Israel’s chief rabbis have united against the recommendations of a special committee advising on the contentious topic of conversion in Israel.

Committee chair and former government minister Moshe Nissim today presented Benjamin Netanyahu with its proposals, the key of which is the creation of a new conversion authority committed to Jewish law but not linked to the Chief Rabbinate.

Mr Nissim said mixed marriage was “a poisonous drug for the Jewish people. Unfortunately, we have been suffering in recent generations from a situation which I can only define as a spiritual holocaust. The assimilation rate in the Jewish diaspora is over 70 per cent. Instead of maintaining its existence and growing, the Jewish people are diminishing."

Under the committee’s proposals, state conversion would remain Orthodox and would be performed according to Jewish law, but not through the Chief Rabbinate. Liberal conversions performed abroad would be recognised in Israel under the Law of Return. 

Chief Rabbi David Lau criticised the plan as "a window to bringing the destruction of Judaism around the world to the Holy Land. They are deluding people that we are solving a problem here but it's the exact opposite.”

Claiming the document was “inviting” assimilation, he added: “The people of Israel can't accept such a reality for a single moment."

Rabbi Lau was among participants at an emergency meeting who published a manifesto expressing concern “about the danger to the Jewish people's unity as a result of the proposals for a conversion reform which excludes the Chief Rabbinate and recognises Reform and Conservative conversions.

"We call on the Prime Minister to reject the Nissim Committee's report and immediately advance legislation that will stop the High Court's attempts to recognise private conversions and Reform conversions."

Knesset Member Yakov Asher, who represents United Torah Judaism, warned: “We will strongly oppose any decision harming the status quo and the Jewish people's wholeness."