JERUSALEM — Critics of Israel’s chief rabbinate have long complained that scores of American converts to Judaism have trouble getting approval to marry in Israel. Now, one such case with a celebrity connection could break open the rabbinate’s longstanding secrecy over which foreign rabbis are approved to conduct conversions.

The case involves an American who, shortly after her Orthodox conversion in New York, became engaged to an Israeli, only to have the local rabbinical court in his hometown reject her status as a Jew when they tried to register for marriage.

As it turns out, the rabbi who signed the woman's conversion certificate also converted Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and officiated at Ms. Trump’s 2009 wedding to Jared Kushner, the newspaper publisher now planning the presumptive Republican nominee’s potential transition to the White House.

The rabbi, Haskel Lookstein, is one of the most respected Orthodox rabbis in New York, where he has led Manhattan’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun for decades, after taking over the pulpit from his father. He recently received an honorary doctorate from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University in recognition for what it called “the influential role he has played in deepening Jewish values and heritage among American Jewry.”