As a member of the Indian Jewish community, I wish to invite the attention of your Ministry to an impending intrusion of the Govt, of Israel in the internal religious affairs of the community. As you may be aware, the Bene Israel section of the community has been very much exercised over certain discriminatory directives issued by the Chief Rabbinate in Israel which subject members of the community who have migrated to Israel to humiliating questioning if they wish to marry. Instead of following the straightforward course of withdrawing these obnoxious directives, which have been condemned by progressive elements of Jewry the world over, efforts have been made to bring Jewish religious institutions in India under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. As resistance was shown to the reception of a Rabbi deputed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Israel in consultation with the Chief Rabbinate and presumably paid out of Israeli State funds, it has now been arranged to have the Rabbi sponsored by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, with headquarters in New York, since this Union has been helping with guidance and money a local organisation called UOJCI (Address C/o Magen Hassidim Synagogue, 8 Morland Rd. Jacob Circle, Bombay 11-rBC). Apparently the local organisation has accepted the arrangement without realising its dangerous implications.To the reception of a foreign Rabbi and the acceptance of his guidance in deciding complicated questions of Jewish religious law there can be no possible objection, as the community has no trained Rabbis of its own. Nor can there by any objection to such a Rabbi being of Israeli nationality. But the participation of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (which, it may be explained, is almost a limb of the State machinery in Israel in so far as its rulings in matters of marriage and divorce are enforced by the State) in the deputation of a Rabbi …

Dear Shri, you may remember that some six months ago I showed you a copy of a letter I had written to Mr. Michael, the Consul for Israel at Bombay, regarding the undesirability of Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs deputing a Rabbi to India to settle pending divorces. In that letter I had informed him that, if the proposal was persisted in, I would appeal to the Government of India to refuse admission to the Rabbi. You had then agreed that a Rabbi so deputed was completely unacceptable. I have seen a letter addressed by you to Shri D.A. Maggonkar in which you say that your Union has arranged with your opposite number in America for a Rabbi in whose selection the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel will have a hand to come to Bombay presumably under your auspices. It is evident that, except for the cover given to the arrangement by the UOJCA, it is substantially the same as that to which you professed such strong opposition in conversation with me, and I can hardly believe that you have not realised that this is so. About the religious aspects of the matter, I am not personally concerned, though it is astonishing that any self-respecting Bene Israel organisation can for a moment contemplate cooperating with an authority which will humiliate us. Have you forgotten the terms of your address to Rabbi Brodie or of the Open Letter to the President and the Prime Minister of Israel? What, however, I am concerned with, and what every loyal citizen of India should be concerned with, is the handle you have provided to the Israeli Government and its hirelings to interfere in our domestic concerns. The matter is, to my mind, of such importance that I have considered it necessary to send a representation to the Government of India in the matter without waiting to canvass opinion among friends and acquaintances. I trust that, even at this late stage, you will take corrective action to ensure that the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs an…