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Zion failed: this is how Israel loses the fight for conversion Israel today

2022-11-28T15:10:20.038Z


A report by the Knesset Research Institute reveals that in the state conversion system as well as in the military there has been a significant decrease in the number of converts • At the same time, there is a constant increase in the number of non-Jewish immigrants to Israel • "There is a trend of a decrease in the number of converts over the years", the researchers wrote • These are the alarming figures


The struggle to preserve the Jewish character of the State of Israel has been at the door of the decision makers for many years, but without a real solution.

Each government declares that it will solve the problem, either by changing the conversion law, as former Minister of Religion Matan Kahana tried to do, or by canceling the grandson clause in the Law of Return, as the incoming government is seeking to do.

But while the governments falter, the data proves that the State of Israel is losing the battle.

While tens of thousands of non-Jewish immigrants enter Israel, only very few undergo conversion.

In the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics published in the report of the Knesset Research Institute, it appears that there is a consistent decrease in the rate of converts both in the conversion courts and among IDF converts.

Matan Kahana.

Tried to change the conversion law, photo: Oren Ben Hakon

Thus, while in 2022 740 converts from the countries of the Soviet Union were registered in the state courts and in 2005, 2007 and 2010 their number crossed the thousand converts per year, in 2020 and 2021 only slightly more than 500 converts were registered each year (228 and -536 respectively).

IDF converts also suffered a difficult blow. In 2008, the first year for which there are data, 722 young people from the countries of the Soviet Union converted to the IDF, but this number has been dropping consistently since then.

In 2020, only 174 young people converted, while in 2021, 155 soldiers converted.

It also turns out that a great many of those who opened a conversion file in the IDF did not complete the process. In 2008, 1,041 soldiers and female soldiers registered for conversion, and in 2021, 433 soldiers and female soldiers began the process.

Smotrich.

Will he initiate the change in the Law of Return?, Photo: Dodi Vaaknin

In total, a total of 22,972 immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union were converted in all the official conversion systems of the State of Israel from 1999 to 2021, out of a total of 223,506 immigrants in total, about ten percent only.

"Although in 2008 the government adopted a policy that intended to double the number of converts per year, the data on immigrant converts from the former Soviet Union do not show such a trend, but rather the opposite trend - of a decrease in the number of converts over the years," writes the Knesset's Research and Information Center.

These figures add to a worrying trend in which more and more of the immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union are not Jewish, meaning that more non-Jews are entering Israel while the conversion system is unable to withstand the burst and convert more.

Within 30 years, from the great increase of the early 1990s to the present day, the number of Jews among the immigrants dropped from 93 percent in 1990 to only 28 percent in 2020.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-11-28

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