YNet Dozens of Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators residing in Israel illegally have requested to convert to Judaism in the past year in a bid to receive a residence permit and perhaps even an Israeli citizenship, Ynet has learned.
Their requests were rejected out of hand by the Conversion Authority for failing to meet preconditions.
According to figures compiled by the Ministry of Religious of Services, dozens of Africans tried to begin a conversion process, and most requests were made when the infiltrators' problem was at the center of the public and media's attention. [...]
According to Jeselsohn, until a few years ago there were no precondition for conversion, so that "everyone who was deported or banned entry to Israel would immediately knock on the door, and we had to summon them for an interview and start a process.
"This has been stopped," he added, and now foreign nationals are required to fill out a form requesting a conversion, which is discussed together with Justice Ministry representatives. If the request is filed by an illegal resident, it will be denied immediately.
Yet religious sources have expressed their fear that the state will regularize the status of African infiltrators in the future and allow them to reside in Israel. In such a case, they will have the legal right to convert, despite the fact that they have no halachic affiliation to the Jewish people.
"The stories we hear from the religious courts, that they allegedly abuse converts, will pale in comparison to what we are expected to see with the Africans," a Conversion Authority source told Ynet.
"Today we are still talking about immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who in the worst case are assimilators of Jewish descent, and so we are still lenient with them. But here we are talking about tens of thousands who want to assimilate into us and have no connection to Judaism." [...]
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