Coalition MK revives efforts to amend Israel’s Law of Return, granting state recognition of Jewishness for purposes of immigration to Orthodox conversions.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

A senior Israeli lawmaker in the ruling coalition government has drafted legislation aimed at amending the country’s immigration laws, with the goal of ensuring that only conversions carried out in accordance with Jewish law are recognized.

The amendment, sponsored by Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, who chairs the powerful Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, is expected to come before the Ministerial Committee for Legislation as early as next week, Israel Hayom reported.

If it wins the backing of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, the bill will secure formal backing from the coalition and will be placed on a fast track for passage.

The proposal would add the words “converted according to halacha” to the law’s definition of a Jew, effectively limiting state recognition of conversions to those performed by Orthodox rabbis.

The Law of Return currently defines a Jew as someone “born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.”

According to the bill’s explanatory notes, the change is intended to “put an end to the ongoing dispute” over conversion and establish a single state definition of Jewish identity that remains “faithful to the heritage that preserved the identity of the Jewish people for thousands of years.”

The bill would mark a major victory for Orthodox parties and lawmakers who have long sought to narrow state recognition of conversions.

It would also reignite a decades-old dispute with Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, particularly in the Diaspora, over who is recognized as Jewish for immigration and citizenship purposes.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court ordered the state to recognize, for the purposes of the Law of Return, Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel, allowing those converts to receive immigrant status and citizenship.

Rothman is seeking to revive the amendment after a previous effort by MK Avi Maoz was blocked following opposition inside the coalition, according to Israel Hayom.

The proposal comes amid broader tensions over religion-and-state issues in Israel, including conversion, rabbinic authority and the role of non-Orthodox Jewish movements in public life.

Supporters say the amendment would clarify the law and preserve a traditional definition of Jewish identity.

Opponents are expected to argue that it would deepen divisions between Israel and large parts of world Jewry, especially Reform and Conservative communities, and roll back recognition granted by the courts.

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In released audio tapes, disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein lamented high Orthodox Jewish birth rates, spoke with former Israeli prime minister about mass conversion of Eastern Europeans to reset Israel’s demographics.

By World Israel News Staff

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has come under fire following the release of audio recordings from a meeting with disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago.

The recordings were released by the US Justice Department last week, one of the millions of files related to the Epstein investigation that were recently made public.

The meeting took place sometime in either 2013 or 2014, given that Barak gave his age at the time as 71.

Barak, who corresponded regularly with Epstein and was spotted outside his Manhattan residence, had already been named in multiple documents released by the Justice Department from the Epstein investigation.

In the newly released audio file, Epstein can be heard lamenting the high birth rates of Arabs and Orthodox Jews in Israel, suggesting that the country should take steps to adjust the demographic balance.

“The demography seems terrible,” Epstein said. “Nobody sane seems to be procreating, and everybody insane in their own way seems to have five children… whether it is Arabs or Orthodox, they have five or so. Regular Israelis have one-and-a-half children, two.”

Barak said in response that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews “are more productive than the Arabs,” noting the high Orthodox birth rate, while adding that Israel still faces an Arab majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“The future in Israel is waking up in the right moment, before it’s too late,” Barak said. “It will be an Arab majority.”

The former premier said that Israel should “break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate” and engage in a concerted effort to bring at least one million people from Eastern Europe to Israel and convert them to Judaism en masse.

“We can easily absorb another million,” Barak said. “I used to tell Putin that what we need is just one more million to change Israel in a dramatic manner.”

“We have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate – on marriage and funerals, the definition of a Jew,” Barak continued. “Open the gates for massive conversion to Judaism. It’s a successful country. Many will apply.”

Barak criticized Israel’s immigration policies in the early years of the state, adding that Israel now should be “more selective.”

“We can control the quality much more effectively, much more than the founding fathers of Israel did,” Barak said. “They took whatever came just to save people. Now, we can be more selective.”

“We need, dramatically, the million Russians,” he said.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis and former chief rabbi of Russia, took to his X account to condemn the proposal, which he called “crazy,” adding that during his term as chief rabbi of Russia, he helped block Barak’s plan.

“I am glad [that] when I was the chief rabbi of Moscow, we stopped this crazy initiative. Didn’t know then that it was discussed with Epstein.”

According to a report by Channel 14, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu excoriated Barak during a cabinet meeting and quoted a longtime Labor Party member and former Barak ally who condemned the former premier for his conversation with Epstein.

“I was shocked to hear Ehud Barak’s new ‘race theory,’” Netanyahu said. “The close friend of the pedophile whom he visited more than 30 times at his home and in other places.

“The man is simply shameless! I’m quoting to you what Eli Goldschmidt from the Labor Party, who had been one of his supporters, said about him: ‘I am ashamed of Ehud Barak. Ashamed that I supported him in the past. The fact that no one in the left-wing parties is shocked or responds shows that they think like him.'”

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Syrian-Lebanese Rawan Osman overcame her anti-Israel brainwashing as an adult in Europe, and then, she said, October 7 “changed my life.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Rawan Osman, an influencer born in the Beqaa Valley in Syria, raised in Lebanon, and taught to hate Israel from childhood, is in the process of converting to Judaism, she told Ynet in an interview published Sunday.

“I was a fan of Hezbollah,” she said of the terror organization that dominates the region in which she was born. “I believed the narrative the state wanted us to learn about Israel and the Jews.”

She then moved to France as a young adult and met Jews, “and that opened my eyes,” she said.

This led her on “a long journey,” as she called it, and “after years of reading about Israel and Jewish history, I became a proud Zionist activist.”

Osman dedicated herself to soft diplomacy, trying to fight the Arab world’s ubiquitous antisemitism by educating people in their own language about Jewish history and the Holocaust.

But then, she said, October 7, 2023, the Hamas-led invasion of Israel in which terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people, including women and children, and took 251 hostage, “changed my life.”

She publicly slammed Hamas and has continually voiced support for Israel’s war on the terrorists, whom she called in the interview “monsters.”

“I don’t understand how anyone can buy their narrative” that Israel is the enemy of the region, she said, when “every day, it becomes clearer” that the real danger is “the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ led by … the Iranian regime.”

While focusing on “trying desperately to get Arabs to understand that they are intensely brainwashed,” Osman found the time to narrate a just-released documentary on antisemitism called “Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred,” directed by Canadian-Israeli filmmaker Rabbi Raphael Shore.

She also decided to take the ultimate step in identifying with the Jewish people by starting the process of converting to Judaism.

“Many people told me that I shouldn’t share that I’m converting,” she noted, because “being an Arab Muslim ally is more valuable.”

“However,” she continued, “converting to Judaism is not my dirty secret, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something I’m proud of, and I’d like the Jews to understand that it is something you should be proud of. There’s nothing wrong with you and everything wrong with the world.”

Osman has received many death threats due to her activism, especially in Germany, where she now lives.

“There is a criminal investigator I report some of them to, but as they say, ‘A dog that barks rarely bites.’ Those who want to kill me won’t inform me in advance,” she said. “I have to be careful where I’m invited to speak publicly. We have heavy security, but I truly believe I’m doing the right thing, so it doesn’t bother me at all.”

Friendships have also ended over her pro-Israel stance.

“I still have many family members and friends in Lebanon and Syria,” she said. “Most of them blocked me right after October 7 when I made a public statement condemning Hamas and supporting Israel, many out of fear, but many just because they are antisemites.”

The post Former Hezbollah defender converting to Judaism appeared first on World Israel News.

Islam specialist Yaron Avraham shares his story from growing up as an Arab-Israeli being sent to Gaza for school only to leave, convert to Judaism, and join the IDF.

The post WATCH: From radical Islam to Judaism appeared first on World Israel News.