The Reform Movement cannot be considered a religious stream in Judaism, but its Jewish members are our brothers.
| Rabbi Eliezer Melamed |
Recently, questions about the Reform movement and its demand for full religious recognition (at the Western Wall, regarding access to state-funded ritual baths [mikva’ot] to perform conversions, and with regard to chaplaincy in the IDF) have resurfaced.
The movement claims that it is one of several Jewish religious streams and therefore deserves status equal to that of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Just as the state funds the appointment of rabbis for cities and neighborhoods and grants legal validity to rabbinical courts in matters of marriage, divorce, and conversion, so too, they feel that they deserve the right to appoint city and neighborhood rabbis and maintain their own rabbinical courts for matters of marriage and conversion. And just as the IDF has a military rabbinate and invites rabbis to give talks and classes on Torah and Jewish values, so too, they demand, it must also invite representatives of the Reform movement as legitimate representatives of the Torah and Judaism (unfortunately, it seems the IDF high command shares this view).
To reinforce their demands, Reform Jews argue that they are the largest stream in the United States, and discrimination against them in Israel insults all Reform Jews abroad. To this argument they add the threat that if they do not win equality, the Reform community’s support for the State of Israel will end, a situation that is likely to adversely affect Israel's status in the United States—the strongest world power whose support for the State of Israel is important, if not critical.
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