The bill was first proposed in March this year by the chairman of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, but drew such vocal protests from Reform and Conservative moment leaders around the world, that it disappeared from public view and was expected to be quietly shelved.
But on Monday, July 11th, Rotem announced that the draft had passed his committee, largely thanks to the discreet absence of members of the governing Likud party, who have done little to support the bill - and little to stop their coalition partners from pursuing it.
The bill still has to pass three further rounds of voting, a process that will take some months. If passed, it will give the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate control of all conversions in Israel, in practice placing authority over Jewish births, marriages and deaths in the hands of a small group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis who dominate the religious judicial structures.
The most contentious clause in the bill is one that says conversion will be recognized only if the convert has "accepted the Torah and its mitzvot (commandments) in accordance with halakha". This clause provides the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis with an opportunity to exclude Conservative and Reform communities - and even Orthodox communities that are deemed insufficiently strict.
The head of the world's largest Jewish organisation, the Union for Reform Judaism in the USA, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, said: "We had the impression that the matter was under control. They told us they wouldn't pass this bill if we were opposed to it. We are shocked; it's contrary to all the assurances that we received.
"And the version that is being put forward is worse than the version that he brought in the first place. We are astonished. It's foolish, disruptive. It will cause an anger amid American Jews when Israel needs its support the most."
Commentator Alana Newhouse wrote in the New York Times that the bill seeks to answer the centuries old question - "who is a Jew" - with a legalistic formula that could have the effect of excluding most of the world's Jews. "If this bill passes, future historians will inevitably wonder why, at a critical moment in its history, Israel chose to tell 85 percent of the Jewish diaspora that their rabbis weren't rabbis and their religious practices were a sham, the conversions of their parents and spouses were invalid, their marriages weren't legal under Jewish law, and their progeny were a tribe of bastards unfit to marry other Jews."
Why has Rotem pushed this bill so single-mindedly? Ironically, an attack on Reform and Conservative Jewish rights is simply a by-product of a different agenda. His party, Yisrael Beiteinu, is a nationalistic group best-known for its hard line on peace talks with Palestinians. Its core support comes from Soviet Jews who have nursed a long-standing grievance: some 320 000 of them, brought up under conditions which effectively barred religious practice, are recognised as Jews by the Israeli state - but not by the rabbinate, which will not allow them to marry them in Israel, or permit them Jewish funerals.
Former prime minister Ariel Sharon attempted to solve this problem by setting up conversion courts under the auspices of his own office, for which he recruited rabbis from the religious Zionist movements. Thousands of Russian Jews were converted, many of them soldiers who completed the conversion process as part of an army project. Many converts invested considerable personal effort, years of study - and money - in the process.
But ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who monopolise the religious registry offices that control marriages and divorces in Israel, managed to obstruct the process by refusing to register many converts. Finally in 2008, the Rabbinical Court of Appeals annulled every conversion ever performed by the Sharon-appointed rabbis - effectively ending the process.
Conversion became a major election campaign issue among ex-Soviet Jews - and one which Yisrael Beiteinu promised to deal with. The bill it has proposed removes the obstacle of rabbinical objections to conversion, smooths the process, provides would-be converts with a wider choice of rabbis, and makes it difficult to revoke a conversion once it is granted.
Yisrael Beiteinu is a secular Zionist, not a religious party. But to get its conversion bill through, it has needed the support of the very same Orthodox constituency that has made conversion by Russian Jews so problematic. The religious parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, are both supporting the bill, and both have made stringent demands. In their case, they are hoping to outflank the Israel Religious Action Committee (IRAC), a progressive activist group which has taken a case to the Supreme Court, calling for recognition of non-Orthodox conversions.
Committee chairman Rotem continues to insist that he is not hostile to non-Orthodox movements. "This is not a change of the status quo on matters of conversion. Through their claims, the Reform and Conservative communities are attempting to make some sort of gain at the expense of 400 000 new immigrants," he told the Israeli newspaper Ha-aretz.
"The bill says the Chief Rabbinate will be given responsibility on matters of conversion in Israel, but it does not say it will receive exclusive responsibility to this. Prior to the second and third reading, I intend to sit with both the Reform and Conservative [representatives] in order to incorporate them into the framework of the law." Rotem told Ha-aretz that he tried to stop the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) from setting additional conditions for the conversion issue. "The Haredi demands are constantly increasing. The more the other communities clash with the Haredim, the more opportunities the Haredim are given to react."
The Executive Director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, is sceptical: "The formula Rotem is using is very vague. He is playing with words. The minute the laws says the responsibility is in the hands of the rabbinate, it will become necessary to turn to the rabbinate and consult with them every time there is a case of conversion. And this, after 20 years of our conversions abroad being recognized in Israel by the Population Registry."
IRAC has called on all Diaspora Jews to write to Prime Minister Netanyahu and urge him to block the bill. In an open letter to Netanyahu, IRAC says: "We are deeply concerned about the intention to grant the Chief Rabbinate sole control over conversion in Israel. Such legislation would be an open attack on the legitimacy of non-Orthodox Jewry, which composes the majority of world Jewry.
"While we are supportive of efforts to create greater accessibility to conversion courts in Israel, the overall impact of the Rotem Bill will set back these efforts. Should this bill be enacted, it will exacerbate a widening gap between Diaspora and Israel communities, which we are working very hard to avoid."
