Shapiro Jerusalem Post 13-Jan-1998 Infants adopted abroad by Israeli families

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Shapiro Jerusalem Post 13-Jan-1998 Infants adopted abroad by Israeli families

Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.co.il/News/Article-5.html
Tuesday, January 13, 1998 16 Tevet 5758

Panel: Parents of converted adoptees need not be observant

By HAIM SHAPIRO

JERUSALEM (January 13) - The Druckman Committee, appointed to seek a solution for the problem of the conversion of infants adopted abroad by Israeli families, presented its conclusions yesterday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The committee recommended that the infants be converted by a special rabbinical court, which would not demand that the parents become observant or that the children be sent to religious schools. The committee, chaired by former National Religious Party MK Rabbi Haim Druckman, included Na'amat chairwoman Ofra Friedman and Rabbi Eli Ben-Dehan, the director of the rabbinical courts.

The committee is to remain in existence for five years to oversee the implementation of its conclusions.

Friedman said that the committee had also decided that the Interior Ministry should immediately stop the practice of identifying the children as converts and that it had recommended against voiding any conversion that had been performed to date.

She said that these solutions would ease the plight of adoptive parents, who had been unable to convert their children in Orthodox rabbinical courts, on the one hand, and who had not been able to register as Jews children converted by a Conservative rabbinical court, on the other.

She said that she continued to support the recognition as Jews of all those converted by non-Orthodox, as well as Orthodox rabbis, but that this battle should not be fought on the backs of infants.

US Orthodox group campaigns for conversion bill, Page 4

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