Israel’s toxic combination of power and politics distorts Jewish law into an obscene monstrosity
By Nitzan Caspi Shilony
Published in the Times of Israel Blogs
JUN 6, 2019, 5:39 PM
Israelis are reeling after MK Betzalel Smotrich of the Union of Right-Wing Parties voiced his aspirations to turn Israel into a “halakha state”—a country in which Torah law would supersede civil law, authorized and enforced by the state. While conjuring up hypothetical nightmarish visions of what such a state might look like, we seem to have overlooked the fact that we already have our own mini-halakha state right here.
Welcome to Israel 2019, brought to you by the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law 5713-1953. Here, the State operates an entire court system in which women are prohibited from serving as judges and for the most part, even serving as witnesses. If you want to serve as a judge in the Rabbinic Court but are not a Hareidi or Hareidi-Zionist male, you won’t even clear the threshold set by the Committee for the Appointment of Rabbinic Court Judges—a committee that, by the way, includes secular politicians among its ranks.
In these courts, you can witness the State condemning children as mamzerim (halakhically illegitimate offspring who are restricted from marrying).
Here, you can watch the following: women begging the courts for legal permission to marry; women condemned for committing adultery and prevented by the state from marrying their lovers; widows branded as nashim katlaniyot–”black widows” thought to be cursed with “bad luck” that resulted in their husbands’ deaths; women who are pregnant or who have children under the age of two needing permission from the state to marry a man who is not their child’s biological father.
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