Who Is a Jew | Martin Vesole

“Israel Has Betrayed the Jewish People”

Israel has betrayed a large segment of the Jewish people, Ephraim Halevy a former Mossad chief and a past head of the National Security Council said on March 19, 2018, at a session of the World Jewish Congress at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

Halevy, who was closely involved in bringing Soviet and Ethiopian Jews to Israel, spoke at a breakfast session titled “Israel-Diaspora relations 70 years-on,” hosted by the WJC and its subsidiary, the Israel Council on Foreign Relations (ICFR).

“Israel betrayed them by taking strict rules of conversion, which had not been used when Ezra and Nehemiah came back from Babylon with children whose mothers were not Jewish,” he said.

No one asked the people who came from Auschwitz and Majdanek for documents that proved their Jewishness, Halevy said. “Hitler was sufficient proof that they were Jews.”

Referring to Russian immigrants and others – many of whom have served in the army, some losing their lives in the process – he said the government and the Knesset cannot turn their backs on such people on the basis of Jewish identity.

—The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 21, 2018

Proof of Jewish Identity

In an article in the Jerusalem Post [January 12, 2012, “Removing Stumbling Blocks to Jewish Identity], author Reuven Hammer criticized the Israeli Chief Rabbinate for making it harder than it is supposed to be to prove you are Jewish:

“In 2010 the Israeli Chief Rabbinate decided to require documents proving the Jewishness of one’s mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and greatgreat- grandmother when applying for marriage. Needless to say this is a near impossibility for most people. Is this really Jewish law? Read more »