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PORAZ TO GRANT CITIZENSHIP TO THOSE WHO
UNDERGO NON-ORTHODOX LOCAL CONVERSION
by Relly Sa'ar
Haaretz, July 20, 2004
Interior Minister Avraham Poraz intends to grant citizenship to people who underwent Reform or Conservative conversions in Israel as long as they were legal residents at the time of the conversion, the minister announced yesterday.
"We cannot accept the monopoly held by Orthodox conversions, which cannot provide an answer for tens of thousands of immigrants under the Law of Return who want to join the Jewish people, but do not intend to observe the commandments," he wrote to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.
The letter expresses the opinion Poraz intends to present at an upcoming High Court of Justice hearing on whether people who undergo non-Orthodox conversions in Israel should be entitled to immediate Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.
Non-Orthodox conversions abroad already grant this entitlement, but to date, within Israel, only Orthodox conversions have been recognized for this purpose.
But Poraz said that regardless of the court ruling, he intends to grant immediate citizenship to 11 of the 17 petitioners in this case and to register them as Jews - even though two of them were not legal residents when they began conversion proceedings with the Israeli branch of the Reform Movement. All have been legal residents for years.
In his letter, Poraz wrote that he decided to recognize non-Orthodox conversions for citizenship purposes after the Reform and Conservative movements promised that henceforth, only people who are already Israeli residents or citizens will be accepted into their conversion programs in order to prevent them from turning into a quick way for non-Israelis to obtain Israeli citizenship.
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