A proposed amendment to Israel’s Law of Return has pushed one of the country’s oldest arguments back to the center of public debate: Who gets to decide which conversions count for citizenship in the Jewish state?
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Backers of the bill say they are not trying to open a fight with liberal Judaism abroad. They describe the legislation as a correction to a system they believe has drifted too far from the original purpose of the Law of Return and has allowed conversion to become, in some cases, a shortcut around Israel’s immigration rules.
“The Law of Return was meant to help the Jewish people and Jewish communities in the diaspora,” Israeli lawmaker Simcha Rothman said.
During an extended conversation with The Media Line, Rothman repeatedly referred to what he described as “conversion hopping” cases in which individuals allegedly seek out little-known communities abroad to undergo extremely lenient conversion procedures before applying for Israeli citizenship.
“You have a person who cannot immigrate under normal Israeli immigration laws,” Rothman said. “Then he goes to some community nobody has heard of, converts under an ‘everything goes’ process, comes back with a paper saying he’s Jewish, and the courts start recognizing it.”
Designed to target liberal Jewish movements?
Rothman rejected accusations that the proposal is designed to target liberal Jewish movements abroad. While acknowledging that some Jewish communities in the US would likely view the initiative negatively, he argued that the practical impact would be relatively limited because only a small percentage of immigrants arrive through non-Orthodox conversions.
“It’s clear to me there are communities abroad, especially in the United States, that will feel hurt by this,” Rothman said. “But in practice, it affects a very, very small percentage of immigrants.”
The conversion bill is advancing against the backdrop of another recent Law of Return case. In that ruling, the Supreme Court said non-Jewish children of immigrants are not entitled to automatic citizenship and must instead apply through Israel’s regular naturalization track. The decision did not deal with conversion, but it added to the same larger argument now unfolding around the law: how far Israel’s immigration framework should extend beyond those recognized as Jewish by religious authorities.
That argument is not new. Israel has lived for years with a split between immigration status and religious status. Some immigrants enter legally under the Law of Return, receive citizenship, and only later discover that the Rabbinate does not regard them as Jewish for marriage. That problem became much more visible in the 1990s, after the large immigration wave from the former Soviet Union brought many people with Jewish family ties who did not meet Orthodox definitions of Jewish status.
For Rothman and other backers of the bill, the gap is no longer a technical inconvenience. They argue it has become a doorway for legal confusion and, in some cases, abuse of the system.
Part of their argument rests on history. A January 1960 Interior Ministry document reviewed by The Media Line defines a Jew for registration purposes as either “someone born to a Jewish mother” or “someone converted according to halacha.” For coalition lawmakers backing the proposal, the document reflects Israel’s original administrative understanding before later judicial rulings expanded recognition to non-Orthodox conversions.
Rothman argued that lawmakers themselves should not decide religious doctrine, but that the state should rely on the Chief Rabbinate as the authority responsible for determining conversion standards.
“The legislator does not determine halacha,” Rothman said. “The body authorized to determine halacha in the State of Israel is the Chief Rabbinate.”
To explain the principle, Rothman compared the issue to Israel’s kosher certification system.
“The state does not decide what kosher is,” he said. “The Rabbinate decides. The law simply says you cannot call non-kosher food kosher.”
Opposition lawmakers and liberal Jewish groups see the proposal very differently.
“The attempt to paint the change to the Law of Return as ‘preventing abuse’ is nothing more than a smokescreen,” opposition lawmaker Efrat Rayten of The Democrats party told The Media Line. “The real goal here is strengthening the power, money, and control of the most hardline religious establishment.”
Rayten argued that the legislation should not be viewed as an isolated legal amendment, but as part of a broader political and ideological trend inside the current coalition.
“This proposal does not stand on its own,” she said. “It is part of a much broader effort to change the face of the state.” She linked the initiative to disputes involving rabbinical courts, gender separation policies, and growing religious influence inside public institutions and the military. “It is a coordinated effort to turn Israel into a de facto halachic state,” she said.
For critics of the proposal, the concern extends beyond conversion procedures themselves. They argue that citizenship policy directly affects Israel’s relationship with Jewish communities worldwide, including millions of Jews who identify with Reform and Conservative movements.
The American Jewish reaction is likely to be watched closely. In the US, where most Jews do not identify as Orthodox, the issue touches a familiar point of friction with Israel: decisions made through Israel’s religious establishment can affect Jews abroad who do not live under that authority. Pew Research Center has put Orthodox identification among American Jews at about 9%, a small share compared with the Reform, Conservative and unaffiliated public.
The difference helps explain why debates that sometimes appear technical inside Israel often resonate very differently abroad.
The conversation also carries particular sensitivity across the Americas, where many organized Jewish communities identify as traditional or Masorti (Conservative) rather than strictly Orthodox. Asked about Masorti communities, Rothman argued that many conversions linked to those communities are already conducted according to Orthodox standards in order to ensure broader recognition across the Jewish world.
“Most conversions done for traditional communities, both in Israel and abroad, are carried out according to halacha,” Rothman said. “Even many rabbis serving traditional communities are themselves Orthodox.”
Rayten warned that the proposal risks creating deeper divisions between Israel and large segments of diaspora Jewry at a time when relations are already under pressure.
“When you control the exclusive gate into the Jewish people, you also control enormous budgets, jobs, and the national identity of the state,” she said. “This turns Judaism from a broad national home into a closed club for whoever they believe belongs there.”
The bill will not move forward immediately. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested that the Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs postpone discussion of Rothman’s proposal, alongside a separate mortgage subsidy bill.
The delay does not remove the proposal from the agenda. It gives the coalition more time to examine one of the most sensitive religion-and-state measures currently before it, while avoiding an immediate vote on a bill that has already drawn concern from opposition lawmakers and Jewish communities abroad.
What began as a dispute over conversion standards has quickly become a test of authority: whether Israel’s elected lawmakers, courts, or religious establishment will shape the legal meaning of Jewish identity, and what that will tell Jewish communities abroad about their place in the state built in their name.
