Delay of gov’t circumcision tender puts 100 convert prospects on hold
About 100 converts, including soldiers and immigrants, are stuck in “torture,” unable to finish their conversion to Judaism because of delays in the awarding of tenders for circumcision, the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs was told Wednesday.
Only seven medical circumcisions have been performed since last April, according to data presented to the committee. Of the 100 converts in religious limbo, 55 are members of the Ethiopian community, and 10 of the waiting converts are enlisted or reservist soldiers, said Lt.-Col. Kobi Gridish, an officer of the IDF Conversion Court.
“Of those waiting, eight people will have circumcisions during March,” he said at the committee meeting. “We will help enlisted and reservist soldiers get circumcisions and are working in full cooperation with the Conversion Authority.”
Committee chairman Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) attributed the problem to the publication of tenders for the expensive medical procedure,
which is only expected in two months. A committee representative said due to the price differential between private and government medical facility
costs, government hospitals were refusing to perform the procedure at a low cost. A circumcision at a governmental medical center was estimated
to be about NIS 3,000 per procedure, while in the private sector, it could cost as much as NIS 10,000.
Forer said the state should
provide a temporary solution.
“If the State of Israel fails to bring immediate solutions for circumcisions for converts, the entire conversion process should be transferred to private hands,” he said. “No government office is taking responsibility for this failure, and without a minister taking up the issue, the conversion crisis will not end.”
Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern said he could not understand how the Conversion Authority director “succeeds in sleeping at night when 100 people are waiting for circumcisions to finish the conversion process.”
Earlier in the day, the Conversion Authority, which is under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office, said it had received permission from the Tenders Committee to advance the tender’s issuance.
Yisrael Vanachutzker, a senior official at the Conversion Authority, said the authority was in the final stages before the publication of the tender, and that until the process was complete, converts should file Form 17 with the Health Ministry.
The Prime Minister’s Office had explored all options, but advancing the tender was the only move forward, he said, adding that it was waiting for the tender budget from the Finance Ministry.
Doria Ganot, a representative of the Finance Ministry’s budget department, said no one wanted the budget for financing circumcisions to cause a delay in the tender’s publication, and the ministry would do everything possible to hasten the process.
“As far as we’re concerned, the tender can be released immediately,” he said.
Rabbi Shaul Farber, head of ITIM: Resources and Advocacy for Jewish Life, criticized the stalling of circumcisions.
“I don’t know how a government body allows itself to torture converts interested in joining the Jewish people,” he said. “We need to put all the relevant ministers together in a room so that we can create a solution to the issue as soon as possible.”
Forer called for a follow-up hearing as soon as possible. The Prime Minister’s Office director-general and legal adviser, together with a representative of the Justice Ministry, should be invited, he said.
Ritual circumcisions, the removal of a man’s foreskin, are an essential part of the induction into the Jewish people. Most Jewish babies have their foreskins removed in a ceremony eight days after birth.