David Stav and Seth Farber – Marriage and Conversion in the State of Israel
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.8 • 658 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2015
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As part of its ongoing series on “Jewish Ideals & Current Dilemmas in Contemporary Zionism,” the Tikvah Overseas Seminars hosted two of Israel’s leading rabbinic activists to discuss recent legislation regarding marriage and conversion in Israel. Rabbi David Stav, chairman of theTzohar Rabbinic Organization, and Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber, founding director of ITIM, have worked together to promote bills that will allow greater numbers of municipal rabbis to register couples for marriage and perform conversions under the auspices of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. While heralded by some as an opportunity to prevent intermarriage by increasing the number of Israelis recognized as Jews, these initiatives have been criticized by others as further entrenchment of the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over marriage and conversion.
What problems might this legislation solve and what tensions will remain? Can broader solutions be provided by the rabbinic establishment—inside or outside of the Chief Rabbinate—or does the problem more fundamentally stem from the incompatibility of Orthodox Jewish law with the modern ethos? While Rabbis Stav and Farber worked together on these particular bills, their conversation highlights disagreements regarding civil marriage in Israel, conversion standards, and the ability of Jewish law to evolve. More broadly, their positions reflect different approaches toward reducing the tensions between the Jewish and democratic characters of the State of Israel.
The program was moderated by Rabbi Shlomo M. Brody, director of the Tikvah Overseas Seminars, who introduced the program with a brief history of Israeli legislation on these topics.
The event was recorded in Jerusalem on Feb 6, 2015.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, welcome, everybody. It's great to see you. I want to start jump right into the issue, which is as follows. |
| 0:05.4 | In Hei Yahr, Tav Shah, May 15, 1948, the state of Israel declared itself as a Jewish state. |
| 0:12.3 | What does it mean to be a Jewish state? It's not really clear on the Declaration of Independence. |
| 0:16.5 | The one thing that was clear from the Declaration is that we want to have Jews here. |
| 0:21.2 | And in fact, in the Declaration of Independence, it makes it very clear that part and parcel |
| 0:25.4 | of what the state is about is to bring Jews to this country in Kibbutz Ghaliyot, which gets |
| 0:31.3 | manifested in the law of return, which allows Jews or anyone who has a Jewish grandparent |
| 0:36.8 | to come to become a citizen of the state |
| 0:39.0 | of Israel. And the standards are Nuremberg standards. If you have a Jewish grandparent, |
| 0:44.6 | you're allowed to come here and become an automatic citizen. Now, what else makes this country |
| 0:49.5 | a Jewish state? In 1949, followed in proper legislation in 1953, the State of Israel decided to maintain the status quo with regard to marriage. |
| 1:00.0 | How does the person get married in this country? |
| 1:03.0 | The same way they did it under the Ottomans and the Brits, namely through your religious affiliation. |
| 1:08.0 | Only religious courts have the ability to marry people in this country, which |
| 1:11.6 | means there are about six different types of Christian various courts. There's a Muslim |
| 1:16.6 | courts, there's Drew's courts, and there's a Jewish court, led by what we know today as the |
| 1:22.6 | chief rabbinit, which is the one that the only authority in this state that is allowed to marry people. |
| 1:28.3 | And the rabbin, which is controlled by the Orthodox Rabbinah, has a different standard of what means to be Jewish, |
| 1:33.3 | the classic Allahi standard of a Jewish mother. |
| 1:36.3 | How does this resolve itself? |
| 1:38.3 | On the one hand, you have the state of Israel which has a policy of the law of return, which is based on Nuremberg. |
| 1:43.3 | On the other hand, you have a chief rabbinate which controls marriage, which is basing itself |
... |
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