Religious Affairs: Rabbi Haim Druckman: The 'darling' of religious Zionism

What Druckman's supporters will remember is their hero's ideological battle with the haredi establishment.

By MATTHEW WAGNER
Druckman 224.88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Druckman 224.88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Occasionally, due to circumstances beyond their control, some public figures break out of their roles as run-of-the-mill institutional heads and become an embodiment of a cause. That is precisely what happened to Rabbi Haim Druckman, outgoing head of the National Conversion Authority. After more than 30 years of public service, first as an MK and a deputy minister for the National Religious Party and later as a conversion court judge and head of the state-run conversion court system, Druckman, a Holocaust survivor who came here from Poland in 1944 at the age of 12, was transformed this year into a symbol of religious Zionism's ideological battle with haredi Judaism. Druckman's nearly overnight metamorphosis into the darling of religious Zionism was the direct result of an unprecedented attack launched on him by Rabbi Avraham Sherman, a member of the High Rabbinical Court. In a lengthy legal opinion that was half halachic discourse, half vituperative diatribe, Sherman blasted Druckman for "flooding the Jewish people with gentiles." The way Sherman and a large swathe of the haredi rabbinic establishment see it, Druckman and other rabbis conducting conversions for the National Conversion Authority are blinded by Zionist ideology. Instead of standing firmly on principles dictated by Jewish law, they are willing to bend the rules in the name of national unity. There are an estimated 300,000 non-Jews who came here under the Law of Return as partners, children or grandchildren of Jews. The law is thus more encompassing than the halachic definition of a Jew. However, the Orthodox religious establishment controls marriages, burials and other religious services, leading to a situation in which these immigrants cannot marry Jews or be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Druckman and other religious Zionist rabbis see mass conversion as the best way of solving the problem. Make the conversion process user friendly, say these rabbis - advertise, be considerate, encourage, do everything short of proselytize. After all many of these people have Jewish roots. They have tied their destinies to the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Sherman's attack, all the more dramatic considering the fact that he himself was educated in religious Zionist institutions before he embraced a more haredi slant, fleshed out Druckman's position on the conversion issue and turned him into a hero. It also saved him from the humility of being fired at the suggestion of the Civil Service Commission for failing as a manager. Shortly after Sherman's diatribe was made public, Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander issued his damning report of Druckman's record as head of the Conversion Authority. Most notable was Druckman's inability, despite a larger budget and more resources, to increase the number of converts. But what Druckman's supporters will remember is their hero's ideological battle with the haredi establishment. Druckman's Challenges Rabbi Haim Druckman sees the challenges facing the National Conversion Authority as "continuing to reach out to our brothers and bringing them back to the Jewish people after generations during which they have drifted away." However, right now there are no positive signs that this is happening. Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is the supreme halachic authority behind the conversion process, is still at loggerheads with Prime Minister's Office Director-General Ovad Yehezkel over the composition of a committee appointed to replace Druckman. Yehezkel, who is one of the members of the five-person committee, wants law Prof. Yedidya Stern of Bar-Ilan University and Mirla Gal, former director-general of the Immigrant Absorption Ministry. But Amar, who is chairman of the committee, is opposed to Yehezkel's picks. Amar wanted to choose two of his own people, which would give him control over the committee's majority. In the meantime, the conversion authority lacks a head, which means it lacks a coherent policy for helping tens of thousands of non-Jewish immigrants join the Jewish people.