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Gay ‘Conversion Therapy’ Group Banned In Jersey Is Operating in Israel

The Orthodox Jewish nonprofit JONAH, which purports to help gay men become heterosexual, is operating in Israel after it was ordered closed by a court in New Jersey.

Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing has referred patients in Israel to some of the estimated 20 to 30 licensed psychologists and social workers and 50 non-licensed therapists who practice some form of conversion therapy in Israel, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Among its clients are Orthodox Jewish teenagers from the United States who attend yeshivas and other post-high school programs in Israel.

There is no law restricting conversion therapy in Israel, but the Health Ministry advises against such therapy.

In Israel, therapists say there is greater acceptance of their work than in the United States, AP reported.

The New Jersey court ordered JONAH to stop its work in December.

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