Citizenship for the Descendent of a Jew
Thursday, January 28, 2010
By: Jerusalem Institute of Justice

Timothy Steger was born in New York to a Jewish father and given up for adoption at birth. He was adopted by a Catholic family which was very anti-Semitic. In fact, his sister actually became a neo-Nazi skin head.Timothy never felt very comfortable with his family's attitude toward Jews; even though for most of his life he did not know that hehad a Jewish heritage.

As a young adult, Timothy decided to visit Israel. On his first trip to Israel, Timothy immediately felt at home and fell in love with the Jewish people. During this trip, a new acquaintance suggested that he contact the adoption agencies and try to find out who his biological parents were. This is exactly what Timothy did when he returned to the USA, and after a long search, he uncovered documents from the adoption agency stating who his father was and that he was Jewish. Timothy subsequently found the synagogue where his father was circumcised and confirmed through Bar Mitzvah. He obtained a letter from the synagogue's rabbi verifying that his father was Jewish and an active part of the community.

Although Timothy never actually found his father, he did find his mother, who gave him an affidavit stating not only that his father was Jewish but that it was his desire for Timothy to grow up as a Jew. The reason that they did not marry and raise Timothy together was that his mother refused to convert to Judaism as his father had requested.

Timothy applied for Aliyah as the son of a Jew according to Section 4(a) of the Law of Return, and submitted all of the evidence which he had gathered to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. Section 4(a), which was added to the Law of Return in 1970, grants Israeli citizenship to the children and grandchildren of Jews, even if they themselves are not Jewish. The Knesset, in 1970, referred to the Nuremberg Laws of the Third Reich which applied a three-generation biological test to the definition of a Jew. The leadership of Israel believed that if one would have been eligible to be sent to the gas chambers, he or she should be eligible to receive citizenship in the Jewish State.

Apparently, the collective memory of the Israeli government has slipped a bit since 1970. The Ministry of Interior denied Timothy's request for Aliyah, and claimed that his adoption had severed his ties to Judaism. His shock and disappointment by this decision was intense. At this time, Timothy turned to the Jerusalem Institute of Justice for help.

We saw this as an excellent opportunity to challenge the policy of the Ministry of Interior towards people who were born to Jewish parents, adopted by non-Jewish families and subsequently became interested in returning to the land of Israel and to their Jewish roots. JIJ submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice about three months ago, and actually achieved the quickest victory ever at the Supreme Court level. The State Attorneys buckled quickly and notified the High Court of Justice that the Ministry of Interior would grant Timothy citizenship. The court ratified this settlement only after granting Timothy court costs in light of the government's discriminatory behavior. It took another couple of months for Timothy to actually receive his citizenship papers, but we are happy to report that today he has now completely finished the aliyah process, as the descendent of a Jew, and is home at last as a full citizen in the State of Israel.

This is a very important victory that both affects many other cases, and brings immediate relief to an unjust situation.