The conversion problem: Reform, Conservative rabbis ought to re-visit the Denver model

The anger which Reform and Conservative rabbinic leaders in the U.S. have expressed to Israeli governments over the years is understandable.

Why does the country refuse to recognize the authority of their rabbis in personal issue matters like marriage and conversion?

Why are the rabbis representing the vast majority of American Jews viewed as outsiders in the Jewish state, when they and their congregants are financial and political supporters of Israel?

The most recent effort in the two movements' on-going attempts to get some positive response on these issues from Israel's leaders came last weekend, when Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and Rabbi Jerome Epstein, exec. vice-president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, met for half-an-hour with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.

Their talks focused on their hope that Mr. Netanyahu would stop pending legislation which would prevent non-Orthodox conversions from being performed in Israel, and which requires all residents and citizens of Israel who wish to convert to do so in that country.

Conversions of non-Israelis outside of Israel would continue to be recognized in Israel.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Netanyahu told his visitors that he would not interfere with the progress of the legislation.

Americans can be rightfully proud of many features of the pluralistic attitude towards religion which exists in this country, but when it comes to tolerance and understanding the implementation of the model still leaves much to be desired.

The Jewish scene here is riven with inter-sectarian competitiveness and antagonism. Why should Israelis want to substitute this American export when their own Orthodox-secular model provides enough tension on its own?

The answer is that there is no reason for Israel to adopt what is not yet working in America. And that ought to send Reform and Conservative leaders back to the drawing board with this message: Put your own house in order before exporting the furniture. Show how the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements can work together in this country, and then try to teach Israelis how it might work there as well.

One way to do that is to revisit the failed attempt in Denver some two decades ago to promote unity among the religious streams in Judaism.

In that famous experiment, which lasted for some six years, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis worked together on a rabbinic court for conversions in such a way as to make it possible for all of the groups to recognize the final status of the convert. The experiment eventually collapsed with the Reform movement's adoption of patrilineal descent and criticism of the effort by right-wing Orthodox groups.

This noble, failed effort -- which Rabbi Irving Greenberg, of CLAL, called at the time "another warning that the religious bonds that bind Jewry are fraying rapidly" -- deserves to be revisited.

While adopting a single standard as was done in the Denver program would be an enormous -- perhaps an impossible -- achievement today, U.S. Jewish religious leaders (and not just the Reform and Conservative) ought to give it another try.

Would not Israelis likely be more receptive to religious leaders who could present an American model of intermovement cooperation rather than hostility?

At the very least putting one's own religious house in order must be the prerequisite for acting as an interior decorator elsewhere.