This is Halachah, what's not clear?

A few months ago Alin Levy, a fashion model, was visibly upset after concluding her first meeting with rabbinical judges at the Chief Rabbinate's conversion court. Levy appeared on a talk show and said the judges told her that due to her profession and her desire to study acting, she would not be eligible to start the conversion process and become Jewish.

The rabbinical judges who convened in Tel Aviv the next day were stunned. "We only tried to ascertain whether she understands what this will demand from her," they said. What happened with Levy perhaps illustrates in a nutshell the problem with the conversion process in recent years. The language is different, the definitions are different.

According to Halachah (Jewish law), converting a gentile into a Jew is done only through the converting person's commitment to observe the Torah and be religious. However, the Israeli public considers Zionist endeavors like making a home in the country, serving in the IDF, and contributing to society as sufficient and worthy enough of being considered a Jew.

It is on this scale that the mighty clash between religious schools is taking place, between the more lenient and the stricter rabbis, and it is this scale that many are also trying to protect. Organizations and rabbis are seeking to mediate, to juggle, and to find "softer voices" against the "harsh" approach. They are trying to open the door, but not keep Halachah on the outside.

The dramatic announcement by religious Zionist rabbis is situated on this scale, and also pertains to the issue of converting minors. Already today, there are some 100,000 minors who find themselves in the complicated situation of having a mother who isn't Jewish, even though they are completely Israeli, and in a few more years the problem of how the state recognizes them will surface.

The main question is whether classes in a religious school can be considered a religious lifestyle, thereby meeting the halachic standards as they are interpreted by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who is in charge of the conversion issue. The answer is no. According to Rabbi David Stav and people like him in the religious Zionist camp, the answer is yes, with additional religious guidance provided along the way.

It must be said that the dramatic announcement by the "rebelling rabbis" is engaging. It sparks discourse and puts the complex conversion issue on the national agenda, but nothing more than this. Anyone who seeks to register as married at the Interior Ministry but is not recognized as Jewish by the Rabbinate will have to explore other solutions, like getting married in Cyprus. He or she will not receive recognition of marriage from the Chief Rabbinate. They can have a wedding ceremony in Israel, but it will only be symbolic.

The attempt by religious Zionist rabbis to establish an alternative to the conversion courts, under the claim that they are unpleasant, unfriendly or too strict, is unfair. Out of 27 conversion court judges, only nine of them can be defined as "haredi" (ultra-Orthodox). The rest are graduates of religious Zionist yeshivas who served in the army, and who are trying to be more lenient and stretch Halachah to its limits, and many pay the price for this when they are excluded from appointments as rabbinical judges. But sometimes there are cases in which they can't do this, because that's not Halachah, stupid.

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