Thanks to the rabbinate’s stranglehold on marriage, approximately one out of every eight Jewish Israeli couples each year choose to marry outside of Israel. (Cyprus is the typical destination of choice.) Tens of thousands more have forgone marriage altogether.

More than 425,000 immigrants to Israel — primarily from the former Soviet Union, where Judaism was outlawed for decades — are listed in the population registry as “no religion” because no one is willing to help them clarify their Jewish status. The rabbinate won’t perform weddings for them.

I know many of these disaffected Jewish Israelis personally. For more than a decade, I have been fighting to break the ultra-Orthodox monopoly over Jewish life in Israel. Through the organization I run, I help more than 5,000 families each year navigate state-administered matters of Jewish life, like marriage and conversion. I have the dubious distinction of being an Orthodox rabbi who has sued the chief rabbinate in Israel’s Supreme Court — six times.

At present, I am representing 27 people whose Jewishness has been revoked by the government. In each case, families that were in Israel for more than two decades (and who had actually been married through the rabbinate) were summoned to “unJew” themselves because a new immigrant relative of theirs was unable to present to the rabbinate adequate certification of Jewishness, which created a domino effect. Unbelievably, Israel’s two chief rabbis both wrote approbation letters in the last year for a book that supports DNA testing to prove Jewishness. This is the kind of creeping fundamentalism I’m trying to stop.

Many people are critical of my work. In some parts of the Orthodox Jewish community, I am accused of “going too far,” of undermining the Halakhah (traditional Jewish legal corpus) that stands at the cornerstone of my faith. In other circles, I am accused of being “too hard on Israel,” of airing the dirty laundry of a young state that has done so much for the Jewish people.

I am cognizant and grateful for all that Israel has done for the Jewish people and for democracy in a region that desperately needs it. But it is precisely because of this love for my country and my people that I am waging this battle. I am spurred to action when I see that the path Israel is taking — continuing to promote a singular, extreme brand of Judaism — threatens to undermine the support of Jews around the world and its role as a “light unto the nations.”

Israel should embrace the challenge and the honor of being a homeland for the whole Jewish people. If it does, the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Zion will be redeemed in justice, and those who return to her, with righteousness,” will be realized.

Rabbi Seth Farber is the founder of ITIM, an advocacy organization fighting for a more inclusive religious establishment in Israel.

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