… The state rabbinate and rabbinic courts are ever more skeptical of the Jewishness of Jews in the Jewish state, and have arrogated to themselves new investigative powers. In doing so, they’re not just violating individual’s civil rights and alienating people from Judaism. They are also making a radical break with halakhah, or Jewish religious law.

… Years ago, the “Who’s a Jew” dispute in Israel was over conversions. But in the 1990s, as immigrants poured in from the former Soviet Union, the rabbinate grew more suspicious of people who said they were born Jewish. In 2010, it issued instructions that anyone whose parents hadn’t married in Israel must prove his or her Jewishness before a rabbinic court in order to marry.

… The best way to help Judaism flourish in Israel would be to free it from the rabbinate – at the very least, by ending its monopoly on Jewish marriage.