The “Who Is a Jew” Bill and American Zionism – Part I
Friday, May 8, 2026 – כ״א אִיָּיר תשפ”ו
Two ‘Old-New’ stories are unfolding in Israel this week. One is a legislative move building on a continual discussion that has been weighing on the fundamental identity of the Jewish State since its inception. The other, a polemic, touches on the forever conversation between the Jews of Israel and the rest of the world. Together, they tell North American (and all Diaspora) Jews something they should not ignore: a significant and politically powerful segment of Israeli society is simultaneously trying to define them out of Judaism and berate them for not living in Israel. The contradiction is almost too neat.
But the stakes are real.
The Bill
MK Simcha Rothman (yes, the same Rothman who was the architect of the Judicial reform/overhaul) is seeking to revive an amendment to Israel’s Law of Return that would recognize only Orthodox conversion for the purpose of defining a person as Jewish. It is scheduled to come before the Ministerial Committee on Legislation this Sunday.
Israel’s Law of Return currently stipulates that a Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism. The proposed amendment would add the words “converted according to halacha (Jewish law),” giving the term “conversion” a stricter, narrower interpretation — one grounded exclusively in Orthodox Jewish law and judged legitimate only according to the most extreme ultra-Orthodox rabbinic authority.
The bill’s backers frame this as continuity and clarity. The explanatory notes describe the move as intended to “put an end to the ongoing dispute” and establish a State definition of Jewish identity “faithful to the heritage that preserved the identity of the Jewish people for thousands of years.” It sounds reasonable in the abstract until you consider who gets erased by it.
The overwhelming majority of North American Jews belong to liberal movements: Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, whose conversions this bill would render legally null in the eyes of the Israeli State. [For reference, the Israeli Supreme Court recognized Reform and Conservative conversions for the purposes of immigration and the Law of Return outside of Israel in 2005* and inside of Israel in 2021].
For Diaspora Jews who converted outside of Orthodoxy, or whose children or grandchildren did, this bill would mean something precise and painful: you are not Jewish enough for Israel. You may donate. You may lobby Congress on Israel’s behalf. You may send your children on Birthright. But if you want to exercise the Law of Return — the founding promise of Zionism that Jews anywhere in the world have a home — this bill would put that right in question for a substantial and majority portion of Diaspora Jewry.
This is not theoretical. It is a question of whether the State of Israel will legally recognize the Jewishness of millions of people who consider themselves Jews because they converted to Judaism, and whose communities have sustained Jewish life, Jewish culture, and Jewish memory for generations.
The Polemic
Into this already charged atmosphere came the journalist Hagai Segal. Many of the readers of this column may not be familiar with the National-Religious newspaper Makor Rishon (with no English translation) and thus may not have been privy to his Erev Yom Haatzmaut polemic in which he addressed American Jewry directly:
“Dear brothers, you are traitors. Traitors to us and traitors to yourselves.”
Then he delivered an ultimatum: immigrate to Israel en masse in the next five years, by Independence Day 2031, or else the Israeli Rabbinate should effectively excommunicate American Jews and no longer include them when considering what percentage of Jews live in the Land of Israel. He also called for shuttering the Jewish Agency for Israel, which sees as part of its mission to deepen connections between the global Jewish family, and ending its emissary program if American Jews don’t immigrate.
Segal argued that American Jews are traitors to the Zionist cause because they could have come to Israel by the millions but chose to remain in what he called “the disgrace of their willful exile.” He later retracted the word “traitor” but stood by the crux of his argument.
Hagai Segal is one of the most influential voices of Israel’s National-Religious Right. A former editor-in-chief of Makor Rishon, a founding figure of Arutz 7, a longtime resident of the settlement of Ofra, and the author of seven books. When he speaks, he is not a marginal figure throwing stones from the fringes. He is articulating, with considerable influence, a worldview that holds significant weight inside Religious Zionism, which I may point out is the ideological bloc that currently (together with the Haredim) anchors Israel’s governing coalition.
The Contradiction at the Heart of Both Stories
Here is what is so striking when you place these two developments side by side. The same political and religious camp that is pushing the “Who is a Jew” bill — which would strip legal Jewish status from the converts of non-Orthodox movements for purposes of making aliyah under Israel’s Right of Return — is also the camp from which Segal’s denunciation comes, accusing American Jews of betrayal for not moving to Israel. Think about what that combination actually says: Your Judaism isn’t valid. And you’re a traitor for not coming to live in the Jewish State.
As one pointed rebuttal noted, you cannot simultaneously construct a vast infrastructure designed to keep Jews thriving in the Diaspora and then call those same Jews traitors for living there. The same applies to the conversion bill. You cannot demand that American Jews immigrate to Israel and simultaneously legislate that the conversions performed in their communities — the communities whose rabbis officiated at their life-cycle events, whose institutions they built and sustained, whose Torah they studied — don’t count.
As one response in Makor Rishon itself noted, “no period in the history of our people has ended well once Jews started calling their brothers ‘traitors’ — they only led to darker periods.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, Israelis must remember that half of World Jewry lives in the Diaspora. And since the destruction of the First Temple, Jews have lived in the Diaspora continually, and so much of Judaism itself has grown in Diaspora communities, and the American Jewish Diaspora has been of major importance to the security and well-being of the State of Israel because of our influence in Washington, DC. So please spare us the traitor argument. (I will discuss the question of Aliyah in a subsequent column).
Why American Jews Should Be Alarmed
Some will argue that the bill is unlikely to pass, that it’s been blocked before and will be again, and that Segal is one columnist, not a policy platform. These are fair observations, and may be valid, but sadly miss the larger trajectory.
American Jews often experience Israel through curated interfaces, social media, organized missions, English-language media, lectures and talks of visiting Israelis and delegations, and, of course, through friends and family. Much of our engagement and investment flows through those same English-speaking frameworks rather than through the Hebrew-language ecosystem where Israelis are actually arguing with each other about identity, democracy, religion, power, and the Diaspora.
The result is that many American Jews are largely absent from — and unaware of — the conversations shaping Israeli political culture from the inside. We don’t always hear how Israelis are talking about us, thinking about us, and positioning us in their internal debates. Segal’s piece offered a rare window into that world, however unrepresentative it may be.
What Segal disclosed is not some marginal sentiment. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said it plainly: “In my community, there is contempt for Jews who do not come to Israel.” The proposed “Who is a Jew” legislation reflects the same worldview — that Israel’s Orthodox-nationalist leadership alone gets to define Jewish legitimacy, and that Diaspora Jews who don’t conform religiously or ideologically somehow don’t count, or count less.
This should matter to American Jews not only as an insult but as a practical threat. The Law of Return is not an abstraction. It is the legal anchor of the relationship between a democratic Israel and world Jewry. For many Diaspora Jews — especially those who have experienced antisemitism, or whose families carry memories of persecution — the existence of a Jewish state that would take them in has profound psychological and moral significance. To erode that through a conversion law that excludes the overwhelming majority of American Jewish denominations is to fundamentally alter what Israel means to Diaspora Jews.
Most American Jewish institutional leaders either did not see or ignored Segal’s piece. We cannot do the same when it comes to the “Who is a Jew” bill. And our response cannot be to issue threats or sever ties with Israel as the relationship is too important, the stakes in this historical moment too high, the shared fate too real. American Jews who care about Israel — and liberal and Zionist-aligned American Jews especially — need to engage loudly, persistently, and with fluent knowledge of what is actually being debated inside Israel’s political and religious culture. The alternative is to wake up one day and find that the State built as a refuge for all Jews has legislated a definition of Jewish identity that excludes them, promulgated by people who also called them traitors for not moving there.
That is the double bind being constructed in real time. Naming it is the beginning of resisting it.
Shabbat Shalom!
*In practice, Reform and Conservative conversions were recognized already in 1989, but the unequivocal statement by the Israeli Supreme Court came in 2005, after the State Attorney claimed that they would agree to recognize conversions performed overseas only if the convert was actively involved in that congregation/community.