Much political ado about a conversion bill

Israel's official religious life is the ultimate show-about-nothing. There is anger and maneuvering, there is money and jobs, there is politics and betrayal, there is pomp and rhetoric – but all of this has little relevance to the lives of Israelis. This makes many of the fierce battles over official religious matters seem somewhat ridiculous – and it also makes many of the fierce criticisms over the grave harms of official religious institutions seem ridiculous. Two examples are in the headlines today: the battle over filling the position of the Jerusalem chief rabbis, and the political crisis surrounding the conversion bill.

I'd like to start with the less significant of the two. If the position of the chief rabbi of Jerusalem is not very important – and it is not – then it is also not very important if the elected rabbi – elections are being held today – is a “Zionist” or a “haredi”, a Shas Party favorite or a Habayit Hayehudi Party favorite, a candidate acceptable to the mayor, or a dark horse that is not supported by the mayor. Jerusalem, for ten years, kept moving forward without a chief rabbi. Today it will have two, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardic. This will make two people, the new elected chiefs, very happy, and will leave most (if not all) other people indifferent.

If you have to know the details of the petty-politics behind this saga of rabbinical intrigue, read Yair Ettinger's fine coverage of the race. But you really don't have to. As the Jerusalem Post commented, in a highly ironic observation (it isn't clear if the writer intended it to be ironic): “many people are unaware that the capital has in fact been without any official rabbinical figureheads”. Imagine that – no rabbis, and nobody even noticed. Yet the Post calls these positions “distinguished”, maybe out of courtesy, maybe out of habit.

The conversion crisis is more significant mainly because of what it tells us about the political system that is gearing toward the next election. Possibly as soon as the coming spring, and almost surely no later than the 2015-2016 winter, before the passing of the 2016 budget. But the conversion debate, as a religious matter, is again a case of more promise of substance that it can deliver.

Yesterday the Prime Minister of Israel decided to drop his support for a conversion bill that has been under discussion for many months. Apparently, political calculations – possibly the potential for having elections earlier than expected – made Netanyahu prefer his alliance with the Haredi parties over his pledge to assist with passing a piece of legislation that was initiated by the Hatnuah Party's MK Elazar Stern.

The haredis oppose the legislation mostly because it aims to weaken the chief rabbinate, an institution that they now control, and strengthen the position of local rabbinates, some of which are controlled by Zionist-Orthodox rabbis. Stern initiated the bill and is fighting for it because he believes that there is an urgent need to provide hundreds of thousands of Israelis with a friendlier path to conversion. He believes that a moderate approach – still Orthodox, still approved by the rabbinical establishment – can provide a remedy for those hundreds of thousands of (mostly Former Soviet-Union) immigrants to Israel, Israelis that were eligible to come to Israel and become citizens according to the Law of Return, but are not halachically Jewish according to the rabbinate (some of them also don't consider themselves to be Jewish).

If Netanyahu has one relatively strong claim, it is the claim that the bill doesn't really matter. Symbolically it might be an important piece of legislation – as it sends a message of moderation, and of the erosion of the power of the chief rabbinate. But if the aim of the legislation is to have impact on the lives of people, there is good reason to suspect that this bill will have little impact: the non-Jewish potential converts have showed no great inclination to go through conversions, even if the process becomes a little friendlier. And on the other hand, the potential for further friction over the status of converts that were converted by the Stern-initiated local courts is real. In other words: if the bill passes after all – and Stern's party intends to put it on the table even without the Prime Minister's support – there is a good chance that two things will happen: the conversion institutions will remain empty, and the few converts of the new courts will later face obstacles in their encounters with a hostile rabbinical establishment.

Stern is admirable in his battle for a good cause. Netanyahu is less admirable for playing politics on this issue. But we should keep it in mind that playing politics is what politicians do for a living. From Netanyahu's point of view it might be reasonable to make the following calculation: the bill is not very important, and Haredi support can be crucial for my quest to remain the PM after the next elections, so I'm going to ditch the bill to try and keep my seat. Of course, a reasonable voter might have a different take: Netanyahu, yet again, is choosing Haredi support over doing the right thing, so I'm going to vote for someone else.

One way or the other, this is not a battle that will determine the Jewish character of the Jewish state, it is not a battle that will alter Israel's demographic future, and it is not a battle that will be a make-or-brake moment for the Orthodox rabbinical establishment. The rhetoric is going to be high-pitched, but that's also mainly about politics and about the next elections. It has little direct relevance to the actual lives of Israelis.