Conversion Controversy in Israel: Not Very Complicated

By Moshe Feiglin "And you who cling to Havayah your G-d are all living today." (From this week's Torah portion, Va'etchanan, Deuteronomy 4:4) The Jewish Nation is alive today in the merit of its attachment to G-d. Our wondrous history and the very fact that the Nation of Israel is eternal testify to His existence. The Jewish Nation has a pact - a covenant - with the Master of the Universe. G-d frees us from the laws of nature and makes us an eternal nation and we cling to Him and testify to His existence. There is no other nation that has consistently starred on the stage of human history, been intricately involved with all the empires throughout the ages - and survived. It is a wonder outside the bounds of the laws of history. There is a caveat, though. G-d's promise of national eternity is reserved for those who cling to Him. All those sects of Judaism that considered themselves "liberated" from the basic pact with our Father in heaven have eventually dropped out of Judaism altogether. All the sects that revised the Torah as per the dictates or constraints of the times - from the Second Temple era desert sects to "Progressive" Judaism - eventually lost their charm and were erased from the pages of Jewish history, or are on their way to dropping out. In our day, the Reform movement has become the dominant movement for Jewish assimilation. This movement is now demanding that the Jewish State relax the requirements for conversion to Judaism. The rationale that preserves the authority for conversion in the hands of the stream of Judaism that perpetuates the tradition of the covenant with G-d, the stream that is loyal to the Oral Law - is stronger by far than any flaw that may be found in Orthodox Judaism. A person who would like to be a Jew according to Jewish law must convert according to the requirements of that very same law. It is as simple as that. Shabbat Shalom