Employees of Israel's Conversion Authority Threaten To Strike

Yesterday's Jerusalem Post reports that administrative employees in the government's Conversion Authority are taking steps to authorize a strike over the chaotic working conditions that prevail in the agency. Disputes between two rabbinic factions in the Authority have slowed down the work of the agency which is responsible for performing conversions of Israelis who wish to become Jewish. Some 50 new Ethiopian immigrants who are candidates for conversion staged a protest march on Sunday to call attention to the unresponsiveness and the bureaucratic hurdles they are encountering. (Jerusalem Post.) There are also thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, but who are not Jewish under halacha (Jewish law). Many of them are also awaiting conversion.