In Israel even conversion to becoming Jewish depends on your race

Not everyone can join the herrenvolk

One of the arguments used by those who say that Zionism is not racist is that anyone can convert to being Jewish and thus become part of the master race in Israel.  There is no barrier if you meet the religious criteria of adherence to Orthodoxy, observance of the commandments (mitzvot) etc.

Now we learn that Israel’s conversion authority routinely rejects Palestinian and refugee requests to convert on grounds of ethnicity or their legal status as refugees.  What has one’s status as a refugee got to do with religious adherence?  Nothing of course.  Except of course that the Orthodox Jewish institutions fulfills much the same function vs the Israeli state as the Reich Church in Germany fulfilled in respect of the Nazi state.  The difference was that in Nazi Germany the Confessing Church supplanted the Reich Church which became unpopular with German Christians (not the Confessing Church ever stood up to the Nazis).

In Slovakia during WW2 approximately 10% of Slovakian Jews, between 6,000 and 8,000 converted to Christianity to escape deportation.  In Budapest in 1944 thousands of Jews converted for the same reason.  Almost without exception the Churches put no obstacles in the way of conversion, even though they knew that the reasons for conversion were to save themselves rather than out of religious devotion.  In the majority of case it did not save the Jewish converts from deportation though it did in somc cases.

Tony Greenstein

'Palestinian requests to convert to Judaism rejected automatically'

JTA  Fri, 01 Apr 2016 

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, director of the Israeli government’s Conversion Authority, made the statement earlier this week, according to NRG.

Photo by: REUTERS

Israel’s authority handling conversions to Judaism rejects Palestinian applicants without review because of their ethnic origin, its head said.

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, director of the Israeli government’s Conversion Authority, spoke about his organization’s handling of requests by Palestinians to convert on Tuesday during a discussion on conversions at the State Control Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, the news site NRG reported.

To initiate an officially recognized conversion to Judaism in Israel, foreigners need to apply to the special cases panel of the Conversion Authority.

“The threshold requirements” to be considered by the special cases panel, he said, “are that applicants be sincere and that they are not foreign workers; infiltrators; Palestinian or illegally in the country.” In 2014, he added, the special cases committee received 400 applications. “Half of the applicants were accepted, the rest were rejected as foreign workers, infiltrators, illegal stayers and Palestinians,” he said.

Conversions to Judaism by Palestinians are rare in Israel.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which is the legal basis for the country’s basic laws  - a set often referred to the equivalent of Israel’s constitution - ensures “absolute social and political equality to all its citizens regardless of faith, race and gender.”

The Israeli government fears that Palestinian attempts to convert to Judaism would be a covert form of realizing "the right of return," which is demanded by Arabs who were forced to flee or fled their former homes and lands in pre-state Israel just before the state's founding.

'African infiltrators have no halachic affiliation to the Jewish people' (archives) Photo: Gil Yohanan

Israel rejects Africans' request to convert to Judaism

Dozens of Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators have asked to become part of Jewish people in past year bid to receive residence permit and perhaps even Israeli citizenship, Ynet learns.

Kobi Nachshoni

Published: 06.11.14, 00:19 / Israel Jewish Scene

Dozens of Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators residing in Israel illegally have requested to convert to Judaism in the past year in a bid to receive a residence permit and perhaps even an Israeli citizenship, Ynet has learned.

Their requests were rejected out of hand by the Conversion Authority for failing to meet preconditions.

Refugee Problem

According to figures compiled by the Ministry of Religious of Services, dozens of Africans tried to begin a conversion process, and most requests were made when the infiltrators' problem was at the center of the public and media's attention.

A ministry official estimates that the immediate refusal made the entire community realize that it would not find a solution to its distress that way, and the number of requests soon diminished.

"The government built a fence in the south, on the state's border, and we built one here, at the entrance gate to the Jewish people," Shmuel Jeselsohn, head of the State Conversion Authority, told Ynet. "That's why even when there are infiltrators seeking to convert – it's not a phenomenon."

Rejected without discussion

According to Jeselsohn, until a few years ago there were no precondition for conversion, so that "everyone who was deported or banned entry to Israel would immediately knock on the door, and we had to summon them for an interview and start a process.

"This has been stopped," he added, 'and now foreign nationals are required to fill out a form requesting a conversion, which is discussed together with Justice Ministry representatives. If the request is filed by an illegal resident, it will be denied immediately.'

Yet religious sources have expressed their fear that the state will regularize the status of African infiltrators in the future and allow them to reside in Israel. In such a case, they will have the legal right to convert, despite the fact that they have no halachic affiliation to the Jewish people.

"The stories we hear from the religious courts, that they allegedly abuse converts, will pale in comparison to what we are expected to see with the Africans," a Conversion Authority source told Ynet.

"Today we are still talking about immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who in the worst case are assimilators of Jewish descent, and so we are still lenient with them. But here we are talking about tens of thousands who want to assimilate into us and have no connection to Judaism."

Appeals received from Palestinians too

Jeselsohn says the tension between the civil law and Jewish Law is built into the conversion issue, but is hardly witnessed these days.

Jeselsohn offers one example: "A while ago I met a woman with a head cover, who obviously maintains a very religious lifestyle and really wants to be part of the Jewish people. But then it turned out that several years ago she tried to enter Israel without a permit, and so legally she must not be converted."

Today, the exceptions committee allows the Conversion Authority to begin the process for a person who fails to meet the preconditions only in very rare cases. According to Jeselsohn, "We are occasionally approached by Palestinians who experience problems entering Israel."

He recalls an amusing incident when a Bedouin who began taking Judaism lessons called to inquire why he was not receiving an allowance like any other yeshiva student. 

Fundamentalism and Modernity

Religious Fundamentalism and its Colonial Roots

A discussion on Facebook thread on US fundamentalist preachers led me to write this.

Mike Cushman

Dear E

You say ‘Europe is not burdened with the Bible literalism that gives life to this insane trajectory {of US susceptibility to fundamentalist preachers].’ I agree, but my question is why is this so? I will attempt some tentative answers – this takes me to areas I haven’t reflected on enough before so what follows is a preliminary intervention.

Your earlier reference to the European experience of and reaction to fascism is thought provoking but I think we need to go further and consider reactions to modernity itself.

We can see the US as le grand projet of the European enlightenment – an enterprise to build an ever more perfect society free of the destructive history of European feudalism, the divine right of kings and authoritarianism. Thus the US embrace of mystical religion is a reaction to failures of modernity in contrast to the critical and sceptical engagement of modernity that underlies the most interesting post-modern critiques. It is a retreat to pre-modern certainties of proclaimed dogma.

Europe’s interlude of fascism, and even more importantly Nazism, gave the continent a brutal experience of a pre-modern reaction to modernity and thus the wide adherence to social- and Christian democratic models of modernity and belief in the possibility of progress.

It is worth trying to do a preliminary taxonomy of the types of religious fundamentalism that are gathering force around the globe.

We can see Islamic fundamentalism as a reaction to the history of colonialism and a rejection of western models of modernity that provided the ideological infrastructure for colonialism and neo-colonialism. The struggle against imperialism was initially widely articulated through communism – originally an enlightenment project for progress. The corruption of communism in the Soviet Union (and later China) resulted in these communist sponsors endorsing and enabling corrupt and repressive regimes that provided little or nothing for the mass of the population and embedded a self perpetuating cleptocracy (the actors who ruled may have changed from time to time and coup to coup but the structures of exploitation remained).

Orthodox Christian fundamentalism in Russia and its neighbours is similarly a reaction to the failures of soviet communism.

Jewish fundamentalism in Israel and supporting Jewish communities is rather different. Israel attempts to be a modern state but it has moved its foundational belief away from a need for a safe haven after the shoah in a territory that modern Jews, even the secular ones who founded the Israeli state, claim a historical link to. The notion of sanctuary remains of course but that can only be used to justify Israel within pre-1967 borders. Occupation of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria in fundamentalist jargon) can only be ‘legitimised’ by reference to a biblical promise. The perceived need to employ this ‘promise’ moves fundamentalist Judaism from a minor current to the centre of state thinking. Jewish Israeli fundamentalism incorporates a central paradox; a would be modern science based state justified through mysticism. 

Hindu fundamentalism of the BJP and the new Modi government has some similar characteristics to the Israeli version. It is an attempt to strengthen the Indian state by asserting a common identity on a highly diverse population – like Israel, significantly against both its own Muslim minority and its Muslim neighbours. The contradiction here is between Hindu mysticism (which incorporates a strong bias against consumerism) and the forceful promotion of neo-liberal economic models of market-denominated rationalities.

This brings us back to the American model. In contrast to Europe the incubus is communism rather than fascism. While Soviet communism distorted and corrupted the enlightenment project it incorporated it, not rejected it. Rejection of fascism in Europe was a rejection of pre-modern tropes; rejection of communism in the US was a rejection of modernity and opened the path to religious fundamentalist ideas. Unlike Hindu fundamentalism it did not have to confront a rejection of materialism – protestant belief co-evolved with capitalism and catholic belief embraced capitalist values many years ago; although the anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist threads of Catholicism still have some purchase and are somewhat articulated by Pope Francis.

Like Jewish Israeli fundamentalism, the American version justifies territorial seizure and in the US sanctifies it as manifest destiny. However like the Israeli version it wishes to have a productive science based economy while rejecting the basic tenets of science. The three central US battlegrounds, climate change, evolution and abortion, each have different characteristics – although the opposing alliances on each issue are very similar.

Climate change denial is economically advantageous to many of its proponents. It is not difficult to see why Exxon or the coal industry or the Koch brothers spend large sums contesting it. The link to fundamentalism is that denial of climate change requires a suspicion of science that is afforded by fundamentalist belief. At its most basic, American protestant fundamentalism asserts that humans in general, and Americans, in particular are the beneficiaries of God’s munificence and as he won’t allow us to be swept away by global warming so the science must be wrong. However, if science is so wrong here where can it be trusted?

Evolution has always been difficult for narrow believers from Soapy Sam, through William Jennings Bryan to contemporary evangelical preachers. Denial of evolution requires belief in ever more elaborate deceptions which are in conflict with Occam’s razor. It requires a belief in a god who requires ever more difficult acts of faith – accepting that a god would carefully place dinosaur bones in ever deeper strata that are most easily accounted for by evolution and a 4.5 million year old earth just so he/she can require us to reject such an explanation to keep our belief pure and accept Genesis and the rest of the bible as literal and accurate history. The US economy requires scientifically competent professionals but School Boards are requiring curricula that reject science in order to sustain their version of religious belief.

Opposition to abortion (and the associated issues around feminism and LGBT rights) is a rejection of the central tenet of the enlightenment: of the individual endowed with rights, rather lucidly proclaimed in the US declaration independence and the amendments to the US constitution. The fundamentalists who most loudly announced their patriotism do so while contradicting the founding principles of their state – unless they believe the claim that “all men are created equal” is to be narrowly interpreted as gender bounded.

A pessimistic view of the possibility of progress and therefore a reluctant renunciation of the central promise of the enlightenment does not require us to abandon the struggle for partial ameliorations of injustice and inequalities – indeed it makes individual action more pressing as we cannot rely on the immanent forces of history to solve our problems. It requires us to keep being forward looking and to maintain a critical acceptance of positivist science. While we may doubt simplistic versions of reality and truth and see reality as socially constructed and the object of interpretation we do not doubt the validity of human experience we rather seek better means of understanding it.

We have to keep making the arguments for makes rejecting the idea that, if only we would retreat to a religiously ordered fantasy past, we will find happiness on earth and contentment in paradise. Such ideas are bound up with an authoritarianism and denial of agency and creativity that will destroy us. The struggle against all varieties of religious fundamentalism, no matter what god(s) each seeks to appease must be a major part of our public and private politics: our ability to lead fulfilling lives, and indeed the future of the global eco-system, depend on it.