The Unity Committee of the Jewish Agency has just completed its meeting for February.There is good news and bad news.
The bad news is that of the 10,000 olim from the FSU in 2005 over 70% are not halachic Jews.This figure is greater than the number of converts for the year from the Conversion Courts.Incidentally this is the first tim e in five years that the number of FSU olim to Israel has exceeded the number who went to Germany.
Secondly , the Reform leadership have filed now at least 11 Supreme Court cases in order to destabilize the efforts of the Prime Ministers Office and those working quietly to correct this major problem.
On the positive side much progress has been made in the past two years.Of the 1 million Russian olim, 300,000 are not halachic Jews .Of these close to a half are under age 35 and half of them are female.
In 2005 the budget for the Conversion process was 26 million shekel.A total of 7475 students are in classes preparing for conversion. 3300 soldiers have now completed the course, however because of unit assignments have not been officially converted.In 2006 , 2500 students will appear before the conversion courts.
In a few weeks I will analyze the works of the Jewish Agency.
