Theocracy in Israel? The Halakhic State is Here  

While we were busy dodging rockets and sitting in safe rooms, the Israeli government took advantage of our distraction to alter the place of religion in our government. The Knesset passed a law this week significantly expanding the authority of the state’s rabbinic and Sharia court systems. The law, sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism and Shas parties – whose parties follow halakha and ban women from running for office, among other things – gives the religious courts power to rule on civil disputes which until now were the purview of the secular court system and hence the law of the land. Now, halakha will decide.

“The expansion of the rabbinical courts’ authority is a law that will fundamentally change the rules of the game in the legal system,” says Israel Women’s Network CEO Tal Hochman.

Indeed, the rabbinical courts, where women are not allowed to be judges, base their decisions on halakha, or Jewish law, which holds some ancient patriarchal ideas about women. As we all know, the halakhic system limits women’s powers in marriage and divorce, controls how women dress and speak, does not allow women to testify, inherit, or count in a quorum, and views women’s primary roles in society as quiet, behind-the-scenes modest wives and mothers.

Rabbinic courts routinely favor men in their rulings and have a history of punishing women deemed insufficiently modest or religious. In fact, the gender bias of the rabbinical courts has birthed the infamous “race to the courts” for divorcing couples, where women run to the secular courts and men run to the rabbinic courts, because whoever files for divorce first gets the system of their choosing. And oy-vavoy for women who land in the rabbinic courts. Anything as innocuous as the length of a woman’s sleeves can be deemed evidence of women’s fitness or unfitness as a mother, according to rabbinic judges. Ask one of the thousands of women who have been subjected to humiliation in the rabbinic courts, not to mention women losing custody of their children for not being meticulous enough about going to the mikveh.

One can only guess how the halakhic views about women will impact the everyday lives of women in the legal system in Israel. Now, the rabbinical court judges will have power of almost every aspect of the tort system.

“This deeply problematic bill is being advanced in the Knesset despite strong opposition from numerous organizations representing both secular and ultra-Orthodox women, says Ms. Hochman. “In fact, a new survey conducted by the Israel Women’s Network shows that only 16% of women in Israel support this legislation.”

While we were looking away

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. After all, the push for a halakhic state isn’t coming only from the haredi parties. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the religious Zionist party frequently talks about this, and has told TOI, told Reuters, told the Guardian, and told Channel 12 that, “My goal is that the State of Israel will be run according to the Torah… as in the days of King David.” And MK Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of the so-called “judicial reform”, who is also religious Zionist and not haredi, has also been leading the way towards a more halakhic state.

The evolution of Israel into a halakhic state has been underway for a while.

But perhaps most offensive in this bill is its timing. Everyone in Israel is facing the psychotic experience of endless rocket fire. And while the country is half closed down for who knows how long, this is what our so-called leaders are spending their time doing. Not taking care of people’s needs, not ensuring that everyone has safe-rooms, not trying to end the bloodshed and war. None of that.

Instead, they are taking advantage of the fact that we are all distracted to turn us into a religious state.

More for women to worry about

This bill will have devastating effects on the lives of Israeli women.

This is on top of what women are currently dealing with, as the country is closed down, schools are closed, and working mothers are on leave without pay. We already know from experience how much women bear most of the burdens of these wars:

• Women are 24/7 childcarers. As schools and daycare centers close indefinitely, millions of women are back to taking care of their families full time.
• Essential workers are juggling it all. Women working in essential sectors – healthcare, welfare, emergency response – are expected to continue serving while simultaneously managing their own families’ safety.
• Reserve duty, again. The government announced that 100,000 reserve soldiers are now being called up, leaving many wives and ex-wives to manage families all alone – childcare, elderly parents, logistics, finances – while absorbing the emotional weight of fear and uncertainty.
• Single mothers have no backup system. When the country shuts down, they face immediate income loss without another adult to share the burden.
• Self-employed women facing the abyss. Once again freelancers and small business owners are watching revenue disappear overnight, again, after more than two years of instability and debt, and finally starting to rebuild their businesses and economic lives.
• Women who are most vulnerable. Women who were already in precarious employment – hourly workers, caregivers, domestic workers – are often the first to lose shifts and the last to receive clear information about their rights.
• Women in physical danger. Women in violent or unstable homes are now confined for long stretches in enclosed spaces, with fewer external safety valves and limited access to support.

Precisely at the moment when women need extra protections from the government, instead of doing that, the government puts patriarchy in charge, threatening women’s lives even more.

“At this moment when the country is absorbing non-stop rocket fire, this government is choosing to harm all women in Israel,” says Ms. Hochman. “It is deeply troubling how easily extra conservative MKs are disconnecting themselves from the public and handing over more power, more authority, and more control to rabbinical judges—at the expense of women who are holding up the Israeli home front. At a time when we are caring for children without educational frameworks, running with them in our arms to shelters every night, and asking ourselves: ‘When will decision-makers start counting us?’

“Today we received a clear answer: they won’t. In their eyes, we are second-class citizens—both in times of routine and in times of war.”

In case women in Israel needed one more thing to worry about right now….