Rabbi’s arrest could force marriage law liberalisation
IF THE rabbinical court in Haifa thought it was enforcing Israel’s State Rabbinate monopoly on performing Jewish marriages by reporting Conservative Rabbi Dov Haiyun to the police, its moved backfired spectacularly.
The police’s heavy-handed detention of Rabbi Haiyun for questioning at 5.30am last week did not just cause a public outcry from Israel and across the diaspora. It also exposed the fundamental flaw in a law passed in 2013 that prohibits Jewish weddings not under the Rabbinate’s auspices.
Since the Strictly Orthodox rabbinate does not even recognise progressive rabbis, the law does not actually apply to them. The Attorney General has since ordered the police not to investigate the case.
Rabbi Haiyun, meanwhile, has been inundated by Israeli couples asking him to marry them. He and other progressive rabbis will continue to officiate at weddings, which will not be recognised by the rabbinate and therefore not by the Israeli authorities either.
Those couples will have to either go abroad to obtain civil marriages or make do with common law status, but survey after survey shows that increasing numbers of Israeli couples are choosing to do that.
The 2013 law was not passed to prevent progressive weddings: the rabbinate’s real concern is the growing number of Modern Orthodox rabbis.
More and more couples angry at the oppressive approach are seeking other options. Jewish law does not require the local rabbinate to be notified or even the presence of a rabbi to be present for a marriage. As Halachic literacy and religious feminism grow, the rabbinate’s monopoly will be further challenged.
Today’s arrangement is based on a “status quo” deal agreed between David Ben Gurion and the Strictly Orthodox establishment, which retained the Ottoman-era arrangement whereby recognised religious communities were the sole authorities permitted to perform marriages. But the 71-year-old agreement is crumbling.
The Strictly Orthodox parties have enough sway within the coalition to prevent any serious talk of civil marriage legislation in Israel anytime soon.
But in 2018, there are enough options to allow any couple to have the wedding they desire and ultimately acquire Israeli state recognition of it — even if it means obtaining a wedding certificate on their honeymoon in a liberal-minded country.
Changing the marriage laws and challenging Orthodox Judaism’s monopoly remain political obstacles. But love, it turns out, is stronger than that.