Israel doesn't want Israeli's to marry American Jews?

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A very poor idea. There is a question of commitment and loyalty here.

Would you replace retiring police officers with people who had been convicted of committing violent crimes?

ruveyn

Judaism's a racist religion at its core. Only the Hasidic/Orthodox population is concerned with that part of it in modern times, though. I doubt most Jews will even care about this news.

Most, probably not, but there is a population within the Jewish community that will state they have more of an allegiance to Netanyahu than Obama, especially in New York. This is who the message is meant for.

I wouldn't be so sure that Hasidic Jews would be too moved by the ads as many of them are against the state of Israel until the Messiah appears, I believe.

That is correct. The Orthodox barely tolerate the State of Israel and only because it is a fact on the ground.

Just a note. Of the Orthodox (rigorously observant Jews) less that 40 percent are Hassidim.

ruveyn

Yes, they really meant it.



They are not trying to appeal to any jewish guilt. Here is the back story. Though they are often perceived in such a way, jews as a unified collective group does not exist. There are large chasms between different types of jews

One of these chasms, is the American jew/Israeli jew chasm. Ironically, most American jews are not aware this exists. Indeed, the first time I ever heard of this was from an Israeli who like to boastfully point out the differences between American jews and Israeli jews, and this was a secular Israeli jew.

That Israeli jews should not marry American jews was likely something declared from the more religious segment of Israeli society, perhaps from the head rabbis at the Israeli Office of Religious Affairs. Though orthodox jews only make up a small percentage of the Israeli population, they wield a large degree of power as there are many aspects of Israeli society that they legally preside over.

One such aspect is that of marriage. The current law of return allows anyone with jewish heritage, whether they be jewish (by conversion* or by having a jewish mother) can immigrant to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship. However Israeli has an officially recognized jewish status which is marked on a person's official papers. Within the state of Israel, only official jews can marry official jews. Any official jew seeking to marry someone who is not an official jew must be married outside of the country. It is the head rabbinate at the office of religious affairs who ultimately decides who is an official jew.

You must understand that the individuals who occupy this office are typically 4th, 5th, 6th, generation haredi (very orthodox) jews and believe their brand of judaism is the only true one. In fact they occasionally even deem other branches of orthodox judaism to be inferior or flawed in some way, and we will come back to that in a moment.

In rabbinical judaism, a person is considered jewish if they had a mother who was also considered jewish, or they converted. When a person immigrates to Israel, to get official jew status, they must provide proof they are jewish by the above definition.

This entails providing names of synagogues and rabbis (who will be contacted and questioned about you, the synagogue, and the religious practices of both) and records such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc or you get a trusted officially jewish Israeli to vouch for you.

If you happen to come from a secular family, with few religious ties, you are probably out of luck. If you happen to attend a reform or reconstructionist synagogue, you are probably out of luck. If you are a convert, you are almost certainly out of luck unless you want to re-convert by an approved rabbi.

Now concerning what I had previously said we will come back to. Previously, the head rabbinate at the office of religious affairs in Israel would only recognize a convert as jewish if they could confirm their conversion was in accordance with jewish law, meaning that all of the witnesses on the beit din (court the person goes before) were observant jews and observed dietary laws and all of the mitzvahs, the person was properly circumsized if male, the person attended a mikveh and remained observant themselves, etc.

This means most individuals who converted through an orthodox synagogue would be given official jew status. However a few years back the office declared that it would only recognize conversions done by certain rabbis and if an individual's rabbi was not on the list of rabbis the office released, their conversion was not considered valid. For the person to be considered an official jew in the state of Israel, they would have to reconvert, a two year long process, and maintain a level of observance, and practice the brand of judaism of the haredi jews. Not only that, the person risked having their second conversion nullified at any perceived transgression of jewish faith.

This created a large backlash as it effectively nullified the conversion of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of converts, at least with respect to Israel and I'm not sure if it was ever reversed.

Back to Israeli jews marrying American jews. The Israeli rabbinate views the jewish status of American jews as untrustworthy because American jews have a 40% intermarriage rate and tend to be largely secular or members of more liberal branches of judaism, which recognize paternal decent in some instances where the child was raised jewish. The philosophical views of many of the orthodox branches of judaism is that a jew is someone who posses a jewish soul and this is inherited from the mother or enters into the person at the time of conversion (this is NOT in the torah). They believe this jewish soul obliges them to follow 113 rules called mitvahs. So this is the orthodox concept of being "chosen". They view it as an obligation rather than something that places them above others in the eyes of God. They also believe that non-jews are only obliged to follow something like 7 of these mitvahs, which are called the Noahide laws.

They fear that if an official jewish man marries a woman who they do not believe to have a jewish soul, the children will not have jewish souls and the people with whom God made a covenant and who are tasked with following his laws "as a pillar to the nations" will disappear.

Keep in mind most jews know nothing about any of this. You will primarily find these philosophies amongst the orthodox branches. It should be understood that they are not anti-gentile though they frown on close mixing of jews and non-jews Some of the American orthodox jewish congregations actually host services for noahide individuals, also known as "righteous gentiles", and of course, a person may always convert though orthodox branches don't encourage this because of their view of being jewish as having more obligations. They don't understand why someone would want to take on more when they don't have to.

However as I previously said, converting at even an orthodox American synagogue does not ensure the Israeli rabbinate will recognize the conversion.

Lots of reasons. But yes, for some Israelis there are costs to living next to neighboring countries all of whom have populations that profess to want to kill them.