If Rabbi's Not on List, You Can't Say 'I Do'

NEW YORK
Earlier this month, an Orthodox couple flew from the United States to Israel to be married in the Jewish state. When they arrived, they discovered they had a problem on their hands.

The woman had converted to Judaism, and despite the fact that the rabbi who converted her in the United States was himself Orthodox, he didn't appear on the Israeli Chief Rabbinate's short list of approved foreign rabbis.

Getting married by a rabbinate-approved rabbi would have required jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops, if it were possible at all.

And so, recalled Rabbi Seth Farber, himself an Orthodox rabbi and a member of the Israeli rabbinate, the couple elected to be married in Israel by an Orthodox rabbi - but not a member of the rabbinate. Farber asked that the couple not be identified for reasons of privacy.

"From the perspective of the Israeli rabbinate, it appears that there is little difference at this point between conversions taking place under Orthodox auspices and non-Orthodox auspices - unless your rabbi happens to be on the list," said Farber, director of Itim, an organization that helps Israelis maneuver through the rabbinate's bureaucracy.

Off the Front Burner
In the past, problems were limited largely to those who had converted with Conservative or Reform rabbis. But last month the rabbinate, an Orthodox establishment that decides on matters of conversion as they relate to marriage and divorce, said it would recognize only Diaspora conversions by one of the 15 to 20 rabbis on its list.

All other conversions must first be checked out by the rabbinate, often leaving converts who wish to get married in Israel with a choice of getting married elsewhere, going through the conversion process again, trying to find a rabbinical court in another area of Israel that is more lenient or being married by someone not recognized by the rabbinate.

Israeli observers say the development has become an unfortunate equalizer between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox in Israel.

"The Orthodox, ultimately, are in the exact same precarious position as the Reform and Conservative movements here," Farber said. "Ultimately, you're going to find that Orthodox Jews can't get married here, like their Conservative and Reform brethren."

For two decades the U.S. Orthodox community had an unwritten understanding with the Israeli rabbinate where mutual respect for each other's conversions was the rule. Insiders say the clerk to a former chief rabbi rarely updated the list of approved rabbis because he had wide knowledge of Diaspora rabbis and a large network of people who could vouch for rabbis abroad.

As such, hundreds of Orthodox rabbis from outside Israel didn't seek a spot on the list because they knew that their certification by the Beth Din of America, which is associated with the RCA, would suffice. Today, as the rabbinate reverts to stricter reliance on the list, the list is extremely small and outdated.

According to Stanley Davids, president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, the move is simply the latest public display of why the Chief Rabbinate as an institution is "problematic for the Jewish people," exercising a level of interference "which I regard as utterly inappropriate."

There is "a lack of understanding inside of Israel in general," he added, "not just as regards the Chief Rabbinate, as to the impact of decisions of Jewish identity issues that reach far beyond the borders of Israel."

JTA staff writer Dina Kraft in Jerusalem contributed to this report.