After threats, private conversion rabbis get police protection

Facing a backlash for initiating an alternative avenue for Jewish conversion in Israel, two prominent Orthodox rabbis are to receive police protection after religious extremists threatened them for challenging Israel’s ultra-Orthodox monopoly over Jewish religious life.

On Friday, police announced that officers would be dispatched to protect David Stav and Nahum Rabinovitch after intercepting threatening messages sent by religious extremists who said the rabbis “harmed the Torah,” Israel’s Ynet website reported.

In light of the threats, the police chief of the central Israeli town of Shoham said that officers would patrol the rabbis’ homes and synagogues until further notice.

Earlier this week, just one month after the government repealed a landmark conversion reform passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous government, Stav and Rabinovitch announced the establishment of a network of conversion courts, offering an alternative for conversion to Judaism to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

Named “Conversion by Halacha (Jewish law),” the new courts adhere to Jewish tradition but bypass governmental bureaucracy. According to halacha, only a person born to a Jewish mother is considered to be a Jew.

The religious-nationalist rabbis said that they have already started the conversion process for several Israelis who aren’t recognized as Jewish in the eyes of the Rabbinate — Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious authority.

Stav and Rabinovitch are joined by a number of Orthodox rabbis, including Efrat Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who say that while they seek to liberalize the conversion process by bypassing the rabbinate’s authority, they maintain adherence to Jewish law.

Currently, there are just four conversion courts empowered to perform conversions throughout Israel. The reform, enacted by a government order in November, would have allowed some 30 Orthodox city rabbis to perform state-recognized conversions in Israel. The law aimed to create more flexible standards within Orthodox parameters, mainly to deal with several hundred thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose Jewish status is in limbo.

Without the chance to convert as children, the road to recognized Orthodox conversion through the chief rabbinate is a long and arduous one that many are more than willing to forgo. And while they live with full citizenship rights in Israeli society, pay taxes and are obligated to serve in the military, living in this “no-religion status” is extremely problematic when it comes to life cycle events such as marriage. Israel, which does not have a mechanism for domestic civil marriage, also has no allowance for interfaith marriage.

Repealing conversion reform reportedly was part of the coalition deal struck between Netanyahu’s Likud party and the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, which did not form a part of the last government coalition.

Now part of Israel’s governing coalition, UTJ pushed through a government reversal of the decision, returning to the pre-November status quo.

By challenging the Chief Rabbinate, Stav and Rabinovitch have angered many in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community who oppose the initiative on the grounds that it will weaken the rabbinate’s authority.

On Thursday, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi accused Stav and Rabinovitch of “fighting against the Torah.” David Lau said that Israel’s chief rabbinate and its rabbis were “under a severe attack in the media, by organizations and in public discourse.”

The assault on Israel’s religious authority, Lau said, went back to the giving of the Torah, “and the attempts to fight against it and its representatives. For as long as it has existed, the rabbinical leadership has withstood changes that could hurt the Torah, the Halacha, the integrity of the Jewish people and we, too, on our watch, will do all we can.”

In a Thursday editorial in Yom Leyom, a Shas-affiliated publication, Stav’s picture was displayed under the headline “Dangerous to the rabbinate, to Judaism and the Torah.” Other rabbis behind the initiative are mentioned by name only, without an acknowledgement of their title of rabbi.

Another outspoken critic of the initiative was Rabbi Haim Druckman, who on Tuesday accused the court founders of being “responsible for the destruction of Torah life in Israel.”

According to Stav, the new court would insist that even if the parents are not observant Jews, the children must get a traditional Jewish education. “When I say traditional, I am saying observing Shabbat, observing kashrut,” he told the Times of Israel.

Amanda Borschel-Dan & JTA contributed to this report.