May 13, 2005 MKs seek advice of US Jews on Israel's constitution By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK A funny thing happened this week on the way to a new Israeli constitution. The Knesset committee charged with drafting one came to North America to solicit advice from American Jews about writing a constitution-a rare instance of Israeli parliamentarians seeking out American Jewish input rather than money, as one Knesset delegate put it. Whether the Israelis will listen to that advice-which they plan on soliciting from everyone from US Supreme Court justices to Jewish teenagers on US college campuses-is another matter entirely. "It's not obligatory for the Israelis to accept what the diaspora Jews have to say, but it is important," said MK Yuli Edelstein, one of the committee members on the Knesset trip. The delegation of more than half a dozen Knesset members met this week and last with judges, legislators, judicial experts and Jews in Ottawa, Washington, and New York. The meetings were the continuation of an effort begun last year by MK Michael Eitan, chairman of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, to seek outside input in drafting Israel's constitution, particularly from diaspora Jews. Eitan launched the effort last September with a meeting with Jewish lawyers at a Manhattan law firm. This time, Eitan brought with him about half of his committee's members. The trip was paid for by the American Jewish Congress. The meetings in Canada last week included private audiences with several Canadian Supreme Court justices, Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and Jewish community members. In Washington, the Knesset members participated in a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on Capital Hill, met with US congressmen and capped the week with private meetings with US Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal on the court, and Antonin Scalia, the court's staunchest conservative and a leading candidate to be the next chief justice. Before returning to Israel, the delegation met with Jewish organizational leaders in New York. "We will not go to listen to the experts without listening to leaders of the Jews," Edelstein said by way of explanation. "It was a fruitful and exciting week." While the meetings with the judicial experts in Ottawa and Washington comprised something of a listening tour by the Israelis, the meetings with the American Jews in New York were more contentious, according to those present. On the agenda for the meeting with national Jewish organizational leaders, for example, was the Law of Return, a topic that leads naturally to the debate over who is a Jew. As the Israelis made clear, however, their goal was to generate input and feedback, not consensus. The idea behind reaching out to American Jewry, the Knesset delegates said, was to include in the constitutional discussion people who have the option of becoming Israeli citizens-and thus have some role to play in the process. "These meetings are very important," said MK Eliezer "Cheetah" Cohen. He said it was much more important to reach out to diaspora Jewry in the constitution-drafting process than to Israel's own Arab minorities. MK Azmi Bishara, a member of the Knesset's constitution committee, declined to join the delegation to North America. The visit by the Israelis to New York generated a rare coming-together of American Jewish groups that often are loathe to sit around the same table, including leaders of the Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, and a representative from Chabad-Lubavitch. Also represented were the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the AJCongress, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and UJA-Federation of New York, which hosted Monday's meetings. The Knesset delegation did not get very far in their Monday afternoon session with America's national Jewish organizational leadership, but Eitan said it was merely the beginning of a process he hopes will continue online and with broader American Jewish participation. Anyone who wants, he noted, can offer their thoughts to the committee through the Constitution for Israel Project's website, at www.cfisrael.org. "The great value of this process is the engaging of Israelis and American Jews, and educating each other about the issues that are important to us," said Marvin Lender, co-chairman of a group called the Israel-American Jewish Forum, which helped put together the Knesset members' meetings. "I've never been asked to participate in a program where we've been asked about our opinion on an issue of importance to Israel," Lender added. Despite the committee's efforts, many Israelis and American Jews remain skeptical that the process will result in an actual constitution for Israel-at this point by no means a foregone conclusion. To merit passage, the constitution would have to be approved first by Eitan's committee, and then ratified by a majority vote in the Knesset. "The constitution now is executed and written by the courts," Eitan said, voicing an oft-heard assessment of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Basic Laws, passed in 1992. The court has been treating those laws as the judicial equivalent of a constitution, experts say. "This is not the way a nation builds a constitution," Eitan told a group of American Jewish lawyers when he met with them in New York last year. "Israel needs a constitution."