Should he become the next prime minister, Yair Lapid promises he would grant full recognition to the Jewish Reform and Conservative movements “my first week in government.”

“It is becoming that Israel is now the only country in the world in which there is no freedom of religion for Jews,” he said.

Lapid noted that when the government had campaigned against the Iranian nuclear deal in the U.S. Congress, it had enlisted the help of several Jewish congressmen who belong to the Reform movement. “And then the Israeli government tells them that their synagogues are not synagogues and that Reform Jews aren’t Jews.”