Israel’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation is to consider a bill that could herald the first step toward making Israel a country governed by Jewish religious law.
The sponsors of the new bill, led by Habayit Hayehudi Knesset member Nissan Slomiansky, above, take issue with the fact that the existing law does not obligate the courts to apply the principles of Jewish law (halakha), so they are seeking to amend the provision.
The idea was roundly condemned by the newspaper, Haaretz. It said in an editorial:
It’s difficult to understand why the sponsors of the bill think it appropriate for a democratic country to adopt the principles of ancient religious law.
Why should the entire Israeli population, a large portion of whom are not religious and some also not Jewish, be subject to Jewish religious law? And this with regard to a religious legal system that systematically discriminates against populations such as women and non-Jews.
Secular judges and judges who are not Jewish will be required, according to the proposal, to rule according to the principles of religious law. In order to ‘make things easier’ for them, the proposed law provides for an official institute to ‘translate’ Jewish law into modern language and make it accessible to all judges.
It concluded:
Beyond the message of extremism and coercion that the bill sends, it would strengthen questions about the legitimacy of Israel as a democratic country. The more evidence that Israel provides of its Jewish religious-state characteristics, particularly of the kind that imposes religious laws on residents who are not religious and not Jewish, the argument that Israel is a country that respects the rights of its citizens is substantially weakened.