1 They've opened the gate. The most important law in our books is the Law of Return, without which there is no unique significance to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The law defines as "Jewish" anyone with a Jewish mother or who has converted to Judaism and is not a member of any other religion. The law intentionally avoids any reference to the nature of the conversion, and therefore anyone who has converted according to one of the streams of Judaism is considered a Jew.
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Yet while someone who converted overseas and made aliyah to Israel is considered a Jew, those who made aliyah and decided to undergo a Reform or Conservative Jewish conversion in the country are not. The orthodoxy, which is fighting for control over all of us, raged at the High Court of Justice's decision to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions. It also swore to rescind "the evil of the decree" despite the decision it likely being able to solve the problem of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are interested in converting without cheating the system and are committed to ensuring their children receive an Orthodox education.
I hope to see the day when every person who considers themselves Jewish, and whose motives we have no reason to doubt, can be defined as such by the state. This won't be enough to obligate the rabbis to recognize their Jewishness, and should they want to be married in a non-civil wedding, they will still need to convert. However, the state of the Jewish people does not have the moral authority to reject those who seek to become part of the Jewish people in a non-Orthodox manner.
2 He was the West's great hope. For a moment in time, his father, Saudi King Salman was seen as an interim leader many predicted would make his son Mohammed bin Salman the crown prince. The assessment was that the role would be taken from his son Muhammad bin Nayef, the experienced and appreciated former crown prince, following the king's coronation in 2015. Indeed, two years later, King Salman deposed bin Nayef in favor of the 31-year-old bin Salman. Bin Salman also became deputy prime minister, defense minister, and chairman of Saudi Arabia's Council of Economic and Development Affairs.
The young man was welcomed as a head of state at the White House and other places. He appeared to be pragmatic, modern, attentive, and a genuine representative of modern Saudi Arabia. The world couldn't wait for his father the king to remove his crown and transfer it to his "liberal" son.
The Saudi crown prince won the world over when he rescinded the ban on women driving, but he later continued to arrest the men and women fighting for reforms, arrested the country's wealthy until they agreed to pay taxes, got his country involved in the terrible war in Yemen, and did other puzzling things, the most notorious of which was his involvement in the terrible murder of Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
America fumed, the world condemned the act, but then-US President Donald Trump defended the young leader.
Bin Salman had become completely dependent on Trump's whims and was worried US President Joe Biden, far more sensitive to the issue of human rights, would bring an end to his career. The fact that the new president didn't call the crown prince and made public his insistence on only speaking to his father the king sent a strong message. Just a few days ago, Biden revealed the findings of a US intelligence report his predecessor had preferred to conceal. Washington has now given its official approval to the assessment bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's killing.
It may very well be that in his conversation with the Saudi king, Biden insinuated he would be wise to replace his rash son with the man who was forced to kiss his feet and relinquish his role as crown prince four years prior. Will this be good for Israel? If it's good for our one true ally, then it will be good for us, too.
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