'Taxpayers are being prevented from using state-funded mikvaot.'
By MATTHEW WAGNERWedding 248.88 aj(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
The Orthodox establishment's ban on non-Orthodox converts and brides using state-funded mikvaot (ritual baths) is a desecration of God's name, Rabbi Barry Schlesinger, the newly reelected president of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement's Rabbinical Assembly in Israel, said on Sunday.
"We have to put an end to the discrimination against Conservative converts and brides," Schlesinger said.
"Tax-paying Israelis, interested in adhering to Halacha, are being prevented from using indoor mikvaot that are run and funded by the state just because they are not Orthodox Jews.
"Instead they are forced to perform their tvila [ritual immersion] in the sea or in a natural spring, where they are exposed to the elements and to less than ideal hygiene," he said.
A spokesman for Religious Services Minister Yitzhak Cohen said he was unaware of any restrictions on the use of mikvaot.
"We actually want to encourage as many people as possible to use the mikve," the spokesman said.
Rabbi Yitzhak Ralbag, the official marriage registrar in Jerusalem, said he personally refused a woman slated to be married in a Reform ceremony written permission to use the mikve.
"If she wants to use the mikve nobody will stop her," he said. "But don't expect me to give a Reform marriage legitimacy. The pig also tries to prove it is kosher by showing that its hoofs are cloven."
Ralbag also said that Reform and Conservative converts were prevented from using the mikve, "in accordance with the directives of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel."
Converts have to make a special appointment with the mikve superintendent because three rabbinic judges must be present. Only Orthodox converts are permitted access.
Rabbi Shaul Farber, head of ITIM, an organization that helps Israelis navigate the rabbinate bureaucracy, said he was personally aware of cases in which the mikve superintendent refused admittance to brides who were marrying in a non-Orthodox ceremony.
"We actually helped one Conservative woman who had scrupulously followed all the laws governing immersion in a mikve but was ideologically opposed to getting married in the Chief Rabbinate," he said.
Farber also confirmed that in Jerusalem, access was denied to non-Orthodox converts.
The Reform and Conservative Movements have petitioned the District Administrative Court to order the religious councils in Beersheba and Jerusalem to allow converts free access to the mikvaot.
Schlesinger, who heads the Moreshet Avraham Congregation in Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood, said that since the mikvaot were built and run with tax-payers' money, the state has no right to prevent members of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism from using them.
"Obviously, the best case scenario would be to force heads of religious councils to provide everyone, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, with equal access to mikvaot. But if they are not willing to do that, the state should at least provide us with mikvaot that we can use," he said.
According to Jewish law, a convert to Judaism must be immersed in a mikve as part of the conversion process. A bride must also immerse herself in a mikve to prepare herself for sexual relations with her groom.
The water in a kosher mikve has to be collected from rainwater, the sea or from a natural spring without pumping or the use of vessels.
During the summer it is possible to use outdoor water sources such as natural springs or the sea. However, with the winter approaching exposure to the cold becomes difficult.
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