WASHINGTON – Opposition to a proposed Israeli conversion bill is mounting, from the U.S. Congress to the Israeli prime minister.

Meanwhile, the bill is likely to be put on hold while the Knesset adjourns this week for a two-month recess.

The controversy over the bill erupted last week when its main sponsor, David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, unexpectedly put it to a committee vote. The measure passed by a 5-4 margin, sending it to the full Knesset.

Meant to give would-be converts more leeway in choosing where and how to convert in Israel, the bill also would consolidate control over conversions under the office of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Non-Orthodox diaspora Jewish movements and the leadership of the Jewish Federations of North America and Jewish Agency for Israel all have warned that non-Orthodox converts would be put at risk of being disqualified as Jews by the Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate.

Sen. Ron Wyden, left, is asking Jewish Senate colleagues to sign a letter opposing an Israeli conversion bill. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, right, has agreed to sign the letter. Office of Sen. Ron Wyden/Office of Sen. Frank Lautenburg

In recent days, a Jewish U.S. senator unhappy about the bill, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), began circulating a letter asking fellow lawmakers to join him in condemning the controversial Israeli measure. Wyden’s letter is circulating among the Senate’s 13 Jewish lawmakers for more signatures before it is delivered to Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he opposes the bill in its current form. The bill “could tear apart the Jewish people,” Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday.

Following its passage last week by the Knesset’s Law, Constitution, and Justice Committee, the bill must pass three readings in the Knesset for it to become law. The prime minister said he would try to remove the bill by consensus, but if that fails he will ask members of his Likud Party and other coalition members to oppose it in the Knesset. With the Knesset on the cusp of a long recess, the bill is unlikely to come up for another vote until the fall.

Rotem says the bill aims to simplify the conversion process, empowering local Israeli community rabbis to perform conversions and thereby make it easier for Israelis to convert — including those who don’t intend to adhere to Orthodox observance. But in giving the Chief Rabbinate ultimate authority over conversions, the bill puts non-Orthodox converts at risk and may make it more difficult for non-Orthodox converts to make aliyah, critics in the diaspora warn.

Rotem says the bill should not concern diaspora Jews.

“It has nothing to do with Jews in the diaspora,” Rotem told JTA last week. “It is only an Israeli matter.”

Shas Party Chairman Eli Yishai, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition government, said he supports the bill.

“The absence of a conversion law is the greatest spiritual danger for the people of Israel at this time,” he told Ynet.

In the United States, the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox organization, said that “While the legislation in question may not be perfect, we who live in North America must recognize that it does contain much to commend it.”

The RCA called on diaspora Jews not to interfere with the internal Israeli legislation, noting, incorrectly, that “North American Jews have long embraced the principle that the duly elected leadership of the State of Israel should not be subject to outside interference or pressure by other governments, religious bodies, or communal entities.”

The chorus of American voices against the bill is growing, particularly in the Conservative and Reform movements, whose members make up most of American Jewry but have only a small presence in Israel. Opponents are concerned by the bill’s clause that converts will be recognized as Jews only if they “accepted the Torah and the commandments in accordance with halacha,” which could exclude some converts from being eligible to obtain Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return because they would not be considered Jews by Israel.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, wrote an open letter to Netanyahu explaining why the bill will divide the Jewish community.

“The way to really ‘solve this problem’ is to have options for multiple streams and for the indigenous Israeli expressions that will only flower in a non-coercive system,” she wrote.

The Jewish Federations of North America said it supports the U.S. Senate letter opposing the Israeli bill.

“We welcome any expression of commitment from influential Jews to maintain the unity of the Jewish people and the dangers posed by this divisive legislation,” said William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of JFNA’s Washington office.

In Washington, U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have signed the Wyden letter.

“I am troubled by a proposal which I believe would make it more difficult for many people who want to convert to Judaism to do so,” Levin told JTA.

The letter’s text has not been made public.

Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives also have expressed support for Wyden’s letter. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations subcommittee that oversees the State Department and international programs, left a message for Netanyahu and spoke directly to Oren to voice her objection to the bill.

“Congresswoman Lowey believes Israel should continue to be a welcoming place for Jews, as it has been through its history,” said Matthew Dennis, Lowey’s spokesman. “She is concerned that this bill would alienate Jews around the world and risks weakening the sense of unity within the diaspora that is critical to Israel’s security.”

JTA

This family in the Gojam region of Ethiopia, pictured in 2005, comes from an area where there may be additional Falash Mura who were excluded from the Nov. 14 Israeli government decision to bring up to another 8,000 Ethiopians to Israel. Uriel Heilman

The decision this week by Israel’s cabinet to bring as many as 8,000 additional Ethiopians to Israel over the next four years and then close the door on mass Ethiopian aliyah has a familiar ring to it.

That’s because it has happened several times before.

In 1991, 1998, and 2008, Israel declared an end to mass Ethiopian immigration, only to reopen the gates after intense lobbying and pressure by advocates for Ethiopian aliyah.

On Sunday, again after dogged lobbying by advocates — including a former president of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, or NACOEJ; a former Israeli Supreme Court justice; Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi; a former Canadian justice minister; and myriad other figures inside and outside the Israeli government — the Israeli cabinet again voted to expand Ethiopian aliyah.

This time, however, it will be different, promised one of the main advocates for the aliyah, Joseph Feit, the former president of NACOEJ. His New York-based organization advocates for Ethiopian aliyah and runs aid compounds in the Ethiopian city of Gondar that provide some food, schooling, and jobs to the would-be immigrants to Israel.

“Everybody’s working in cooperative mode,” Feit said in an interview from Israel a day after the Israeli cabinet voted to expand by as many as 7,846 the number of additional Ethiopians who will be allowed to immigrate to Israel under special criteria established for the so-called Falash Mura — Ethiopians who claim links to descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity generations ago, but who now are returning to Jewish practice.

What’s different this time, Feit said, is that NACOEJ has agreed to withdraw from Ethiopia and cease all aliyah advocacy if the additional Ethiopians are brought to Israel in accordance with the government decision at the rate of 200 per month.

Under the agreement, NACOEJ will turn over operation of its aid compounds in Ethiopia to the Jewish Agency for Israel three months after the aliyah begins, and NACOEJ will end all its activity in Ethiopia and aliyah advocacy once those among the 8,000 who meet Israel’s criteria for aliyah are brought to the Jewish state.

It’s not the first time such an agreement has been reached. An identical deal was proposed in 2003 and signed in 2005, and since then thousands of Ethiopians have been brought to Israel and been made citizens.

NACOEJ did not cease its aliyah advocacy, however; Feit said it was because the 2005 agreement was never implemented. He said the Jewish Agency never took over the aid compounds, and the Israeli government dragged its feet on bringing the Ethiopians, stretching out the aliyah for years in fits and starts.

In addition, Feit said, several thousand Ethiopians who were supposed to be considered for aliyah were never included in the immigration. Adjusting for natural growth, those are the 8,000 or so Ethiopians in Gondar seeking to make aliyah, he said.

“The numbers have not changed,” Feit said. “These are the people left over after artificial caps.”

But a former Jewish Agency official who headed aliyah operations in Ethiopia for four years disputes that notion. Ori Konforti said the numbers are constantly changing in a ruse to keep Ethiopian aliyah going as long as possible.

Rather than capping Ethiopian aliyah, the government’s decision this week actually sets a dangerous precedent by potentially opening the doors to even more Ethiopian immigration because it dramatically eases the criteria Ethiopian petitioners must meet to qualify for Israeli citizenship, Konforti said.

For the first time, an Israeli government will be allowing Ethiopians to apply for aliyah who were not counted in the Efrati Census of 1999 — a tally of would-be Ethiopian immigrants carried out by a former director of Israel’s Population Registry, David Efrati.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Konforti said. “Half of Ethiopia has relatives in Israel.”

Until now, any Ethiopian seeking to immigrate under the special criteria for Falash Mura had to be on the Efrati list. Now, however, Ethiopian petitioners who were not on the list but have Jewish lineage on their mother’s side will qualify for aliyah.

Rabbi Menachem Waldman, director of the Shvut Am Institute, which is involved with Ethiopian aliyah and preparing the immigrants for conversion to Judaism, said that in all likelihood no more than 6,500 additional Ethiopians will come to Israel as a result of this week’s decision. That number represents those who qualify for aliyah but were not counted on the Efrati Census because they were in rural villages where the census tally was imprecise.

“We said all these years that there were a certain number that were not in the census,” Waldman told JTA.

He estimated the number of Falash Mura villagers who were not counted by the Efrati Census at about 5,000. The figure of 8,000, he said, includes those villagers who migrated to Gondar between 2003 and 2007 and people from the Efrati Census whom the Israeli government mistakenly failed to verify for aliyah eligibility, plus natural growth due to births and marriages.

“With this decision, I think the government went to the maximum,” Efrati, who conducted the original census, told JTA this week. The 8,000 figure, he said, was the maximum number agreed upon by Ethiopian families in Israel, public figures, advocacy groups, their American Jewish sponsors, the Israeli government, and the Ethiopian government.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t others in Ethiopia — a country of 88 million whose population believes it is the product of the offspring of an illicit union 3,000 years ago between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba — who may be eligible to make aliyah, Waldman acknowledged.

“In the villages, not all the censuses were precise,” Waldman said. “I think there are more in Gojam,” a rural Ethiopian province. “But we took a decision in 2007 that we were closing the list at 8,700 to send a message to the Israeli government that we are advocating to bring only those who abandoned their homes, came to Gondar, and are living as Jews. Someone who lives in his village and goes to church on Sunday morning and merely has Jewish lineage — I never advocated for him.”

Any Ethiopian who can prove eligibility for aliyah under the standards of the Law of Return — practically impossible for the Falash Mura — may immigrate to Israel regardless of this decision.

The question at the heart of the dispute over the aliyah of the Falash Mura is how many remain in Ethiopia, and therefore whether the aliyah will ever end.

Opponents claim the number changes constantly because Ethiopians desperate to escape Africa’s poverty for Israel’s comforts are manipulating the immigration system. Advocates claim the numbers have changed only due to natural growth and to earlier Israeli government mistakes in counting the Ethiopians.

They say a combination of factors will help make sure that this time the Ethiopian aliyah ends for real: the Israeli government and the advocates agreed on a cap; to be eligible, would-petitioners had to have moved to Gondar by 2007, so newcomers cannot be added; the advocates have agreed to cede operations in Ethiopia to the Jewish Agency, which will shut down the aid facilities and school once the eligible petitioners are brought to Israel; and the Ethiopian government does not want mass emigration to continue beyond these agreed-upon 8,000.

“All the parties dealing with this subject for 20 years were active in reaching this consensus,” Waldman said. “The list is closed.”

JTA Wire Service