla as 'Arabs' pregnant with all the hateful connotations that word has acquired in Israel, not unlike Germans who branded fellow citizens who spoke up for Jews as 'Juden'?
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Extract
Conversion Bill Debate Evidence of American Jews' Increasing Discontent with Israel
In July, an Israeli parliamentary committee advanced a bill that would give the chief rabbinate, the religious authority in Israel run by ultra-Orthodox Jews, the sole power to decide which conversions to Judaism are accepted. The bill overturns an Israeli Supreme Court decision ensuring eligibility for Israeli citizenship by Jews converted by rabbis from all branches of Judaism.
"Representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements, which have been battling for years for more rights in Israel, saw the commit...See the full content of this document
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