Since Israel was declared an independent Jewish state in 1948, conversion to Judaism is not only about the religion itself. Being a Jew—by choice or by birth—means you have the right to settle in Israel, to make an aliyah. But things are not that easy. Rabbis of various denominations do not always recognize each other’s converts. I’m no expert on this, but I understand that the subject is a constant cause for annoyance. (I will never forget the furious hour-long monologue one of my friends held on the subject after a service at the CBST in New York.)

Now things seem to be more complicated still. From the Jerusalem Post:

Last week, a panel of three haredi, non-Zionist rabbis belonging to the High Rabbinical Court, the state’s highest rabbinic institution, caused an upheaval in the Orthodox rabbinical world after publishing a caustically incriminating indictment of the head of Israel’s Conversion Authority, Rabbi Haim Druckman, who is a religious Zionist.

The haredi judges’ decision effectively annulled retroactively hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of conversions performed between 1999 and 2003 by Druckman.

I don’t know what—if any—consequences this will have for those converts that have made their aliyah, but I guess questioning their conversion is harmful enough.