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RABBIS CRITICIZE LAU'S ISRAEL PRIZE
by Mati Wagner, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2005
Former Chief Rabbi
Yisrael Lau
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
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In response to the bestowal of the Israel Prize on
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau for "bridging rifts in Israeli society", the Masorti (Conservative)
and Reform movements in Israel criticized the former Chief Rabbi for his intransigence
against non-Orthodox.
"The public acknowledgement of Lau's achievements in fostering unity in Israeli
society provides the perfect opportunity for him to retract unfortunate statements
made against non-Orthodox conversions," said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, head of the Masorti
Movement in Israel.
Rabbi Uri Regev, Executive Director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism,
an umbrella organization for Reform, Liberal, Progressive and Reconstructionist
streams of Judaism in 41 countries, said Lau was undeserving of an Israel Prize
for promoting peace and unity.
"If he were receiving it for eloquence and exceptional public speaking skills
I would understand it," remarked Regev.
"I still remember how Lau, in an editorial in Hatzofeh, compared Reform Judaism
to the Hizbullah," said Regev.
In response, a Lau spokesman said, "Rabbi Lau refuses to stoop to the level of
those people. The facts speak for themselves. The committee that decided to give
Rabbi Lau the prize is respected and accepted by all walks of life in Israeli
society."
In a letter to the rabbi, Reuven Hammer, Head of the Conservative (Masorti) Rabbinical
Court for Conversion in Israel, recalled Lau's decision to reject the Neeman Commission's
suggestions.
The commission was saddled with the task of reaching a compromise with non-Orthodox
streams of Judaism on the conversion issue.
In the late 1990's then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attempted to push legislation
that would give Orthodoxy a monopoly on conversions.
However, the bill lost momentum in the face of strident opposition from Diaspora
Jews and fear of a deterioration of Jewish unity.
The Neeman Commission hammered out a compromise in which Joint Conversion Institutes
would staff Conservative and Reform teachers along side Orthodox ones. Jointly,
these teachers would help prepare prospective converts for conversion. It was
agreed that Orthodoxy would maintain its control over the final step of conversion
- approval by a rabbinic court, immersion and circumcision. However, the Israeli
Rabbinate's Rabbinical Council, headed at the time by Lau, rejected the Neeman
Commission's recommendations.
In a statement issued at the time the Rabbinical Council forbid "any partnership
with them and their ways. One should not even consider forming any joint enterprise
with them." The council also accused non-Orthodox of "fomenting a schism among
the people of Israel and trying to instill in them ways that stray from the generations
old paths, thus bringing about a catastrophe leading to assimilation in Diaspora
Judaism."
Rabbi Hammer, who was a member of the Neeman Committee, which was also composed
of Orthodox rabbis and lay leaders, wrote in his letter to Lau that his approach
to non-Orthodox conversions "does not seem to me to foster bridge-building among
various groups of Jews and certainly does nothing to forge ties of brotherhood
between Israel and the Diaspora, especially since the majority of Diaspora Jews
are members of the very groups you condemned.
"If there can be a dialogue between Orthodox and secular, between Jews and Christians,
between rabbis and priests- even the Pope – cannot there also be dialogue between
Orthodox rabbis and other rabbis?"
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