Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumMinisters reject two bills seeking to allow civil marriage
Opposition trying to put issue back on the agenda following U.S. Supreme Court ruling.By Jonathan Lis
Two bills on civil marriage in Israel failed to move through the Knesset Sunday, although one managed to technically stay alive.
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation tabled Yesh Atid’s proposal for civil unions, which the party had failed to advance during the previous Knesset when it was part of the government coalition. At the same time, the committee rejected outright Meretz’s version of a civil marriage.
“In the situation in which two thirds of the Israeli public support granting the possibility of civil marriages, the real question that we must ask ourselves is why doesn’t it happen; why is Israel in the same group with countries such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or Syria, which recognize only the religious-conservative monopoly over marriage?” Meretz chairwoman Zehava Galon said in advance of the committee meeting.
MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), who is sponsoring the civil union bill in the present Knesset, said: “The proposed law is not intended to harm Jewish tradition or the authority of the Rabbinate, but wants to offer an alternative for couples who are prevented from marriage by the Rabbinate, or for couples who are not interested in it.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.premium-1.664513
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Israeli
(4,139 posts)Lavie added: “The law will allow everyone the freedom of choice between the civil track and the religious track, and allow full equal rights between couples who choose a civil union and those couples who choose the religious channel, also in terms of law and justice. In the present situation, the State of Israel is completely ignoring the distress of thousands and men and women. Do we really want to continue to encourage them to get married abroad? ... It is simply an inappropriate situation which harms the values of equality.”
The Israel Democracy Institute called on the ministerial committee at the end of last week to support Lavie’s bill: “This proposal is similar to the proposal prepared in the past by the institute, which asks to preserve the balance between the Jewishness of the state and upholding the equal rights for every citizen [man and woman] to live in an established union.”
Allowing civil unions would enable over 300,000 people in Israel who are unable to be married now by the Rabbinate – such as same-sex couples and others who are not interested in marriage under religious auspices and today are forced to go overseas to conduct the process there – to feel part of Israeli society, said the Israel Democracy Institute. It is the best compromise available at the moment.
“We must recognize the problem and not hide our heads in the sand,” said a spokesperson for the institute.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.premium-1.664513
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)It's also a very touchy issue.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)The argument that civil marriage will promote a rift in the Jewish people is a lie. So why do the religious parties really oppose such legislation?
By Avi Garfinkel
On Sunday a civil union bill, which would enable civil marriages in the country, was submitted to the Knesset, for the ninth time. There is seemingly no reason why the proposed legislation submitted by Yesh Atid Knesset member Aliza Lavie should not pass. Everyone knows that Israel is the only democracy that does not permit civil marriage in the country, and nearly everyone, including many religious people, understand that the situation is insufferable.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including “mamzerim” (a category of certain illegitimate children under Jewish religious law), those barred the right to marry, same-sex couples, and even those who have fallen in love with someone of another religion can’t get married within the borders of the State of Israel. That involves the denial of a basic freedom and does serious damage to the principle of equality.
It is nearly certain, however, that this bill too will be rejected, in part on the false argument that if Jews in Israel get married without the rabbinate as intermediary, other Jews would not be able to marry their descendants, thereby creating a rift in the Jewish people. “Civil union initiatives are seeking to split the Jewish people into two! It simply will not happen!” declared former Habayit Hayehudi MK Yoni Chetboun in October 2013 while explaining his opposition to one such piece of legislation.
In fact even some secular Israelis are impressed by this argument and are prepared to forgo some of their freedoms and compromise their values so long as the unity of the people is not harmed. But contrary to the statements of those who have been threatening us, civil unions would in no way promote a schism among the people. Believe it or not it represents the position of Jewish religious law, halakha.
Late Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ruled on the issue at the Tel Aviv regional rabbinical court in 1973. The case involved a couple who had married in Romania in a civil ceremony and had a son. They were later divorced and the wife then remarried and again divorced. She sought to return to her previous husband, but Jewish religious law, which is binding in Israel on matters of marriage and divorce between Jews, does not allow a divorced woman who had been married to another man to return to her first husband. Rabbi Yosef therefore considered the validity of the woman’s first marriage, the civil marriage in Romania. He referred to a long list of rulings according to which civil marriage did not in any way constitute a marriage, in the Jewish religious sense. He ruled: “Since the [civil] marriage is void in and of itself, the ‘get’ [Jewish religious divorce] is also meaningless;” therefore there is nothing barring the marriage of the woman and her first husband.
Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky of the Rabbinical Court of Appeals, also ruled: “Civil marriage performed out of choice and free will [in a manner other than Jewish tradition], despite the ability of the couple to duly marry according to religious law, is considered marriage that is contrary to halakha…. Therefore, in such an instance, there is no need for a ‘get’ [a Jewish religious bill of divorce] to be provided by the husband to the wife.”
In other words, according to Rabbis Yosef and Dichovsky, anyone whose parents were married in a civil ceremony can marry a Jewish spouse in a religious ceremony, even at the rabbinate, without running afoul of halakha. Therefore, the concern that civil marriage will bring about a split in the Jewish people is baseless.
And from a practical standpoint as well, opposition to civil unions is insignificant. In 2011, at total of 8,995 Israelis, about 11 percent of all the couples who married that year, wed in civil ceremonies abroad. And then there is that huge number of people who choose not to get married at all, living as common law couples. The number of people who would marry at the rabbinate only because they had no other option inside Israel is shrinking. The only beneficiaries of the current situation are travel agents who sell airlines tickets to Cyprus and other destinations where Israelis can get married in civil ceremonies.
Opposition to civil unions is baseless both from the standpoint of halakha and practically speaking and involves more than a little hypocrisy. The ultra-Orthodox community already keeps separate marriage registries or lists than those kept by the Chief Rabbinate, and in practice, they would never marry into secular families. In other words, the split in the Jewish people that they warn against is already here and has been for some time. The hypocrisy is also apparent from the fact that it is actually the most sectoral and tribal political parties, those that only look after their own voting publics, that dare speak in the name of unity and the good of the nation when it is convenient for them.
As with a lot of other subjects, extraneous political circumstances are what have allowed a minority to force its will on the majority and infringe on human rights. But the circumstances are just circumstances, even if they have prevailed for decades. And the moment the circumstances change, this injustice, which is not based on halakha or truth or logic or justice, will also vanish from the country.
The writer heads the writing center at Jerusalem's Shalem College.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.664751
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)Last edited Tue Jul 7, 2015, 07:45 AM - Edit history (1)
This marriage was a simple thing to do in the US, but impossible in Israel. I'm slightly uncomfortable discussing Jewish attitudes, but anyone willing to marry according to halacha should be given the means to do so - it should be a right. Also, halacha shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of a couple marrying, or even make it harder, if the couple wishes to marry in a less halachical way.
Response to Israeli (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)A brief comparison:
Iran: called a religious theocracy by the US and its allies. This is because the country is effectively ruled/guided by religious authorities, the mullahs. Also because religions other than Islam enjoy second class status.
Israel: called "the only Middle East democracy" by the US and its allies. But the country seems to be effectively ruled /guided by religious authorities, the rabbis. Also because religions other than Judaism enjoy second class status.
Wait a minute!! If BOTH countries are effectively ruled/guided by religious authorities, and in both countries there is a definite state religion, with other religions enjoying second class status, how can one be a theocracy and the other be a democracy?
By the way, "mullah" means teacher. "Rabbi" also means teacher. Interesting, no?
Israeli
(4,139 posts)My apologies ......
In Israel, it's the Jewish mufti who decides whether a citizen belongs
When only some seven percent of the hundreds of thousands of 'others' have been converted over the last 20 years, perhaps this entire conversion issue is nothing more than a bubble.
By Zvi Bar'el
A heart-rending cry arose from all sides this week following the cancelation of the conversion reform. Woe is me. Municipal rabbis will lose their power to conduct conversions and this power will return to the bosom of the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly – or in other words, the rabbinate’s hacks and their ultra-Orthodox patrons.
There are two reasons for this weeping and wailing: the loss of pluralism in conversion, which was ostensibly promised by the provision authorizing additional rabbis to convert people, and the fact that political horse-trading, rather than any desire to please God, is what gave birth to this retreat. For a moment, it was possible to believe the municipal rabbis had generated an earthquake in the conversion process, and with the wave of a hand, had turned some 350,000 Israelis currently classified as “others” into Jews. Had this actually been the outcome, there would have been no need even to discuss conversion now.
But nothing substantive has changed, and the outcry over the political machination that ostensibly returned Israel to the Dark Ages is also unnecessary. You’d have to be naïve, or live on Mars, to think conversion is strictly a matter of Jewish law that doesn’t come within arm’s reach of politics.
Yet those now mourning the reform have forgotten the most important point: Why does the state have to stick its nose into an issue relating to a person’s beliefs and conscience to begin with? In many Muslim countries where Islamic law is an inseparable part of civil law, a non-Muslim is permitted at any moment to join the correct religion and become part of the majority, but his national identity isn’t dependent on this. He is a citizen, whether he’s Christian, Jewish or Muslim.
In Israel, in contrast, not only does someone who isn’t Jewish have to be very lucky to be permitted to pass through the seven levels of conversion hell, but his membership in the national majority is dependent on the approval of the Jewish mufti.
Religion never attained this degree of supremacy over the state even in the most benighted of Muslim countries. When religious institutions in Muslim countries reared their heads, the regimes simply nationalized them and turned them into part of the state apparatus.
But in Israel, membership in the right religious club is an existential issue. Without it, the citizen will be treated as a suspicious object even if he served in the army – the litmus test of Israeli nationality – and even if he has invested the better part of his money, energy and intelligence in the state.
He will be unable to marry a Jewish spouse in Israel or be buried in a Jewish cemetery. He is a “nonperson” in both religious and national terms. Even somebody who persists and manages to adhere to Judaism and gets a signed certificate attesting to it will continue for the rest of his life to be “known to the rabbinate,” to borrow a phrase from the world of crime, and at any moment, the rabbinate will be able to strip him of his conversion certificate as if it were a driver’s license.
And of course, stripping him of his certificate also strips him of his national identity. He will, admittedly, continue to be a citizen, because the Law of Return is flexible enough to allow even someone with only a Jewish father, or even the non-Jewish grandchild of a Jew, to be accepted as a citizen by virtue of being part of the “seed of Israel.” But a vast ocean separates the “seed of Israel” from the finished product, a “kosher Jew.”
If there were really a treasure reserved for converts, one would have expected most of the Israelis with no religion to have stormed the doors of conversion institutes and rabbis who perform conversions in to obtain the coveted title. But when only some seven percent of the hundreds of thousands of “others” have been converted over the last 20 years, perhaps this entire conversion issue is nothing more than a bubble, whose power depends entirely on the muscle of bouncers.
The uproar over their identity encourages the thought that they are the problem. If only they were more courteous, more liberal in their views, with a bit more compassion in their hearts, conversion would be easier.
But that’s a warped view. It’s not the guards on the wall who are guilty. It’s the wall itself.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.664891
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)I was unaware of the "technicalities of Jewishness" that you have referenced here. This is a very interesting topic that I will try to look at.
If I am reading this article correctly, there are "technical Jews" and there are "kosher Jews", with only the latter being considered fully realized as Jews.
If I am also interpreting what I have read correctly, only "kosher Jews" enjoy full rights of citizenship.
If my reading and interpretation on these matters is correct, Israel can in no sense be considered a democracy where all citizens enjoy equal rights, but is instead a limited democracy, much like the US.
It is very interesting how the reality of Israel bears so little resemblance to the view of Israel that is presented in the US media.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)but relevant ........
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/downloads/democracy_flash/democracy_eng.swf
" It is very interesting how the reality of Israel bears so little resemblance to the view of Israel that is presented in the US media. "
Not the first time I have heard that guillaumeb......I'm the wrong person to ask why tho ...never been to America and struggle to understand American Jews like oberliner and their politics .
I'm an Israeli atheist .....this is what I believe :.....
Israel must be free of, and from, religion
A liberal state cannot be subject to the dictates of religion and the halakha.
Haaretz Editorial
Two days ago the High Court heard a series of petitions concerning the opening of businesses in Tel Aviv on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. The hearing was largely devoted to the question of authority: Who is supposed to determine urban identity and character – the local authority or the central government?
As expected, both sides argued they should be given the presumption of authority. The Tel Aviv municipality explained that “the local authority is the elected body that balances between the city’s various groups.” The Interior Ministry insisted the minister is not exceeding his authority, and that “the previous minister left the decision to the new minister, and he has yet to decide his position on the matter.” At the end of the hearing, the court ordered the present interior minister to make a decision on the issue within three months.
The “previous minister,” Gideon Saar, is responsible for the original sin here. In June 2014, Saar vetoed the Tel Aviv municipality bylaw that would permit grocery stores and kiosks to operate on Shabbat. Having become more religious himself, and perhaps motivated as well by a desire to get closer to the prime minister’s seat, he chose to disregard Tel Aviv’s secular identity, explaining that “the principle of the weekly day of rest is a fundamental principle in our country… the Jewish people’s gift to all of humanity.”
Saar failed to understand that a “gift” can be given, but you can’t obligate people to accept it. Indeed, the secular public in Tel Aviv is not interested in this particular “gift” that the Jewish people gave to humanity. The secular public, which already has to put up with some legal prohibitions and restrictions in the name of religion, would rather operate freely and without restriction on Shabbat. It has no problem with religious citizens who do not wish to work or shop on Shabbat choosing to pray or rest instead.
When he decided to withhold approval of the municipal bylaw, Saar expressed concern for the country’s future. “What will the Israeli street look like on Shabbat not so many years from now, the blink of an eye in historic terms?” he asked. The simple answer to Saar’s question was provided the other day by Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, when she asked the Interior Ministry’s representative: “Shouldn’t the community be the one to determine the community’s way of life?”
In a liberal state, the obvious answer to that is yes. However, since the current government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, is ready to drag Israel backward in nearly every area related to individual liberty in order to bolster its rule, Silvan Shalom ought to be reminded: A liberal country cannot be subject to the dictates of religion and halakha. A liberal country is supposed to afford all its citizens freedom of religion, and no less important – freedom from religion.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.664938
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)And the differences between Canada and the US are far greater than most US citizens would believe.
As seems to be the case in Israel, there are many in the US who would be quite comfortable living in a theocracy. As long as it was a Christian theocracy. Many here clearly do not understand that freedom of religion also contains in it the freedom to be without religion.
My feeling is that for a country to be considered a democracy, people must be free to believe as they wish, and of course that includes the freedom to act by one's beliefs. As to your reference here to Shabbat restrictions, in the US, there are also towns that have laws that restrict or prohibit business hours on Sunday. This is also a reflection of religious beliefs about a day of rest.
Being from a country where the social welfare of all citizens is seen as a proper matter for state concern and regulation, I also wonder at times how people who are not rich can so easily be suspicious of their own government but have no problem with the richest 1% buying elections and politicians.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)....to continue your education .....
Israel tells Reform Jews: You’re not really Jewish, but your money is just Jewish enough
srael’s growing alienation with Diaspora Jewry is further proof of its desire to build a wall that separates it from everyone else.
By Asher Schechter 02:20 10.07.15
Another week, and yet another Israeli politician has managed to outrage American Jewry.
In what seems to have become a favorite pastime for Israel’s political echelons, Minister of Religious Affairs (and Shas MK) David Azoulay became the latest official to alienate some of Israel’s biggest supporters, this time by saying Reform Jews cannot be considered Jewish.
“Let’s just say there’s a problem,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, before adding “I cannot allow myself to call such a person a Jew.”
Ironically, the exchange began with Azoulay saying he did not wish to determine who is or is not a Jew. That is, before he casually excommunicated 35 percent of American Jews — the single biggest Jewish denomination in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center — in the blink of an eye.
Azoulay’s comments sparked international outrage. The Anti-Defamation League slammed his “demeaning and hateful comments.” In Israel, he was denounced by religious freedom advocates and both sides of the political spectrum. Minister of Education and Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennet rebuked him, saying “every Jew, whether he is Conservative, Reform, ultra-Orthodox or secular, is Jewish.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly admonished him, saying Azoulay’s views “do not reflect the position of the government” and clarifying that Israel “is home to all Jews.”
Eventually, Azoulay was forced to apologize. Conspicuously, he did so without apologizing at all. Speaking from the Knesset podium, Azoulay claimed his words were “taken out of context” and “used by those with vested interests to increase divisions within the people of Israel.” Having said that, Azoulay added that Reform Jews are still “sinners,” and that Reform Judaism “bears responsibility for the greatest danger facing the Jewish people - assimilation.”
Reform Jews, understandably, weren’t impressed with Azoulay’s apology. In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, the leader of Israel’s Reform Judaism movement, Gilad Kariv, said he does not believe Azoulay’s expression of contrition. “I believe the Azoulay of yesterday,” he said.[
As well he should. Azoulay’s words were no gaffe, but a clear elucidation of Israel’s policies. Azoulay’s statements accurately depict the true attitude of Israel’s religious and political establishments towards Reform Judaism, and indeed every brand of non-Orthodox Jewish faith.
They also reflect three of the defining aspects of Israel’s national character nowadays: its self-proclaimed monopoly on Judaism and Jewish identity, its growing affinity for isolationism, and the enormous hypocrisy with which it treats Jews abroad.
Reform Jews: victims of Israel’s theocracy
Last month, before he made international headlines, Azoulay made another inflammatory remark against Reform Jews. “They are a disaster,” he said in an interview with Israel Hayom. He added: “I don’t want to be the first man in the history of the People of Israel to legally recognize Reform Jews.” As of 2013, according to a report by The Israel Democracy Institute, Reform and Conservative Jews account for nearly 8 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. Yet despite being roughly the same size as Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community (currently around 9 percent), Reform and Conservative Jews do not enjoy full religious recognition and are banned by the Chief Rabbinate.
That is because while Israel’s Declaration of Independence guarantees freedom of religion, Israel is in effect a theocracy, where religious establishments, chiefly the Orthodox rabbinate, have absolute control over ceremonies such as marriage and burials. Only one brand of Jewish faith is in fact recognized by the state.
In Israel, the rabbinate, largely controlled by the ultra-Orthodox, has an absolute monopoly on Jewish matters, particularly those involving personal status. Non-Orthodox streams are deprived of having any real power over religious affairs. If a Reform or Conservative or secular Jew in Israel wants to get married, that person must do so with an Orthodox rabbi — or the marriage will not be recognized, unless the marriage is conducted abroad. Jewish burial, likewise, is placed exclusively in the hands of the ultra-Orthodox Chevra Kadisha burial society. Those seeking a non-Orthodox or secular burial must make do with the small cemeteries in Israel’s kibbutzim and moshavim, where civic burial is allowed, but is also very expensive.
This status quo, in existence since the founding of Israel, has given enormous political and financial powers to whoever controls the state’s religious institutions, predominantly, the ultra-Orthodox parties. It has also given prominence to a very narrow definition of what constitutes a Jew.
In Israel, anyone who isn’t an Orthodox Jew (or at least agrees to adhere to Orthodox customs) is a second-class citizen in certain respects. In that regard, Reform Jews are victims of Israel’s theocracy, and are in the same boat as secular people, Jewish-Muslim couples who intermarry, and same-sex couples.
In recent years, the relationship between Israel and the Reform movement has been especially tumultuous.
Azoulay is not the first Israeli politician to disparage Reform Jews. In fact, disparaging Reform Jews has become something of a national sport among right-wing and ultra-Orthodox politicians, and an occasional derogatory. In February 2014, Israel Beitenu MK David Rotem said Reform Judaism is “another religion” and that Reform Jews “are not Jews.”
This week, shortly after Azoulay’s outburst, Haredi MK Moshe Gafni rushed to his defense and said: “Reform and Conservative Jews are Jewish, no doubt, but they also stab the holy Torah in the back.”
Incitement inevitably leads to an atmosphere of hatred. In January 2014, a Reform synagogue was vandalized in Ra’anana, part of a wave of vandalism against the city’s Reform establishments. The vandals defaced the synagogue’s walls with graffiti. Among the slogans sprayed: “Non-believers”.
Who gave Israel the monopoly on Jewish identity?
What made Azoulay believe he had the authority to excommunicate Reform Jews? Part of it has to do with the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on religion in Israel, affirmed recently thanks to Shas rejoining Netanyahu’s cabinet, but part of it has to with something else: The assumption, articulated by Israeli officials in the past, that Israel is the center of the Jewish world. It is the same kind of arrogance that led Benjamin Netanyahu, following January’s terror attacks in Paris, to call upon all French Jews to emigrate to Israel, believing that a Jew who has not made aliyah is a Jew unfulfilled.
At the center of it all, there’s a huge, gaping hypocrisy, that is egregious in the state’s treatment of Reform Jews. While Israel excludes, disparages and mocks its Reform Jews, it is also dependent on the contributions and political support of Reform Jews abroad. Non-Orthodox Jews comprise most of America’s Jewish population; without their financial and political support, where would Israel be?
Essentially, Israel sends Reform Jews a conflicting message: You are not Jewish enough for Israel. But your money is Jewish enough for you to support us from abroad.
Sometimes, though, politicians get confused and inadvertently reveal this duplicity. In 2014, for instance, MK Shimon Ohayon of Israel Beitenu called Reform Jews a “bag of trouble.” He went on to say: “My message to Reform Jews is: Calm down. You don’t bring a very good dowry, only a bag of trouble, of assimilation, of disregarding Jewish education… Reform Jews say: ‘We donate a lot of money to Israel.’ And I say to them: ‘Calm down. How much do you contribute? $400-500 million a year? Half of that stays in the U.S. anyway.”
Israeli politicians never truly excelled in respecting other religions, but they used to at least be respectful toward other forms of Jewish faith (even if they did nothing to make Israel’s religious establishment more inclusive), especially those of Israel’s most important allies. This, however, is rapidly changing. Israel’s hostility toward everything that doesn’t correspond with its version of things has finally been turned against Jews who support the country.
Israel’s growing alienation with Diaspora Jewry reflects not only its religious conservatism and its hypocrisy, but also its growing isolationism — its withdrawal into political and religious narrow-mindedness and its tendency to build walls within walls within walls. And this, perhaps, is the most disheartening aspect of this story. If you only make friends with people who look like you, talk like you and pray like you, eventually you’ll be left with no friends at all.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.665301
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Some Republicans have made the claim that President Obama is not "really American". Presumably his black skin makes him the eternal outsider.
There are also many in the US who truly believe and feel that the US was founded as a Christian country for the exclusive use of white European Christians.
All that is posted here could, with some allowance for different cultural specifics, could and has been written about the US.
Perhaps all empires must degenerate into fascism at some point.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)SUMMARY
By caving in to ultra-Orthodox demands to cancel religious reforms, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disregards most of the Israeli public, focusing solely on his political survival.
AUTHOR
Ben Caspit
POSTED
July 6, 2015
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/07/israel-netanyahu-religious-reforms-chief-rabbinate-orthodox.html
Paradoxically, Netanyahu himself is a secular Jew. He belittles religious practices, is not a believer and does not observe the religious commandments. He grew up in a secular family, in a secular neighborhood, was educated on secular values and attended prestigious non-Jewish schools in the United States. Thus, Netanyahu’s actions are in direct contradiction of his personal beliefs, while he exhibits inconceivable political cynicism.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Israel does not have a state religion. All religions have the same status.
Israel's government is secular. A large percentage of Jewish Israelis are secular.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Plus your reply does not address the substance of the original post, which is much at odds with your claim.
