Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, leader of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, said she was “shocked and extremely outraged” by the ministry’s policy, calling it “completely inconsistent with more than two decades of Israeli practice of Conservative converts.”
A High Court appeal against the Interior Ministry’s decision is now being prepared.
News of the refused application came in the week that a report commissioned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recommended moving oversight of conversions in Israel out of the Chief Rabbinate’s direct control.
The report by former Justice Minister Moshe Nissim recommended forming an independent, state-funded conversion authority.
The rabbis working for the new body would themselves all be Orthodox, although the Authority’s eleven-member council would include non-Orthodox members with no religious stream having a majority.
