Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar! Party, announced that he has set a goal of two million olim (immigrants) to move to Israel by the year 2048.
How does he intend to do it? “By cutting bureaucracy and expanding incentives for both olim and returning residents.”
This is refreshing news, because what should have been a relatively simple process, has ended up being a non-ending nightmare of bureaucracy, almost meant to turn away new citizens by completely wearing them down. It wasn’t always that way.
How aliyah became a bureaucratic nightmare
It used to be that anyone desiring to live in Israel would present documents showing that at least one parent or grandparent was Jewish, in accordance to the 1950 Law of Return. That stopped being good enough the moment that the Shas Party hijacked the Interior Ministry.
Since that time, the process became increasingly difficult, to the point where many Jews were turned away, often due to being told they didn’t qualify religiously even though they qualified ethnically.
What does that mean? According to the present interpretation of the law, the adoption of another faith disqualifies a Jew from being eligible for citizenship. In other words, regardless of being born a Jew, if you are not a practicing Jew or believe in another faith, a bureaucrat from the Interior Ministry has erased your ethnicity and wiped out your peoplehood, based on your personally held beliefs.
While that may have been regrettable for those who truly wanted to live in their ancestral homeland, it is now become a critical and pressing mistake, begging to be rectified.
That is because we have reached a time in history when all Jews are prey, whether religiously or ethnically. Potentially, it means that everyone born Jewish has a target on their back, without specifying one’s religious affiliation. That animus is, instead, based on tribal affiliation.
And that is deterring the Jewish homeland from taking in those who share the same bloodlines but not necessarily the same faith. The obvious fact is that religious affiliation is not the sole criteria for who is a Jew. Because if that were true, millions of Israeli Jews, who are unaffiliated or identify as atheists or agnostics, would also fall into the category of non-Jews, if the religious aspect is the sole factor.
In recent years, anyone desirous of immigrating to Israel was forced to provide a letter of Jewish authenticity by a local community rabbi. Failure to do so, would automatically render them ineligible.
Then there were cases where even a letter was not adequate. Those deemed to be “suspicious,” were requested, by the clerks, who were more like the appointed guard dogs, to provide obscure and unattainable family documents. It was their way of granting coveted citizenship only to the right type of Jews.
Short of hiring a costly lawyer and being prepared to duke it out in court for years, the message was that not every Jew could live in Eretz Israel. But now, as synagogues and Jewish schools, throughout the world, are being torched and as any event, restaurant or other venue, frequented by Jews, has become a potential area of attack, Israel can no longer afford to turn down anyone based on their personal faith beliefs.
By doing so, they share the guilt of that person’s fate. The truth is that questions of religion or political persuasion should always be an issue between an individual and their conscience, thereby off limits to probing. These matters are highly personal and should never fall into the realm of coercion.
Regrettably, the history of the Jewish people is one where that did happen, resulting in their exile from a host country and often even their death. When it comes to the truths one holds about God, forcing someone to change their mind or face death is an unconscionable sin which the Almighty would never pardon.
So why do it in reverse? As bad as things are, America, Europe, and Australia are not yet demanding that Jewish-born people forcibly convert to Christianity or Islam to avoid death, but when there isn’t adequate protection for Jews to live safely in those countries, they might consider making the move to Israel.
But then what happens? They get here, only to be told that if they do not return to the religion of their ethnicity – Orthodox Judaism (the only official expression of Judaism in Israel) then they must remain in the dangerous countries from where they came.
Isn’t that the same as pronouncing a death sentence over them for not forcibly accepting a faith that may not ring true to them?
The writer is a former Jerusalem elementary and middle school principal. She is the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, available on Amazon, based on the time-tested wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs.
