Rabbinical court judges confirmed the Jewishness of a Russian immigrant woman according to her facial features. The woman, who immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union with her husband and two children, had to undergo an inquiry over her Jewishness after filing for divorce. The woman's original birth certificate indicated that both her parents were Jews, but when she wanted to leave the Soviet Union, she was forced to give the authorities the original certificate and receive a new one with "Russian" written in the nationality clause and the religion clause left empty. The court found that her father was Jewish, but that the mother was Chernogoriyan. The woman told the court that her mother had applied for medical school in Moscow, and her request would have been declined had the admission board known that both her parents were Jews. She had therefore altered her certificate to state her mother's nationality as Chernogoriyan, explaining the lack of authentication of the certificate. She brought the rabbinical court judges many photographs of her with her grandmother and mother. At that stage, the rabbinical judges decided that the woman's facial features were visibly Jewish and that there was no chance she was Chernogoriyan, as mixed marriages were forbidden in the early 20th century and if both her parents had been Chernogoriyan, she would have had distinctive Slavic facial characteristics. The rabbinical judges said that the fact that the Jewishness of the petitioner's brother had already been established helped them determine her Jewishness. "Obviously facial features play a role; Indians have them, as well as the British and the Jews," said Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, head of the Zomet Institute and a judge in the Chief Rabbinate's conversion authority. "In any case, this was not the only criterion we relied on. ... Enough evidence has been accumulated and her facial features simply reinforced the positive trend and the proof of her Jewish descent."
