JERUSALEM — The long-running issue of whether Israel should be a Jewish state based only on ethnicity or on religious law as well recently came to a head again:
Justice Minister Yaacov Neeman came under fire Tuesday, after apparently expressing hope that the state’s current legal system will soon be dictated by the Torah…
Another former justice minister, Yossi Beilin, urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to fire Neeman following his ‘Torah’ statement.
According to Beilin, “A justice minister who advocates an Israeli theocracy needs to leave his post immediately.”
Kadima MK Orit Zuaretz said that Neeman’s comments “undermine the foundations of the value system and the laws of a democratic country.”
She said that if he meant what he said, Neeman should reconsider his position since his remarks are damaging to “entire communities and to the delicate balance that exists between a democratic state and a Jewish state.”
As I wrote in a post in my Letters from Israel series, the Zionist founders of Israel wanted to create a secular nation-state for Jews akin to those in Europe:
When the early Zionists founded the modern State of Israel in 1948, they aimed to create a country that was based on Jewish ethnicity — not Jewish religion. They were so-called modernists who, like many of the intellectual elite in Europe the late 1800s and early 1900s, believed that religion was a silly anachronism that would soon disappear to make way for a secular world. The Zionists believed that just as the Frankish people have France and the Germanic people have Germany, so should the Jews have an Israel again.
However, the idealistic dream of the Zionists soon gave way to political reality. When David Ben-Gurion became the first prime minister of Israel, he needed to assemble a governing coalition in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, by gaining the support of several parties to gain a majority in a legislature that was rife with political and religious division. To do so, he made a compromise with the Orthodox parties that still reverberates today: Ben-Gurion agreed to let the religious establishment have absolute control over issues like issues like Jewish identity, conversion, marriage, kashrut (kosher) certification, and burial. The secular government would be responsible for everything else. In a sense, there have been two, parallel governments in Israel that have been responsible for everything in their specific domains. Despite what many critics of Israel maintain, the country is not a theocracy per se.
Now, let’s return to what Neeman reportedly said:
Neeman had told rabbis and rabbinical judges attending a conference in Jerusalem on Jewish monetary laws that “restoring the former glory, so that the law of the Torah is Israel’s law, is really the appropriate way to endow upon us the law of Torah in stages… step after step.”
Neeman repeatedly used the phrase “restoring former glory,” which has become associated with Shas, after it became the religious-Sepharadi party’s slogan.
“Israel should regain the heritage of our Fathers, the primary and ultimate words of the Torah, which contain a complete solution to all the questions we deal with,” the justice minister continued in his address on Monday night.
“Soon, in the near future, amen,” he added.
The issue of secular versus religious law has always been complicated because Israel’s legal system is a combination of English common law, civil law, and Jewish law. Since Israel still does not have a constitution, the country operates based on set of Basic Laws.
This convoluted legal system allows various restrictions based directly or indirectly on Jewish law to exist. Public transportation does not operate on Shabbat — from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday — anywhere in the country. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that pork can be sold in a given locality if a majority of residents there are in favor, but it is illegal for anyone except Arab Christians to have pig farms (Muslims, of course, do not eat pork as well). These are just two examples of the many that I could cite.
The issue is that no one here — religious or secular — is pleased with the fact that these religious-societal issues are usually decided on a case-by-case basis. No one likes complexity and nuance. I was talking once with a secular friend in a bar in Rishon Lezion, a city in the central part of the country, and he wanted to see a country in which everything was up for each individual to decide. Most religious Jews, however, want to see a country in which Jewish law reigns supreme — many do not want a constitution to be drafted because such a document would seemingly have more importance in national affairs than the Bible. The debate over religious and secular law is even extending to the Israeli military — many religious soldiers say that they would refuse to implement any orders to remove settlers from the West Bank in the future.
In an editorial, the Jerusalem Post is dead-set against any imposition of Jewish law:
It is a grand idea for Israeli jurists to be informed by Halacha (Jewish law), but it would be terrible if they were bound by it.
Halacha, like American constitutional law, is organic, evolving and malleable. It is intended to unify the Jewish people. Tragically, however, those who today dominate the application of Halacha tend to be strict constructionists. A theocratic state in which such rabbis would replace judges would be hellish.
Rabbi Reuven Hammer, a leader in the Masorti (Conservative) Judaism movement, also opines:
What does it mean to say we are a Jewish and democratic country? What does it mean to say that Israel is a Jewish state? Certainly not that it is a state in which Jewish religious law is the law of the land.
That would be no different from the Islamic nations that enforce Muslim law. Rather, it means that it is a state that will provide a home for Jews and that will support Judaism, its culture and its religion, by making it possible for Jews to live according to their beliefs and help and encourage all elements of Jewish civilization. All of this can be done without compromising the basic tenets of democracy. It is time for Israel to become truly Jewish and truly democratic. Establishing a state ruled by rabbinic authorities is exactly the opposite.
The issues are complex. What should be the supreme law of the Jewish land — secular, civil law; a future, still-unwritten constitution; or the Torah, however it may be interpreted at any particular moment? If it is the latter, who would have the final say in the drafting and interpretation of the law — civil judges or rabbis?
As a modern-Orthodox Jew, I would like to see the Torah as the basis for Israeli law.* For example, I would like to see the sale and production of pork banned — even for Arab-Israeli Christians since there should be one law for Jews and non-Jews alike in Israel:
There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the Lord; the same ritual and the same rule shall apply to you and to the stranger who resides among you. (Numbers 15: 15–16)
But I’m not sure about the practical implementation regarding the balance between judges and rabbis. And it goes without saying that Jews love to argue, so what is considered Jewish law today might change in fifty years. (It was once permissible to turn electricity on and off on Shabbat.)
Perhaps the only other alternative is for the government to allow everything that is banned under Jewish law and that it would be up to individuals to decide whether to follow it. But then the Jewish state — defined religiously — would no longer exist if and when fifty-one percent of Israelis would become secular. The issue is one of competing priorities: What is more important, that a Jewish state exist in religious terms or that a state exists in which people are free to do what they want?
I will end this post with an interesting comment by Dov Bear, who is something of a rebel, Orthodox blogger:
I asked why is it ok to impose law on people not interested or against their beliefs as long as the law is secular but if we adopt religious law and make that the law of country than they would consider it consider it coercion?
Meaning, if we make a law that one is not allowed to eat pork, for example, someone secular and opposed to such a law would consider it religious coercion, and therefore opposes the implementation of a lawbook based on halacha.
But if the law says that one is not allowed to cross the street against the light, for example, I am not allowed to oppose that law. Can I call it secular coercion?
Why is it legitimate for the secular state have the right to impose its laws, thereby imposing its set of values, on religious Jews, while a religious state (or call it a halacha state) would be considered religious coercion?
I’d be curious to hear any responses. Meanwhile, here is the justice minister’s interview with the Jerusalem Post on his comments regarding Jewish and secular law.
* I am sure that I will hear responses with questions like, “The Torah says to kill people who violate Shabbat. Would you support that?” Such a question is ignorant of Jewish law as practiced in ancient Israel. The Sanhedrin, the 71-member high court, would hear all such cases and would have to rule unanimously to sentence someone to death. A court that did so more than once every seventy years was considered excessively cruel.
Moreover, I would flatly oppose the implication of any non-secular law — Christian, Jewish, or otherwise — in the United States. I have two different sets of beliefs for two different countries and societies. Each place is different.
