Attorney General Menachem Mazuz submitted his position to the High Court of Justice on Monday regarding an unusual petition from a United States citizen. The woman who filed the petition, a non-Jewish resident of the U.S. who was adopted, claims the right to make aliya (immigrate) under the “Right of Return,” which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to Jews and the children, spouses and grandchildren of Jews.
The plaintiff's initial aliya application was rejected by the Interior Ministry. Ministry officials argued that her legal parents and grandparents – the adoptive family – were not Jewish, and thus she was not entitled to citizenship.
Mazuz told the court that the woman's request should be granted despite the fact that she was adopted by a non-Jewish family because her biological father was Jewish. Adoption is not religious conversion, Mazuz told the court, and does not change “the adoptee's religion or his biological affiliation.”
Adoption changes the adoptee's relationship to one's parents, Mazuz continued. The Right of Return does not focus on that relationship, he explained, but rather on “a person's ties to his people, to the Jewish people.”
The legal implications of the opinion given in this particular case should not be extended to other adoption-related cases, Mazuz cautioned.
The High Court is expected to rule on the case in the next few days.