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In Israel, A Clash Over Who Is a Jew
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Yoseph Sheinin, chief rabbi of Ashdod, did not take part in the ruling, but he praised it as a means of correcting the government's mistakes. "The idea of Zionism was to bring Jews here. The moment they brought Gentiles here, they bankrupted the movement," he said.
When Yael appealed to the High Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, she was again subjected to tough questioning -- most of it focused on prohibitions relating to sex. "It was all about our private life -- our very private life," she said. "It was simply terrible."
In a lengthy ruling, the Jerusalem judges attacked Rabbi Chaim Drukman, a religious Zionist who oversaw Yael's conversion along with thousands of others as part of an aggressive government effort to increase the Jewish population of Israel. Every one of those conversions, the court ruled, should be called into question.
Drukman said the decision strikes at the heart of the Zionist project. "We feel a responsibility for the people of Israel," he said, his bookshelves lined with copies of the Talmud. "They don't. They only care about their small circle."
Indeed, the backlash against the ruling has prompted proposals for alternative courts that would take a more lenient view of Jewish law, or the institution of civil marriage.
Susan Weiss, a lawyer whose Center for Women's Justice is handling Yael's appeal to Israel's Supreme Court, said she is hoping that the case helps to "change the system from its roots."
Until then, however, the government and the rabbinical courts continue to work at cross-purposes -- with the government spending millions of shekels annually to bring people into the fold of Judaism, and the courts trying to keep them out.
Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, a major advocate for easing the conversion process, used to "pound on the table and say, 'If I had to convert, I would not pass,' " said Avigdor Leviatan, head of Israel's conversion office. "The problem lies with the rabbinical courts. There the system collapses."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
