Top rabbinical court overturns cases of DNA testing for Jewish status
The Supreme Rabbinical Court has overruled two lower courts in recent months to stop DNA tests being used to clarify a person’s Jewish status.
Despite the increased frequency of the practice, the DNA tests are controversial since they cannot definitively prove Jewish status but only act as an aid. Some rabbinical courts, however, have refused to register individuals for marriage who refuse to submit to such tests.
The use of DNA tests as proof of Jewish status has been contested by the ITIM religious services group, which appealed both cases to the Supreme Rabbinical Court. The practice has also provoked reaction from Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, who labeled their use – principally against citizens from the former Soviet Union – as discriminatory.
In one recent case, Oleg, an Israeli citizen who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, got engaged and applied for a marriage license.
His local rabbinate required a Jewish status clarification process that included using an investigator to check Soviet-era documentation and interview Oleg’s grandparents, among other methods.
Based on documents that indicated his great-grandparents were married for eight years before his grandmother was born, the investigator speculated that Oleg’s grandmother might have been adopted, raising the possibility that Oleg was not Jewish.
The court ruled that it could only certify Oleg was Jewish if his grandmother and great-grandmother undertook DNA tests, despite his great-grandmother having died. The court determined that without the DNA tests, Oleg would be put on a rabbinate “blacklist,” preventing him from getting married.
As a result of the ruling, at least seven other members of Oleg’s family had their Jewish status formally blacklisted, since it was not just his Jewish status but that of his grandmother that had been put in question.
In a second case, Iris, also originally from the Soviet Union, married in 1996 through the Chief Rabbinate, implicitly approving her Jewish status at the time by granting her a marriage license.
She and her husband subsequently divorced, however, and her ex-husband claimed during rabbinical court proceedings that Iris was not Jewish.
The court then cast aspersions on Iris’s Jewish status and questioned whether she too had been adopted, and required her to take a DNA test to prove a biological connection to her mother in order to preserve her Jewish status.
Because of the ruling, the Jewish status of Iris’s two children was also threatened.
ITIM appealed both cases to the Supreme Rabbinical Court, which overturned the lower court ruling in Oleg’s case last week, and the decision against Iris earlier this year.
“ITIM’s successful appeals on their behalf are important steps in the struggle against the religious establishment’s overreaching authority and discrimination against citizens from the former Soviet Union,” said ITIM director Rabbi Seth Farber. “We will continue to challenge cases like these until the state puts an end to the use of dubious DNA tests, which represent a scientifically flawed and Jewishly misguided approach to proving Jewish identity.”
ITIM is dealing with at least 15 such cases, all of which involve citizens from the former Soviet Union. The rulings against Oleg and Iris were the first to be overturned by the higher court.
Liberman wrote on Facebook that he was pleased with the Supreme Rabbinical Court’s rulings against the lower courts, and said a High Court petition against the practice had helped change the approach of the Chief Rabbinate.
Liberman added, however, that since the Supreme Rabbinical Court has not in principle rejected the use of DNA tests to prove Jewish status, he would insist in a future coalition agreement for a law to prevent their use.