Last update - 00:00 16/10/2007
Lieberman: State lacks courage to fix systemic conversion issue
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday that the state lacks the courage, strength and political will needed to find a solution for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not considered Jewish according to the halacha.
Lieberman, speaking to the Ashdod conference on aliyah, said the fact that there are over 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union and only about a thousand giyurim (recongnized Orthodox conversions) taking place a year is a situation that "can only be solved by a political solution."
Citizens not considered Jewish by the Rabbinical Authority are excluded from a number of rights entitled to other Israelis, including state-recognized marriages.
Speaking later to Haaretz, Lieberman was asked why his Yisrael Beitenu party, a member of the ruling coalition, wasn't demanding that the government find a solution. "It wasn't this government that created the problem," he answered. "No government was brave enough to do it. Also, this government, I regret to say, hasn't the strength or the political will to reach the necessary solutions."
Lieberman, speaking at a panel dealing with the Law of Return and conversions, supported the position that no change should be made to the Law of Return, saying that "we don't have to invent something new every time, we have to learn from the past and from the example of people who were cleverer than us," and that the law was "a strategic decision by the founding fathers."
According to Lieberman, it is much more important to improve the conversion process and "make it more attractive, more user-friendly." Lieberman criticized the rabbinical establishment, noting that the leaders of the Jewish people at the time of the Second Temple had permitted a general conversion of all the non-Jews who returned to Zion with the Jews.
"As it is there is no one Rabbinical authority, no-one agrees with each other so we need a political solution," he said.
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