Supreme Court on conversion could hand Haredi parties an easy electoral campaign

The Supreme Court rejected the government request to delay a decision on the Conversion Bill until after the elections, to give the 24th Knesset a chance to finally legislate the matter. The Court indicated it will give its decision prior to the upcoming elections.

The Conversion Bill is controversial and worrying to some. It is a decision to be made by the Supreme Court (due to lack of legislation) regarding the application of the Law of Return to people who converted to Judaism through non-Orthodox channels.

This issue has been bouncing between the government and the courts for 15 years already. "Who is a Jew" has held the status quo of only Orthodox conversions for a long time now, and nobody knows if the Supreme Court will abandon that status quo and order recognition of non-Orthodox conversions or if they will uphold it. 

I think the Haredi parties are in a pretty good position in these elections. Their campaign is being handed to them ion a silver platter. They are going to have this easy campaign on defending Judaism against those who would harm it. They have the issues of the Draft Law, the Conversion Bill, the government shutting shuls and yeshivas (due to Corona) - which they might not want to use, Shabbos observance in the public sphere, and others.

Such a campaign might only draw small numbers of people form other sectors who want to defend Judaism against this attack, but it will almost definitely rally the Haredi community to vote for the Haredi parties. Polls show that some increasing percentage of Haredim are looking to other parties, but a good campaign on these issues could easily draw many of them back.

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