Israel’s two largest Orthodox political parties both released ads this week attacking Reform Jews.
One video featured pictures of dogs in kippahs with a voiceover saying “This is a Jew, and this is also a Jew. And this one? Obviously. His grandmother was a rabbi.”
Both ads were taking aim at a recent Israeli High Court decision that requires Israel to grant citizenship to those in the country who convert to Judaism under non-Orthodox auspices.
The dog ad, by the United Torah Judaism party, implied that the Reform movement’s standards are so lax that it would convert dogs to Judaism.
The other ad, by the Sephardi Orthodox Shas party, sought to play off of Israeli bigotry toward African asylum seekers.
Reacting to the High Court decision, one Shas lawmaker, Moshe Aboutboul, said “Blessed is the true judge,” the blessing Jews traditionally recite when hearing of a death.
Attacks on Reform Jews by Haredi, Israeli politicians are nothing new. A top priority of Haredi politicians in recent decades has been to preserve Orthodox conversions and prevent the government from recognizing the liberal Jewish denominations — Reform and Conservative — that represent most American Jews.
Haredi politicians have also attacked Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who is on track to be elected to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, as part of the Labor Party in the March 23 vote. Kariv would be the first Reform rabbi to enter the Knesset, and Haredi lawmakers have pledged to boycott him.
“Unbelievable,” the Haredi journalist Israel Cohen wrote on Twitter last week above a picture of Kariv installing a mezuzah at Labor headquarters. “In the Labor Party of old, they would bring Haredi rabbis to install a mezuzah. Now they bring Reform Jews. Sad.”
“Is the Reform movement a type of Judaism or a new religion?” the group posted on Facebook, advertising the conference. “[Is it] an embrace of distant brothers or a spiritual and national danger?”
On Tuesday, Haredi lawmaker Yitzhak Pindrus used the term “Shiksa” for women who convert under a conversion course in the Israeli military. The course is run according to Orthodox standards, though Haredi leaders have said it is insufficiently strict.
Some Israel advocates for separation of religion and state have condemned the Haredi attacks. Yair Lapid, who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, tweeted that the United Torah Judaism ad was “disgusting.”
“Anti-Semites throughout the generations always compared Jews and dogs,” Lapid wrote. “Now United Torah Judaism has joined them.”
Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline right-wing Orthodox lawmaker who once called Reform Judaism a “fake religion,” defended non-Orthodox Jews Tuesday in the wake of the ads. According to The Jerusalem Post, he said that while he will always have disputes with Conservative and Reform Jews, “I understand that we are brothers. We need to speak and have a dialogue and look for common ground.”
Smotrich said his change of heart came after a trip to the United States three years ago when he was exposed to Reform and Conservative communities.
“Suddenly an entire world of Diaspora Jewry that I was not familiar with was revealed to me,” he said. “I really understand that many things we do here in Israel have an impact on what happens overseas.”
