Why most recent immigrants to Israel aren’t considered Jewish
T. Belman. This is a huge problem and must be solved. Israel must consider an easier way to convert just as the Reform have done. It is very important that the children of these immigrants be deemed Jewish. Those who want to be Jewish according to Hareidi standards can convert according to their standards. The rest should have a lower standard for joining the Jewish people.

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau, second from left; Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, third from left; and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau at a special meeting of the Israeli Rabbinate Council at the Western Wall tunnels in Jerusalem’s Old City, May 24, 2017. (Shlomi Cohen/Flash90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — For the first time, Israel announced that Jewish immigrants to Israel were outnumbered by non-Jewish immigrants.
The headlines might suggest that Christians and perhaps Muslims have been moving to the Jewish state in significant numbers, but the truth is more complicated: According to numbers released Monday by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 17,700 of the 32,600 migrants who moved to Israel in 2018 came under the Law of Return but were listed as “having no religion.”
Such immigrants, hailing largely from the former Soviet Union and Baltic states, count Jewish ancestry but are ineligible to marry as Jews, for example, under the state-controlled rabbinic court system. In 2017, there were 11,400 such immigrants out of a migratory population of 29,100.
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