Religious law has caused a rift among Israeli politicians
According to religious canons – Halakha – Jewish nationality in Israel is passed down through the maternal line: for example, if a person has a Russian mother and a Jewish father, then from the rabbinate's perspective he will not be considered a Jew, although he has the right to repatriate to Israel. In accordance with Halakha, about 300,000 of Israel's Jews are non-Jews. For Israel, which has a total population of 7.5 million, of which 1.5 million are Arabs, this is a large number.
Recognition of nationality through the mother has given rise to many jokes among Russian-speaking Israelis, especially those who arrived from the USSR in the 1970s: 'In the Union they called us Yids, we moved to Israel – and turned out to be Russians.'
Non-Jews according to Halakha do not feel any discrimination from Israeli society. Except for one single case – when they decide to get married. Since the institution of marriage in Israel is controlled by religious bodies, its registration is only possible after the rabbinate recognizes that the couple are Jews. If the rabbinate doubts the authenticity of the documents of even one of the spouses, such a marriage cannot be concluded in Israel. For this reason, many Israelis, regardless of whether they are Jews according to Halakha or not, prefer not to deal with the rabbinate and 'register' abroad.
Israeli society as a whole faces the problem that many immigrants – and Israel is one-third immigrants – lack knowledge of Jewish culture and traditions. This especially applies to Russian-speaking Jews who came to Israel in the 1990s. Many of them still consider New Year their main holiday, ignoring the fact that the calendar in Israel is calculated from the creation of the world, not from the birth of Christ, and therefore the Israeli New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is celebrated in September. The New Year familiar to Russians, which occurs on the night of January 1, is not an official holiday here.
According to many local religious figures and officials, disrespect for Jewish culture, ignorance of the traditions of one's country, and the heterogeneity of Israeli society lead to its split. The only solution, from the point of view of many experts, is to simplify giyur. The goal is not just to register a person as a Jew in their passport, but also to educate them, to introduce them to the foundations of the Jewish faith. However, currently this procedure in Israel is so complicated that many immigrants simply do not dare to 'become Jews'.
The bill of Avigdor Lieberman's party (he himself, by the way, is a native of Moldova), according to the authors' intention, was to make giyur accessible to any Israeli. The essence of the legislative initiative is to transfer giyur from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Rabbinical Court to the competence of city rabbis, which would significantly reduce the bureaucratic pressure on candidates for conversion.
However, religious parties supplemented the bill with their own amendments, as a result of which, if approved by parliament, according to experts, it will only complicate the giyur procedure, since it will completely fall into the hands of Jewish ultra-Orthodox.