Isntreal considers question: 'Who is a Jew?'

Issue heads to higher court after rabbis annul some 40,000 conversions

JERUSALEM - Raised without religion in Maryland, Shannon sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel.

In a rigorous conversion process, she studied religious law for a year, took a Hebrew name and changed her wardrobe to long skirts and sleeves as dictated by Orthodox Jewish custom. Finally, a panel of rabbis pronounced her Jewish.

But five years later, she and some 40,000 like her have suddenly had their conversions annulled by Israel's Rabbinical High Court. The court says the rabbi who heads a government authority set up to oversee conversions is too liberal in approving them.

The issue, now headed to Israel's Supreme Court, has exposed an intensifying power struggle inside Israel's religious establishment over the age-old question of "who is a Jew." It also threatens to deepen the wedge between Israel and American Jews, who largely follow more liberal schools of Judaism.

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Isn't this yet more proof that Judaism isn't really a religion? Jews don't want converts because Jews know that Jewishness is an ethnic/racial thing, and not about faith, God, and holy texts. The only true Jew is a Jew born of a Jewish bitch. Isntreal: it's for the Jewish RACE and the Jewish RACE alone.