Yes, it’s pretty complicated.

Why did Mr. Nissim end up with such an intricate set of suggestions? Because he tried to make his proposals acceptable to as many Jews as possible. He wanted to give everybody — the Orthodox, the secular politicians, the Jews in the diaspora — a little something. That, he may have thought, would maintain some unity among the Jewish people. As if Jews can be united by having smart lawyers sitting for a long enough time and issuing long enough reports on what makes a Jew a Jew.

But here’s why that’s a difficult task: The boundaries of Jewishness are no longer agreed upon. Secular Jews do not accept religious definitions. Religious Jews accept only religious definitions, but they also have their own rivalries. Jews outside of Israel do not want Israel to determine who is Jewish. Israeli Jews do not want to be bound by diaspora sensitivities.

If it’s not possible to reconcile these competing priorities, what should Israel do? I believe it should consider forging a new path.

The Jewish state has already changed the course of Jewish culture and identity in myriad ways. It can change it once again by redefining conversion. To do this, it should secularize conversion. Cast aside the priorities of religious leaders in determining the boundaries of Jewishness and establish the authority of the state and its political leaders to make such determinations.

This would be a regime change. Rabbis out, political leaders in. And it would most likely ruffle some feathers. But in the long run it would also solve a lot of problems. Political leaders can do what rabbis cannot do. For example, a political body that decides on conversions could rule that serving in the Israel Defense Forces counts when a person wishes to become Jewish.

Naturally, should how Israel recognizes conversions change, it would not be to something completely unfamiliar. Tradition and religious sensitivities would still play a big role in the process. And yet, the mind-set would be different. It would be the mind-set of a people. The mind-set of Jews who begin to culturally adapt to having a nation-state. That’s why serving in the Israeli Army would be considered a show of seriousness about wanting to join the Jewish people.

Yes, a least initially, this would fracture Jewish unity. Many religious Jews would not at first accept such conversions and would continue to insist on using their own criteria. Many Jews in the diaspora would not initially accept such conversions, either, since they would argue that Israel has no authority to unilaterally alter the boundaries of Jewishness.

But there would also be advantages: The Jewish people, as they gradually adapted to this new path, would no longer be held hostage to an irrelevant interpretation of Judaism that is the result of a world without a Jewish state. The Jewish people as they debate this new path will get a process of conversion to the Jewish people, not to a version of a Jewish religion that most of them do not practice.