Reform Jews Aim to End Outsider Status in Israel : Religion: At Woodland Hills convention, group's president announces campaign to curb Orthodox rabbis' dominance.

By JOHN DART

April 9, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WOODLAND HILLS — Signaling a raucous fight against the exclusive control of Orthodox rabbis over religious rites in Israel, the liberal Reform branch of Judaism on Saturday announced an aggressive campaign to end Reform’s outsider status in the Holy Land.

Only Orthodox rabbis have legal authority in Israel to marry couples, grant divorces and conduct funerals, a continuing source of controversy among that nation’s many non-religious Jews and American Jews, 80% of whom belong to synagogues of the Reform and centrist Conservative wings of Judaism.

“We can no longer be docile and permit others, for their self-serving interests, to look at Reform Jews as if we were lepers,” Marcia Cayne, president of the Assn. of Reform Zionists of America, said in a Sabbath service during the group’s four-day national convention at the Warner Center Marriott Hotel.

Several strategies for introducing a bill in the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, to permit Reform, Conservative and even civil marriages in Israel were unveiled during the annual meeting of the 60,000-member association, an official arm of Reform Judaism.

Its plans include an intense political and public opinion campaign, which has been dubbed Project Equality and will be supported by a $2-million fund-raising drive among 1.4 millioS. Reform Jews. Already, passions are running high.

“The task will be exceedingly difficult (because) Orthodox parties will wage ‘holy war’ against us at every stage,” says a Project Equality brochure.

Citing an Orthodox newspaper’s disparaging description of Reform Judaism as a tiny movement in Israel trying to impose its “loose standards” on others, Cayne of Woodland Hills pictured Reform goals differently:

“We bring the Israeli people opportunity . . . to reclaim the beauty of Judaism as a living, rather than a rigid or restrictive, form of religion,” she said.

Orthodox rabbis contend that Conservative and Reform Jews do not practice authentic Judaism because they introduce innovations such as women rabbis and violate religious law by, for instance, not strictly following dietary rules and by driving and using electricity on the Sabbath.

“Tragically, there is anger and distortion on both sides,” said Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Landes of B’nai David-Judea Congregation in Los Angeles. But, in an interview, Landes also criticized Reform’s campaign literature as “inflammatory and misleading.”

Orthodox Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen, a former president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis, said he was “very shocked” that Reform Judaism is planning an operation to attack the Orthodox establishment in Israel.

“It’s as if someone would say to the Catholic Church that they should now have equality with Protestants in Italy,” Simcha said. “The overwhelming majority of religious Jews in Israel are Orthodox or traditional, whereas Reform and Conservative Jews are a small minority.”

Reform leaders put it another way: The great majority of Israeli Jews are secular, not religious.

If given a choice of religious ceremonies, “tens of thousands of Israeli couples suddenly would want to be married by Reform and Conservative rabbis,” predicted Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the New York-based executive director of Reform Zionists.

“If legislation passes that would allow officiating by non-Orthodox rabbis at marriage ceremonies, then it will be much easier to dismantle other pieces of the Orthodox monopoly,” asserted Hirsch.

A current draft of the proposed bill calls for ending the exclusive Orthodox authority to marry couples and to grant divorces, said Rabbi Uri Regev, who directs Reform Judaism’s Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem and spoke at the Woodland Hills convention.

“We may have to compromise; it is going to be easier to reform marriage laws,” said Regev. He said that about 150,000 Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel are now unable to marry without converting to Orthodox Judaism because many mixed marriages in Russia severed lines of Jewish heritage in the eyes of Orthodox rabbis.

“Imagine,” said Cayne in an interview, “Russian Jews lived in a country where for 75 years you weren’t permitted to practice anything and suddenly you are told you must be converted and must thereafter observe every single Jewish law.”

Cayne said that non-Orthodox couples end up submitting to Orthodox requirements anyway or traveling to Cyprus for a civil wedding ceremony.

But while the issue may be high on American Jews’ agenda, it is unlikely to go far in Israel because of that nation’s continuing preoccupation with the more pressing issues of peace and economics, suggested Phil Blazer of Studio City, publisher of National Jewish News.

“Religious issues are not in the forefront in Israel,” Blazer said in an interview.

Nonetheless, there is already a nascent, joint movement among Conservative, Reform and non-religious Jews in Israel to challenge Orthodoxy’s monopoly, according to American activists.

Yet Blazer, who said he is a traditional Conservative Jew, also sees the Reform campaign arising from domestic motives.

“The Conservative and Reform movements need issues in order to gain attention and credibility in their congregations,” Blazer said. “If they don’t take (Orthodox rabbis) to task, they could be looked upon as being ineffective.”

Reform officials disagree. Regev said a recent major survey in Israel found that 79% of adults backed equal status for Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis.

“The world is watching Israel now,” Cayne said. “So, now it’s important to be truly a democracy with equal rights for everyone.”