Rabbi Avraham Stav, a rabbi in Yeshivat Har Etzion and the son of Rabbi David Stav, criticized media personality Yedidya Meir, who lashed out at the conversion program publicized by New Right chairman Naftali Bennett earlier this week.
"Good evening Yedidya," Rabbi Stav wrote. "In my humble opinion, what you wrote doesn't honor you or Naftali Bennett. Bennett's post presented a position that expressed the views of dozens of rabbis and many public leaders. His words were reasoned, albeit written in a summarized way due to the space limitations of his platform. It was actually your words that were full of irrelevant insults and superficial generalizations which distort his words without responding with a practical solution."
"As someone who is very fond of your program and that of your wife (media personality Sivan Rahav-Meir), as well as many of your columns, I'm sorry that on certain subjects you tend to be drawn into a very ineffective form of discourse."
Rabbi Stav was referring to the column published by Yedidya Meir in B'Sheva, in which Meir lashed out at Bennett over his proposal to loosen restrictions on conversion by allowing municipal rabbis to perform conversions.
Meir wrote: "For thousands of years, the leading authorities have been discussing the issue [of conversion]...and suddenly a politician who is trying to reinvent himself after failing in the elections announces in a Facebook post on a mass conversion project of half a million non-Jews. Because they also stand during the siren [i.e. are full-fledged Israelis] like you and me, so why shouldn't we intermarry with them? What a lack of seriousness, a lack of responsibility and a lack of awareness. Where is the pretense of writing in such a populist way about the sanctity of Israel?"
If he is elected to the Knesset, Bennett intends to present his proposed conversion legislation as a condition of the New Right party to join a future coalition.
According to Bennett, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are not considered Jews according to Jewish law and are unable to convert due to the strict conversion process. Bennett proposes allowing municipal rabbis to convert tens and even hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
"The time has come for open conversion instead of strict conversion," Bennett said. "If we continue to distance those who want to approach us, we will create damage for generations. There are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live as Jews, serve in IDF combat units, but aren't Jewish according to Jewish law and would be happy to convert through a welcoming rabbi."
"It's a time bomb that can be solved, but the haredi rabbinate is preventing a solution. It's time to show courage, face reality and bring about a sane solution," Bennett concluded.