Thirty (30) bottom lines regarding Minister Matan Kahana's proposed "Conversion Reforms"

• Published date: 19 February 2022
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

1. The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance

2. Rav Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

3. The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) main conversion court, Beth Din of America, under the halakhic guidance of Rav Mordechai Willig, will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

4. The Rabbinical Council of California, RCA's regional conversion court covering America's western region, will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

5. The Chicago Rabbinical Council, RCA's regional conversion court covering America's midwestern region — i.e., the middle region of the United States — will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

6. The Rabbinical Alliance of America (Igud HaRabbonim) will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

7. Agudath Israel of America will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance.

8. The Haredi community of Israel monolithically opposes the Kahana proposed conversion "reforms" without any equivocation.

9. Rav Chaim Druckman, the leading rabbinic figure on this issue in Israel's "Religious Zionist" community, akin to "Modern Orthodoxy" or "Centrist Orthodoxy," will not recognize any conversions done in Israel that fail to gain the Chief Rabbinate's acceptance. The political leader of the Religious Zionism party, Betzalel Smotrich, advocates the same position.

10. Avigdor Liberman, who manifestly has been at war for years with Orthodox Jewish political parties across the spectrum, supports Matan Kahana's "reforms" and warns the Chief Rabbis of Israel that they are mere government clerks subject to being deposed if they insist on promoting and enforcing an interpretation of Orthodox conversion procedure that differs from the interpretation of the secular Knesset's current hair-thin majority coalition.

11. Yulia Malinovsky, a Liberman lieutenant in the Knesset on this matter, likewise supports the Kahana proposed conversion "reforms" and publicly states the Chief Rabbis are there as paid government employees who can be fired at will by the Knesset if they do not comply with the secular Knesset hair-thin majority's instructions on how to conduct the conversion aspect of Jewish law.

12. The Israeli Supreme Court (Bagat"z) has a history of accepting appeals that immerse it in the middle of religion-state entanglements — for example, ordering the Chief Rabbinate to accommodate demands by women litigating for the right to sit for Chief Rabbinate ordination exams.

13. At least 33-40 percent of people in America who present themselves as "Jewish" are in fact not Jewish, not eligible to be counted in minyan nor to be married by an Orthodox rabbi nor to have their children bar-mitzva'd or bat-mitzva'd at an Orthodox congregation, nor to be buried in an Orthodox congregation's cemetery. This exceptional demographic chaos extends even to non-Jews who today are ordained reform rabbis. The demographic breach in Jewish unity is so severe that two separate "Jewish people" now exist in America.

14. Because of the chaos of Judaic lineage in America, all mainstream U.S. rabbonim (Orthodox rabbis) — with no exception whatsoever among the normative mainstream — now conduct private lineage investigations under the radar, so as not to offend, in all cases when they are asked to conduct a marriage, a bar- or...