One
of the problems of states based on race is that you have to draw the line
somewhere.  If not then just about
anybody could belong to the herrenvolk. 
And when membership of the master-race involves the acquisition of
privileges it is particularly important to accurately define who is and who is
not a member of said group.

This
is Israel’s dilemma.  Israel is a
self-proclaimed Jewish state, which in practice means that Jews in Israel are
privileged in a way in which, if the situation were reversed in non-Jewish countries,
there would be loud and persistent cries of anti-Semitism and quite rightly.

In Israel
there are two classes of Jews.  Those who
are admitted to Israel under the Law of Return, which defines who is a Jew very
widely.  Like the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany
you are Jewish if you have a Jewish grandparent or if you are married to
someone who is Jewish or you are the child of parents, only one of whom is Jewish.  But if you want to get married, divorce or
die then you have to be the child of a Jewish mother.  A Jewish father is simply not good enough
because it is the woman who gives birth and if that woman isn’t Jewish then
neither is the child Jewish.

Of
course it creates certain problems such as the fact that hundreds of thousand
of Jews cannot now marry in Israel. 

Sad
isn’t it?

Prohibitions
on civil and non-Orthodox weddings in Israel prevent 660,000 Jewish-Israelis —
including 364,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union — from marrying in
the Jewish state, according to a nonprofit promoting religious freedom in
Israel.

Hiddush
presented the information in a report Monday to a Knesset conference on
“alternatives to marriage through the [Chief] Rabbinate,” according to a news
release the group issued Monday. It also reported that 20 percent of weddings
registered in Israel took place overseas — a way of circumventing the
prohibition on non-Orthodox weddings stateside — and that 70 percent of secular
Israelis say they would have non-Orthodox wedding ceremonies if the state
permitted them.

The
nonprofit attributed its statistics to opinion polls and Israel Central Bureau
of Statistics data.

Rabbi
Uri Regev, who heads Hiddush, told the Knesset conference that growing numbers
of Israelis “wish to be free of the Rabbinate’s shackles” and that the
“monopoly of the Rabbinate” hurts Judaism because it “leads the general public
to hate Judaism and identify it with dark, ugly extremism.”

In
addition to many immigrants, those unable to wed in Israel because civil and
non-Orthodox Jewish weddings performed there are not legally recognized include
284,000 gays and lesbians, 13,000 non-Orthodox converts to Judaism and various
others, according to Hiddush.

A
poll conducted for the group found that 64 percent of Jewish-Israelis supports
“official recognition of all types of marriage,” including same-sex
partnerships.

Hiddush
reported that only 45 countries in the world, most of them Muslim, have
marriage policies as restrictive as Israel’s.