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After three years in Israel, Reform convert told she can’t make aliyah
(JTA) — When Isabella Vinci stepped out of the mikvah on Nov. 11, 2021, she thought she had done everything that would be required to become Jewish. A beit din, or rabbinic court, had approved her conversion after nearly a year of study with Rabbi Andrue Kahn at Temple Emanu-El, a Reform congregation in New York, including a congregational course and one-on-one meetings.
Within a year, she visited Israel on Birthright and returned on an immersion program to teach English in an Orthodox public school in Netanya. Friends, rabbis and colleagues, she said, embraced her as Jewish.
Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority did not.
In a pair of decisions issued in January and again last month, immigration officials rejected Vinci’s application for aliyah under the Law of Return and then denied her administrative appeal.
The letters point to two main problems: She studied for conversion online during the COVID period, and she did not prove sufficient post-conversion participation in a synagogue community — particularly while living in Israel.
Vinci, 31, had to leave behind the life she had built in Tel Aviv and move back to the United States. She is now preparing a court petition with the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal‐advocacy arm of Reform Judaism in Israel.
For decades, IRAC and other non-Orthodox advocacy groups have complained about attempts by religious parties in Israel to block the recognition of conversions outside of Orthodoxy. But Vinci’s advocates say she was blocked from citizenship despite a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 allowing overseas conversions, regardless of denomination.
Her rejection also reflects a gap between the Diaspora and Israel, they say, in everything from religious practice to the adaptations made necessary by the pandemic.
“The whole world — from rabbis to strangers who hear my story — tells me I am Jewish. They see that I am putting everything on the line to be a part of our people. The only ones telling me that I’m not Jewish are within this government agency,” Vinci said in an interview, describing months of silence and what she felt was the government’s unwillingness to consider new supporting documents. “Why aren’t they putting in the work and the effort to actually understand where I’m coming from?”
Vinci grew up Catholic in a sprawling, multicultural family, spending early years in Florida and most of her childhood in Omaha, Neb. She never felt rooted in the church and developed her own spirituality as a teen. Jewish relatives and friends were part of her orbit, and she felt increasingly drawn to the religion.
When she moved to New York as an adult, she decided to become a Jew, going through Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, one of the most prominent congregations of Reform Judaism.
Neither the immigration authority nor the Interior Ministry, which oversees it, responded to a request for comment.
But official responses Vinci received show that decisions in her case zero in on whether her path fits internal regulations drawn up in 2014 to vet conversions performed abroad. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that such conversions, regardless of denomination, must be recognized, leaving it to the ministry to set criteria.
Those rules anticipate in-person study anchored in a congregation; if the course is “outside” the congregation, they require a longer, 18-month track. In Vinci’s case, officials treated her 2020-2021 Zoom coursework as external and concluded she hadn’t met the time or community-involvement thresholds.
IRAC’s legal director for new immigrants, attorney Nicole Maor, appealed the initial rejection, sending in a detailed memo. Maor wrote that congregational classes conducted on Zoom during a pandemic should be considered congregational, rather than external. She argued that the criteria’s purpose is to prevent fictitious conversions — not to penalize sincere candidates who followed their synagogue’s rules during COVID.
“The entire purpose of the criteria is to protect against the abuse of the conversion process. A person who converted in 2021, came to Israel on a Masa program to contribute to Israel in 2022-2023, and stayed in Israel to work and support the country in its most difficult hour after Oct. 7 deserves better and more sympathetic treatment,” she wrote.
She also wrote that the ministry had ignored evidence of Vinci’s Jewish communal life in Israel, from school prayer with students to weekly Orthodox Shabbat meals with a host family.
As part of Vinci’s appeal packet, Kahn submitted a letter describing the cadence of Vinci’s studies: roughly five months in Temple Emanu-El’s Intro to Judaism course alongside his own one-on-one meetings beginning Dec. 21, 2020, and continuing “1-3 times a month for 2-3 hours” until her November 2021 conversion — about 11 months in total. He listed key books and practices he assigned and attested to her active participation in synagogue young-adult programming.
A host family in Netanya provided a letter saying Vinci spent “Shabbat with our family every weekend as well as most holidays,” describing a year of Orthodox observance in their home and an ongoing relationship since she moved to Tel Aviv after Masa. The school where she taught also wrote in support.
The ministry was unmoved.
In an interview, Maor, who handles a large caseload of prospective immigrants, said Vinci’s case is emblematic of a larger phenomenon.
“It’s not just bureaucracy,” Maor said. “There’s a recurring theme — a suspicious attitude at the ministry that has become worse in recent years and makes life much more difficult for converts.”
Vinci’s case sits at the fault line between Diaspora practice after COVID and Israeli bureaucracy. Around the world, Reform and Conservative congregations shifted classes, and in some communities, services, to Zoom. Many have retained hybrid models because they work for busy or far-flung learners.
“This reality has led to a widening gap between how Diaspora congregations operate and the demands of the Interior Ministry,” Maor said.
There is also a philosophical mismatch: For the ministry, involvement in the Jewish community post-conversion appears to mean synagogue membership and attendance logs. For non-Orthodox streams, Maor said, Jewish life can be expressed in multiple ways — home ritual, learning circles, social-justice work — especially in Israel, where Jewish rhythms permeate public life.
In Vinci’s Netanya year, that life included like daily school prayer, holidays with an observant host family, and teaching in a religious environment. Maor argues that should count.
Kahn, who says two of his other converts have made aliyah without incident, said he was saddened by Vinci’s rejection given her devotion and the hoops she jumped through to satisfy paperwork and timelines.
“It wasn’t like she was mucking around in Israel, she was really doing the work and legitimately devoted to being Jewish,” he said.
After losing her legal status and appeal, Vinci returned to the United States. She took a legal-assistant job in Kansas City and is scraping together fees to file a court petition.
Maor won’t predict the outcome, but she said often cases settle before a precedent is set. The state agrees to a compromise such as additional months of study, rather than risk a ruling that forces a policy shift.
Vinci hopes the case determines not only where she celebrates the next set of holidays, but also improves how Israel treats a growing cohort of would-be immigrants whose Jewish journeys began on a laptop during a once-in-a-century shutdown and amid rising antisemitism.
“I hope my story sheds light on inter-community love and acceptance,” she said. “In our current political and social climate, the best thing we can do is be united as one.”
The post After three years in Israel, Reform convert told she can’t make aliyah appeared first on The Forward.
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Tlaib Condemns Israel for Retaliatory Strikes Against Hamas After Staying Silent on Gaza Ceasefire
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 11, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most vocal opponents of Israel in the US Congress, has condemned the Jewish state for supposedly continuing a so-called “genocide” in Gaza after remaining silent on the recent ceasefire agreement between Jerusalem and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Tlaib lambasted Israel on X on Sunday, saying that the “apartheid regime” has continued “raining down” missiles on Gaza despite striking a ceasefire agreement days prior. She insinuated that Israel has used the ceasefire agreement as cover for carrying out a slaughter campaign against the Palestinian people and urged the US federal government to impose sanctions to the Jewish state.
“The genocidal apartheid regime is once again raining down bombs across Gaza and calling it a ‘ceasefire.’ They will never stop until there’s a total arms embargo and economic sanctions. The US must stop the genocide,” Tlaib posted.
On Sunday, Israel launched a wave of strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza after two Israelis soldiers were killed in a Palestinian attack.
Notably, Tlaib remained largely silent regarding the ceasefire and hostage-release deal to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that went into effect last week. Tlaib did not release a statement acknowledging the release of Israeli hostages on any of her official platforms.
Tlaib has also been a fierce critic of Israel’s war against the Hamas terrorist group, relentlessly accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza. Tlaib has also accused Israel of attempting “ethnic cleansing” and erecting an “apartheid” regime in Gaza and the West Bank.
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‘We Stand Together’: UK Professors Call Out Harassment of Jewish Colleague Who Served in IDF
Illustrative: London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Hundreds of professors on Tuesday signed a petition calling for the end of an antisemitic hate campaign aimed at driving a Jewish Israeli professor from his job at City St. George’s, University of London because he served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the 1980s.
The professor, Michael Ben-Gad, has been unrelentingly pursued by a pro-Hamas organization which calls itself City Action for Palestine, the petition says. It has subjected him to several forms of persecution, including social media agitprop, unlawful assembly at his place of work, and even a petition of their own.
“Regardless of diverse views on the recent Gaza war and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we deplore any campaign that seeks to intimidate and drive out lecturers because they are Israeli, Jewish, or members of any other group,” the professors’s petition says. “Academics and students have a right to go about their work at any university without facing harassment.”
It continues, “Attacks of this kind are intimidating, particularly to Jewish students, and set a precedent under which others could be targeted in the future. We wish to make clear to what appears to be a small, if very vocal, group that their mobbing tactics will not succeed. We stand together in support of Professor Ben-Gad and his personal and intellectual freedom as an academic.”
City Action for Palestine is one of London’s most notorious anti-Zionist groups, convulsing higher education campuses across the city with pro-Hamas demonstrations which demonize pro-Israel Jews, attack policies enacted to combat antisemitism, and amplify the propaganda of jihadist terror organizations. Ben-Gad is not its only victim, as the group has targeted Members of Parliament, the Union of Jewish Students, and City University London president Anthony Finkelstein, who is Jewish and the child of a Holocaust survivor.
Jews employed in higher education in Europe and America face an escalating climate of hate and intimidation.
Around the globe, in Alameda County, California, a professor is suing the University of California, Berkeley, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim the university’s own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation. According to court documents, a hiring official allegedly concluded that an Israeli professor working in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies would be unpalatable to students and faculty after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Dr. Yael Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation into Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance.
At George Washington University, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) issued an ominous warning to a professor who created a proposal to resettle residents of Gaza outside of the Palestinian enclave and remake it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism.
“This notice is to inform you that you are hereby evicted from the premises of the George Washington University,” SJP wrote in a missive it taped to the office door of international affairs professor Joseph Pelzman, who first shared the resettlement plan with Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2024, according to an account of events he described to the podcast “America, Baby!” the following month.
“The reason for the eviction is: your active role in incepting the genocide and planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” SJP’s message continued. “Your disgusting plan for the complete destruction and foreign occupation of Gaza and the colonial ‘re-education’ of Palestinians.”
Denouncing Pelzman as an “architect of genocide,” SJP added, “Pelzman’s tenure is only one pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating our campus … The proprietors of this eviction notice demand your immediate removal.”
In September, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), released survey results showing that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.
Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
“Colleges and universities are meant to be open, safe, learning environments where faculty and students alike feel comfortable sharing ideas and having open discourse,” AEN executive director Miriam Elman said in a statement. “It’s disturbing, but perhaps unsurprising, that Jewish and Zionist faculty on campuses across the country are experiencing antisemitic hostility and retaliation for their beliefs.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Qatar, Turkey’s Expanding Roles in Gaza Could Strengthen Hamas Infrastructure, Experts Warn
Heavy machinery operates at a site where searches for deceased hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct, 7, 2023, attack on Israel are underway amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
As the fragile ceasefire in Gaza appears to hold, experts are warning about the expanding roles of Qatar and Turkey in reconstruction and post-war efforts, amid concerns that their involvement could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Last week, Qatar’s Minister of International Cooperation, Mariam bint Ali al-Misnad, announced new operations in the Gaza Strip to remove debris and restore infrastructure.
“As part of assistance to Gaza, the State of Qatar has commenced debris removal operations and opening of primary routes,” al-Misnad said in a press conference.
“The goal is to restore hope and return life to its normal course,” the Qatari official continued. “We take pride in belonging to a nation that makes humanity an obligation.”
Joining several world powers, Qatar has welcomed the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, pledging to support reconstruction efforts in the war-torn enclave and to advance the next steps in ceasefire negotiations.
Alongside the United States and regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the two-year conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
Amid Qatar’s ongoing reconstruction efforts in Gaza, experts have warned that the heavy mechanical equipment might do more than clear debris and build roads, potentially aiding Hamas in restoring its terrorist infrastructure.
According to Natalie Ecanow, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, Qatar’s involvement in the ceasefire plan is concerning, largely because of its decades-long relationship with Hamas.
“Qatar has long been a political and financial patron of Hamas and has previously signaled that it’s OK with the terror group surviving to rule another day. That’s incompatible with the Israeli and American position,” Ecanow told The Algemeiner.
As Doha begins debris removal operations in the enclave, Hamas has reportedly requested “specialized equipment” to recover the remains of deceased Israeli hostages, some of whom the Islamist group says cannot be retrieved without such machinery, for transfer to Israel as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
Ecanow also argued that Qatar only intensified its push for reconstruction and ceasefire efforts after Israel’s Sept. 9 strike against Hamas leaders in Doha, which exposed the country’s vulnerability and prompted it to move quickly on the deal.
“The ceasefire is on shaky ground, which isn’t wholly surprising,” Ecanow told The Algemeiner. “At the end of the day, Hamas is a terrorist group that has repeatedly shown little regard for ceasefire deals.”
“It’s also important to remember that the hostage release was only one part of a multi-phase plan for Gaza. There were almost certain to be roadblocks along the way,” she continued.
Meanwhile, Israel is also concerned about Turkey’s potential influence in Gaza after the war, given its role as a major international backer of Hamas and its openly hostile stance toward the Jewish state.
On Monday, Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli rejected any possibility of Turkey playing a role in US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is a sworn enemy of Israel and the West, a jihadist in a suit,” Chikli said.
“We will not tolerate a Turkish presence, not on our northern border and not on our southern border,” the Israeli official continued, referring to Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip to the south and Syria to the north.
“May Allah, for the sake of His name… destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.”
This sentence was not uttered by a Hamas or Hezbollah leader, It was said in a public prayer on March 30, 2025, by the President of Turkey @RTErdogan.
Erdogan is a sworn enemy of Israel and the West,… https://t.co/cH5usZWj9Z
— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) October 20, 2025
Last week, Erdogan joined several Arab countries in pledging support for Trump’s Gaza peace plan, vowing to help manage post-war efforts in the enclave.
Among other initiatives, Turkey has committed to deploying search and rescue teams to Gaza to recover the bodies of slain hostages, who are to be returned to Israel as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal, and to support reconstruction across the enclave.
Under Trump’s plan, Turkey is also expected to join a multinational task force responsible for overseeing the ceasefire and training local security forces.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected Turkey’s participation in the International Stabilization Force, calling it a “red line.”
Turkey, a longtime backer of Hamas, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel on the international stage, even going so far as to threaten an invasion of the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if Jerusalem failed to halt its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he describes as Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, while erroneously accusing Israel of committing genocide.
As part of his long history of anti-Israel rhetoric, Erdogan has also falsely accused the Jewish state of running “Nazi” concentration camps and compared Netanyahu to Hitler multiple times before.