Israeli citizen?

I have no idea what you’re trying to ask FIREman. Can you try to explain a little more please?

You’re saying, there was some ‘thing’ with common jews living in Israel, or do you mean Israeli people living abroad?

There is a fairly large and unfortunately growing problem with Jews, from anywhere making Aliyah (relocating, literally means stepping upwards) in Israel. The problem comes from the Ultra-orthodox and Orthodox Rabbinate making things very difficult for people to “prove” that they are Jewish. Please note that under Israeli Law, any Jew from anywhere in the world can relocate to and become a citizen of Israel.
But you now have the Rabbinates becoming the official authorities or judges as to the validity of your heritage.
For example they are very tough on people converted to Judaism by Reform and Conservative Rabbis in the US, Canada and the UK.
They will also try to be certain of your lineage by asking for copies of Ketuvot (marriage contracts, every Jewish bride is given a contract to protect her in case of divorce – it’s a long story too long to explain here). How do you find a piece of paper that is 100 years old? I have the contract for my mother’s parents who married in 1923 but until I got it from my sister it was sitting in a metal box. I got it into acid-free vinyl and hopefully it won’t deteriorate any further. We can’t find my mother’s ketuvot and my Dad must have had it but it was not in the apartment last December when he passed away.

We don’t get documentation like a baptismal certificate. We don’t get “bar mitzvah” documents.

About three weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a woman in Israel who needed someone to go to a cemetery in Allentown PA and photograph a headstone which would show the secular and the Hebrew names of her fiance’s great-aunt.
The fiance was born in Chicago and moved to Israel at some point and now six weeks before her wedding, her fiance who is certainly Jewish, had to start finding physical proof like death certificates, burial documents and whatever to prove himself a Jew.
I ended up finding the phone number of the President of the Cemetery Association and speaking to his wife to ask him to get this picture as quickly as possible.

They e-mailed it three or four days later and they got other documentation from Chicago but she is still “stressed” – she won’t elaborate – because the Rabbinate does not promise an answer and you wait for a decision, regardless of the wedding date and plans.

There is more about this and I am really not qualified to dig deeper into this with any knowledge or authority but if you are interested I have a cousin who can discuss this ad infinitum

SRM