The World - News from July 25, 1989

The Israeli Supreme Court reignited the “Who is a Jew” debate, ruling that people converted by non-Orthodox rabbis should be registered by the government as Jews. The ruling immediately sparked threats from Orthodox politicians to introduce conflicting legislation or order religious institutions to ignore it. In a separate decision, the court said that Reform rabbis, the least strict of three main wings of observant Judaism, could not perform weddings in Israel. The two decisions reopened a decades-long debate over who is to be considered Jewish, a source of conflict between Orthodox Jews who control Israeli religious institutions and Diaspora Jews who are mostly non-Orthodox.