MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Israel
Index
A Druze elder
Courtesy Embassy of Israel, Washington
Samaritan priest and followers on a holy day of
sacrifice
Courtesy Les Vogel
The basis of all religious institutions in Israel dates back to
the Ottoman Empire (1402-1921) and its system of confessional group
autonomy called the millet system. Under the millet, each religious
group was allowed limited independence in running its own community
under a recognized (usually religious) leader who represented the
community politically to the imperial authorities. Matters of law
relating to personal status--marriage, divorce, inheritance,
legitimacy of children--were also left to community control, so
long as they did not involve a Muslim, in which case the sharia
(Islamic law) courts took precedence.
The Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine was represented by
its chief rabbi, called the Hakham Rashi or Rishon Le Tziyyon (the
First in Zion), who was a Sephardi. The Orthodox Ashkenazim in
Ottoman Palestine, who never formed a unified community, resented
Sephardi preeminence. The secular European Jews who began to arrive
in large numbers after 1882 ignored the constraints of the millet
system and the standing of the chief rabbi and his council as best
they could.
Under their League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, the
British retained this system of religious courts (the Jewish Agency
became the political representative of the Yishuv as a whole). In
recognition of the growing numerical preponderance of Ashkenazim,
however, the British recommended the formation of a joint chief
rabbinate, one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi, and a joint chief
rabbinical council. This system was implemented in 1921, together
with a hierarchical court structure composed of local courts,
regional appellate courts, and the joint Supreme Rabbinical Court
in Jerusalem. After Israel's independence--even with the
establishment of autonomous secular and military judiciaries--this
system of rabbinical courts prevailed. An addition to the system
was a Ministry of Religious Affairs under the control of the
religious political party that sat in coalition to form the
government, originally Mizrahi and later the National Religious
Party
(see The Judicial System;
Multiparty System
, ch. 4).
In 1988, in addition to the two chief rabbis and their Chief
Rabbinical Council, local chief rabbis were based in the larger
cities (again, generally two, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi) and
on local religious councils. These councils (under the Ministry of
Religious Affairs) functioned as administrative bodies and provided
religious services. They supervised dietary laws (kashrut)
in public institutions, inspected slaughterhouses, maintained
ritual baths, and supported synagogues--about 5,000 of them--and
their officials. They also registered marriages and divorces, that
is, legal matters of personal status that came under their
jurisdiction.
Israel's Proclamation of Independence guarantees freedom of
religion for all groups within the society. Thus, the Ministry of
Religious Affairs also supervised and supported the local religious
councils and religious courts of the non-Jewish population:
Christian, Druze, and Muslim. As in Ottoman times, the autonomy of
the confessional groups is maintained in matters of religion and
personal status, although all courts are subject to the
jurisdiction of the (secular) Supreme Court. (This was true
technically even of Jewish rabbinical courts, but outright
confrontation or imposition of secular appellate review was, in
fact, avoided.) Among Christians, the Greek Catholic, Greek
Orthodox, Latin, Maronite, and Arab Anglican groups operated their
own courts. In 1962 a separate system of Druze courts was
established.
Sunni Muslim (see Glossary)
judges (qadis)
presided over courts that followed sharia.
The Ministry of Religious Affairs also exerted control over
Muslim religious endowments (waqfs), and for this reason has
been a political presence in Muslim communities. The ministry
traditionally was a portfolio held by the National Religious Party,
which at times also controlled the Arab departments in the Ministry
of Interior and the Ministry of Social Welfare. This helped to
account for the otherwise paradoxical fact that some Arabs--8.2
percent of voters in 1973--supported the neo-Orthodox, Zionist,
Nationalist Religious Party in elections.
Besides Christian, Muslim, and Druze courts, there was yet
another system of Orthodox Jewish courts that ran parallel to, and
independently of, the rabbinate courts. These courts served the
ultra-Orthodox (non-Zionist Agudat Israel as well as anti-Zionist
Neturei Karta and other groups) because the ultra-Orthodox had
never accepted the authority or even the legitimacy of the
official, state-sponsored (pro-Zionist, neo-Orthodox) rabbinate and
the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In place of the rabbinate and
Rabbinical Council, Agudat Israel and the community it represented
were guided by a Council of Torah Sages, which functioned also as
the highest rabbinical court for the ultra-Orthodox. The members of
this council represent the pinnacle of religious learning (rather
than political connections, as was alleged for the rabbinate) in
the ultra-Orthodox community. The council also oversaw for its
community inspectors of kashrut, ritual slaughterers, ritual
baths, and schools--all independent of the rabbinate and the
Ministry of Religious Affairs.
In 1983 this state of affairs was even further complicated when
the former Sephardi chief rabbi, Ovadia Yoseph, angry at not being
reelected to this post, withdrew from the rabbinate to set up his
own Sephardic ultra-Orthodox council and political party, called
Shas (an acronym for Sephardic Torah Guardians). Shas ran
successfully in the 1983 Jerusalem municipal elections, winning
three of twenty-one seats, and later in the national Knesset
(parliament) elections in 1984, where it cut deeply into Agudat
Israel's hold on ultra-Orthodox Oriental voters. Shas won four
seats in 1984, Agudat Israel only two
(see Religious Parties
, ch.
4). In this context, Shas's importance lay in the fact that it
split the Oriental ultra-Orthodox from Ashkenazi domination under
Agudat Israel, adding yet another institutionalized variety of
Israeli traditional Judaism to an already complicated mix.
The practical result of all these separate and semiautonomous
judiciaries based on religious grounds was that, for a large area
of law dealing with matters of personal status, there was no civil
code or judiciary that applied to all Israeli citizens. Marriages,
divorces, adoptions, wills, and inheritance were all matters for
adjudication by Christian clerics, Muslim qadis, or
dayanim (sing., dayan; Jewish religious judge). An
essential practical difficulty was that, in strictly legal terms,
marriages across confessional lines were problematic. Another
result was that citizens found themselves under the jurisdiction of
religious authorities even if they were themselves secular. This
situation has posed the greatest problem for the Jewish majority,
not only because most Jewish Israelis are neither religiously
observant nor Orthodox, but also because the hegemony of Orthodox
halakah has from time to time forced the raising of issues of
fundamental concern to modern Israel. Foremost among these has been
the issue of "Who is a Jew?" in the Jewish state.
Data as of December 1988
|
|