Israel's New Conversion Crisis

By Richard N. Ostling

One of the most troublesome issues facing Israel since its founding in 1948 has been the definition of Jewish identity. Divisive cases have forced the Cabinet, the courts and the Knesset to grapple with the question: Who is a Jew? The latest phase of the dispute, involving the legitimacy of an American woman's conversion to Judaism, led last week to the resignation of Interior Minister Yitzhak Peretz from the Cabinet and threats from the country's religious parties to quit the coalition government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

At the center of the controversy is Susan Miller, 43, a onetime Southern Baptist and civilian employee of the Colorado Springs, Colo., police. In 1982 she embraced Reform Judaism, adopting the Hebrew first name Shoshana. When Miller moved to Israel in 1985, the Interior Ministry questioned the validity of her conversion because it had been supervised by a Reform rabbi. Thus, said the government, Miller was not eligible for the automatic citizenship granted Jews under Israel's Law of Return.

Although only about 15% of Israelis are religiously observant, the state basically follows Orthodox precepts in such matters as marriages and conversions. They insist that a convert's training be supervised by an Orthodox teacher. Accordingly, Interior Minister Peretz told Miller to undergo an Orthodox conversion. She refused and filed suit.

Fearing a court ruling in Miller's favor, Peretz came up with a compromise: he would approve citizenship but mark her identity card JEWISH (CONVERT). That upset not only Miller, who said it would make her a second-class Jew, but also former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren. He said that reminding a convert of the past was a "reprehensible" violation of religious law. Last month Israel's Supreme Court tossed out Peretz's proposal and ordered that Miller be registered as a Jew.

Rather than carry out the court's order, Peretz resigned. On a radio show he then charged that Reform Jews were "leading the nation of Israel to destruction." Responded Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the North American Reform leader: "I reject his comments as a perversion of the truth. He is an extremist who wears blinders." Said another Reform spokesman, Richard Hirsch: "If Israel is the spiritual home of all Jews, we must be made to feel at home in Israel."

Israel's Law of Return, last revised in 1970, grants automatic citizenship to any immigrant who is "born of a Jewish mother or who has converted." Orthodox politicians, distressed at the Miller ruling, are insisting on an amendment that the Knesset has repeatedly rejected. It would require conversion "according to halakhah" (religious law) as interpreted by Orthodoxy. The Orthodox claim that, otherwise, rabbinical courts, which supervise marriages, will need to maintain two lists of Israelis: those qualified to wed under religious law and those who cannot because of questionable conversions.

The leading figure of the National Religious Party, the political vehicle of moderate Orthodox Judaism, favors a proposal that the Reform, Orthodox and Conservative branches in North America help solve Israel's conversion problem by forming a joint rabbinical court. One condition: Reform would have to repeal its 1983 innovation, which recognizes as Jews children of gentile mothers.

Says Miller, who has returned to Colorado for a short time: "When I decided to join the Jewish people, I thought innocently that I was making a strictly personal commitment. But to my disappointment, I found myself at the center of an acute public controversy. I have undergone bitter experiences that are not easy to forget."

With reporting by Marlin Levin/Jerusalem