Israel’s Pro-Orthodox Laws Anger Diaspora Jewry

Rabbis warn that Israel’s new conversion law and the Jewish state’s reluctance to protect religious freedom could threaten the important relationship with American Jewry. They are right. I don’t think most Israelis understand how angry many Diaspora Jews are.

Rabbi Steven Wernick of the Conservative movement says it well:

“We are Zionists. Fifty percent of the participants in the last AIPAC conference at which PM Netanyahu spoke are Conservative. We are pro-Israel. For us, Jerusalem is our capital, not a settlement. Everything we do stems from a love of Israel.”

Following this disclaimer, he [Rabbi Wernick] charged, “It is about time that the state and Israeli society deal with the question of Jewish pluralism.”

Though the conversion law is a death blow for them, even without it, US Jews are crushed by the country’s conduct on issues of law, justice, and democracy in general, and by the country’s treatment of them in particular, the rabbi says. They are angered that it turns out the Western Wall apparently does not belong to all Jews, but to ultra-Orthodox who have taken over the Western Wall pavilion and are awarded police support.

They are outraged when a Reform rabbi is arrested at the Kotel for donning a prayer shawl or when women seeking to pray there are gruffly pushed aside. Reform and Conservative Jews find it hard to understand why a sovereign democracy does not protect their right to pray at the Western Wall, Wernick explains.