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RABBINATE BID ON CIVIL MARRIAGE DRAWS FIRE
by Abigail Radoszkowicz
Jerusalem Post, Nov. 18, 2003
MK Mordechai Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said he has reservations about the
Chief Rabbinate's offer on Monday to consider the registration of civil marriages
for non-Jewish citizens by clerks under its auspices.
"I haven't checked out the details of their proposal, and I'm not certain
that they have firmly crystallized it in any case," Gafni told The Jerusalem
Post. "I proposed a similar bill a few years ago, but dropped it when...
we discovered that if we instituted civil marriage for citizens who were not
Jewish, Christian, or Muslim... at some point the Supreme Court would rule it
a violation of basic law for a Jew, Christian, or Muslim not to be able to have
a civil marriage."
Gafni, who was present at Monday's Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee
meeting at which the idea was proposed, said he does not want to separate religion
from state - and that the chief rabbis don't, either. Were Jews to marry outside
the scope of government-supervised Halacha, the haredi [ultra orthodox]
sector would draw up a sefer yehusin, a list of those eligible to marry
and those not.
A source close to the chief rabbis said the proposal aims to tighten supervision
of marital status and eligibility. MK Yitzhak Levy (NRP) said the National Religious
Party would support any proposal made by the chief rabbis.
However, Rabbi Ehud Bandel, head of Israel's Masorti (Conservative) Movement,
decried the move, calling it "a pathetic attempt to maintain [the Rabbinate's]
monopoly by having non-Jews go to a religious council where an Orthodox clerk
will conduct a non-religious wedding."
Bandel said he wants a two-track option for those wishing to marry in Israel.
The religious track would offer Jews the choice of an Orthodox, Conservative,
or Reform ceremony, and the secular one would be available to those ineligible
to marry in any of the three streams, and to Jews who prefer a secular ceremony.
Gilad Kariv of the Reform-affiliated Religious Action Center also scorned the
Rabbinate's suggestion.
"The proposal is a scandal," he said. "It isn't enough that
for many years the Chief Rabbinate avoided offering a reasonable conversion
process to these immigrants. Now it wants them to marry only among themselves,
and even to administrate these non-Jewish marriages. In every area that the
Chief Rabbinate took charge it failed: Thousands of eligible-to-marry Israelis
go to Cyprus for their weddings to avoid dealing with the Rabbinate."
Kariv said the threat of a sefer yehusin is not relevant to the Reform
community. "Native haredim don't allow their children to marry even
hozrim betshuva [born Jews who become religious]," he said.
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