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Israel's High Court Orders Equal Funding For Non-Orthodox Conversion Classes

By Howard M. Friedman

Jerusalem Post reports that Israel's High Court of Justice today handed down a landmark ruling requiring the government to fund Reform and Conservative institutions that offer classes to prepare individuals for conversion to Judaism, on an equal basis with Orthodox bodies. Ruling in a case brought by the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism, a 3-judge panel of the Court ordered the Immigration and Absorption Ministry to set criteria for equal funding, and to retroactively fund the organizations for the past three years. Justice Dorit Beinisch, president of the Supreme Court , wrote in her opinion that the government must allow different conversion institutions to "coexist" as a matter of "freedom of religion and pluralism." Her opinion suggested that an alternative would be for the government to stop funding private Orthodox conversion classes.

Meanwhile, JTA reports that in another ruling yesterday, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the High Rabbinic Court to explain why, in a decision last year, it retroactively nullified conversions that had been carried out through special conversion courts headed by Rabbi Haim Druckman. (See prior posting.)

Full post as published by Religion Clause on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).