Unauthorized translation of original article that can be found here

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/verden/1.7231258

(Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation)

A place where I am inferior

What do you do when Israel says that you are Jewish, while the rabbis claim you aren’t? And what is it like to be a goy in Israel?

SIDSEL WOLD   sidsel.wold@nrk.no

Posted 31/07/2010 1:35 p.m..

Letters are posted weekly from Middle East correspondent Sidsel Wold.

As I arrived at Ben Gurion airport this week after my vacation in Norway, I sensed again the slightly heavy feeling I often get here.

I'm in a place where I am worth less. Because in Israel, I'm a goy, a non-Jew, I’m not kosher.

Israelis tend to assume that I am one of them since I have dark hair and know Israel very well. When people venture to ask if I am a Jew, I see the disappointment in their eyes when I reply:

- No, I'm not.

- As if my money is not good enough

Some years ago I searched for an apartment in Jerusalem. I went to look at a place in West Jerusalem, an Israeli showed me the apartment.

- Are you Jewish? he asked.

- No, I said.

- Aaah, that might be a problem. The owner would rather rent to Jews, the man explained.

I felt offended and thought that if my money is not good enough, so be it. A few days later I called and said that I had found something else.

- That’s too bad, said the Israeli, because the owner agreed to rent to you anyway.

- Yes, but you wanted a Jew. I'm not Jewish, so I rented a place from a Palestinian in East Jerusalem, where I was more welcome, I said acerbically.

The taste of being worth less because I do not have the right skin color, ethnicity or religion, is nasty and unpleasant.

But I think it is important to know the feeling that millions of people live with every day - also in Norway.

And besides, the Jews have been discriminated against, persecuted and killed for centuries in Europe, so who are we Europeans to complain when we are in the Jewish state? Israel is not my country. I live here temporarily and strictly voluntarily.

Jews discuss who is a Jew

It is far worse for the 1.5 million Israeli citizens who are not Jews - Arabs, Druze and Bedouins - who lived here for several hundred years, and whom the brutal course of history put in the Jewish state 62 years ago.

But it turns out that Jews also discriminate against each other. This summer, the old debate over who is a Jew resurfaced, and with that the debate about who gets to decide.

Is it the Chief Rabbinate, or elected officials in the Knesset who can determine who is an authentic and who is a less-than-authentic Jew? And if it is the Rabbinate, do the Orthodox decide or only the Ultra-Orthodox?

According to the Rabbinate, a person is Jewish when he or she is born by a Jewish mother. Someone with only a Jewish father does not count. But according to the State of Israel, a person is Jewish when he or she is registered as a Jew in the Population Registry, which also includes people who have converted by a Reform or Conservative rabbi.

In Judaism, there are four main directions. The strictest form is the ultra-orthodox. Then follow the Orthodox, Conservative, and then the liberal Reformed [sic] direction.

In Orthodox synagogues, men and women sit separately, as they do in the Norwegian synagogue, while in Reform synagogues they sit together. And they may even have female rabbis. The Reform movement has its strongest position in the United States.

Neither fish nor fowl

But now Jews who have converted or married by a Reform or Conservative rabbi, are not kosher enough in Israel. Children of such marriages can face big problems when they marry, because they are not regarded as Jews, even though they live a completely Jewish life in Israel.

They have to go to Cyprus and marry there, since there is no option in Israel of a non-religious wedding.

In a sunglass shop last year I got to talking with the with the woman behind the counter. I could hear from her accent that she was born in the former Soviet Union.

- How do you like Israel? I asked.

- It is very difficult for me here, replied the young woman with long black hair.

- My mother is Ukrainian and my father is Jewish, so I'm neither fish nor fowl, not fully accepted. This despite the fact that our family was encouraged by Israeli authorities to make aliyah, yo immigrate to Israel.

She is an Israeli who is not accepted into the Jewish community she was invited to join.

Israel says yes, chief rabbi says no

The problem begins with "The Law of Return", the law gives every Jew the right to settle in Israel and to gain citizenship, which is to say, Zionism in practice.

When the rate of immigration fell in the 1970s, Prime Minister Golda Meir changed the law by expanding it. Children and grandchildren of Jews were now eligible to become Israeli. The goal was to match the rapid Palestinian population growth.

When the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years later over 1 million Russian-speaking people immigrated. One third of these were non-Jews.

The problem with the Law of Return is that the State of Israel welcomes you if you only have a Jewish father or grandfather. But not by the Chief Rabbinate, which determines the the most important lifecycle rituals.

As far as the rabbinate is concerned, the 340 000 the Russian-speaking non-Jewish immigrants are only Gentile.

The consequences are heartbreaking. They can neither celebrate their Bar Mitzva, marry in Israel or have a Jewish funeral at the end of life.

The Russians are good enough to be soldiers in the Israeli army, but if they sacrifice their lives for the Jewish state, they  will not be buried with their comrades in arms, but outside the soldier's graveyard.

To accomodate them, the Russian party Israel Beiteinu has proposed a new law for conversion. If the law passes reading in the Knesset, the Chief Rabbinate will coordinate conversions to make the process easier for the Russians.

But American Jews are strongly opposed the law because it does not recognize their more liberal rabbis. Which is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not support the law at present and has postponed further consideration of it for another six months.

Must show certificates from mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother

But not only people with a Jewish father or grandfather encounter problems in Israel these days. This summer it has become much more difficult even for people with a solid Jewish pedigree to get married.

In July the Chief Rabbinate in Israel decided that if someone who wants to be married can not produce a marriage certificate for their parents marriage certificate that is issued by a rabbi recognized by the Rabbinate, then they must submit to a thorough investigation by the Rabbinateæs courts to ascertain whether they are completely kosher, i.e., real Jews.

The new marriage law affects hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and many more in the U.S. and Europe.

One of them is American-born Hillary Rubin, who immigrated to Israel in 2006. Her uncle is a known Zionist leader, and all her four grandparents are Jews who survived the Nazi Holocaust.

Hillary Rubin wishes to marry, but the Rabbinate doubts her Jewishness. The letters she has from four Conservative rabbis in the United States are not accepted, and now the Chief Rabbinate requires that she supplies them with religious marriage papers, and also the birth or death certificates for the mother, grandmother, great grandmother and great-grandmother to prove that she is Jewish.

A distraught and upset Ruby told the newspaper Haaretz that the grandparents lost most of what they owned during the Holocaust.

- Besides, all my grandparents were persecuted because they were Jews, and here I am told that I'm not really Jewish? say 1929 year old who says she is furious with the state of Israel right now.

She fears that rabbinatet will declare her a non-Jew and that she can not marry in a recognized ceremony in Israel. Rubin and her boy friend plan regardless to fly to Cyprus to marry there in a civil ceremony.

Chief Rabbi of Norway Michael Melchior tells Haaretz that he receives many complaints from outraged couples who want to get married - including from a woman who also has four Jewish grandparents:

- Nobody has ever doubted that she is Jewish, "said Melchior, but she can not document this in a way the Chief Rabbinate accepts.

They do not accept the letter from the Scandinavian Rabbinate, even one issued by a very orthodox rabbi. The rabbinate says that the woman must produce birth and death certificates for parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

Melchior understand that rabbis must have some kind of documentation, but the birth and death certificates going back three generations?

- I know noone who has that, "Melchior said.

Very few have such documents. In no small part because such papers were lost during the Nazi era, and during pogroms, revolutions and turmoil in Czarist Russia.

If the documents are not produced, Jews may be asked to convert to Judaism.

The new marriage rules and the controversy about the new conversion law increases the distance between the Jewish diaspora and the Jewish state. Of the American Jews only a small number are Orthodox, and the majority - who are Conservative and Liberal [sic] - feel that they are no longer kosher enough for Israel. The Reform movement has launched a campaign against the new conversion law and the new marriage procedures.

Clinton marries Jewish Mezvinsky

Today, Chelsea Clinton will marry Jewish Marc Mezvinsky, which of course gets coverage in the Israeli tabloids. Will Chelsea convert to Judaism? the Israelis ask themselves.

Even though she is the daughter of one of America's most powerful families, she is not kosher. She can not bear Jewish children. For when she marries into the Jewish tribe, it should be a commitment, many here are likely to believe.

For those of us who are not part of the Israeli-Jewish society, this elitist debate about who are real Jews and who does not reach the level, strange. At a time when Europeans are talking about integration, and work for tolerance and against segregation, it is strange to follow the debate here, where ethnicity and religion is used to separate people and put them in boxes and on shelves - high and low.

Not least in the U.S. - where the melting pot and integration is the foundation of the nation's success - this must be a strange discussion to listen to. In a time where people often marry across cultures.

The big - and perhaps tragic paradox - is that the law of return is based on the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Anyone who risked being persecuted and killed by the Nazis was supposed to come Israel, the safe haven for Jews.

But the most Orthodox guardians of the Jewish faith are putting an end to the safeguard the law was meant to be.