Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Israel’s Rabbinical Court Jails Husband Indefinitely for Refusing to Divorce Wife

A fascinating story from Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the country’s Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals has ordered that a man be imprisoned indefinitely for refusing to grant his wife a bill of divorce, or get, under Jewish law. Tzivya Gorodetzki sued her husband, Meir, for divorce in 2001. Under Israeli law, religious tribunals have exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce, so the case went before a rabbinical court, or beit din, which ordered Meir to give Tzivya a get. Under Jewish law, a divorce is effective only when the husband voluntarily gives the wife a get. Otherwise, the wife is an agunah, or “chained woman,” who may not remarry.

This is where things became interesting. Meir refused to give his wife the get. To punish him for contempt, and to encourage him to change his mind, the rabbinical court sentenced him to prison, where he has been for the last 10 years, the maximum term the rabbis could impose. Prison authorities tried various methods to make him relent, including solitary confinement, but nothing worked. Fearing that Meir would flee the country after his release, Tzivya went back to the beit din and asked it to extend Meir’s sentence indefinitely. In what the Post calls a “groundbreaking ruling,” the rabbinical judges complied. “The keys to your release are in your own hands,” the chief rabbinical judge told Meir at the hearing, “through the fulfillment of your obligations as a Jew. Release your wife and then you will receive your freedom.”

Accommodating religious law in a civil legal system is often problematic. Values clash, and it is difficult to know how much authority to give religious tribunals.  Countries adopt different approaches. From the outside, this particular accommodation seems extreme. Granting religious courts the power to imprison people indefinitely is no small matter. As I understand it, Israel’s Supreme Court has reserved the right to review the decisions of religious tribunals for compliance with Israel’s Basic Law, though rabbinical courts dispute this. I wonder if the Supreme Court will have an occasion to review this ruling.

Posted on by

Alderman on The Designation of West Bank Mosques as Israeli National Heritage Sites

Kimberly L. Alderman (University of Wisconsin Law School) has posted The Designation of West Bank Mosques as Israeli National Heritage Sites: Using the 1954 Hague Convention to Protect Against in Situ Cultural Appropriation. The abstract follows. – ARH

This Article considers whether the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (“1954 Hague Convention”) should extend to protect against in situ appropriation of culturally significant sites. This Article examines the text and spirit of the 1954 Hague Convention, and inquires whether the 1954 Hague Convention imposes an obligation on its Signing Parties to protect not just the physical integrity of culturally significant sites, but also the relationship of local peoples with those sites. This Article uses the recent dispute over the Ibrahimi and Bilal Bin Rabah Mosques (also called the Cave of Machpelah and Rachel’s Tomb, respectively) on the Palestinian West Bank as a lens through which to make this inquiry.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Jerusalem Post on Israel’s Christians

From the Jerusalem Post, an interesting article on Israel’s small Christian minority. Christians, the Post says, who comprise about 2% of the population, are both “thriving” and “beleaguered”: their level of unemployment is lower, and their test scores on national matriculation exams higher, than the general population, but they are also subject to acts of “petty discrimination.” The majority of Israel’s Christians are Palestinian Arabs, but there are also Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Greeks, and Syriacs. A new and growing “Hebrew Catholic” community exists are well  — Catholics who have grown up in Israel and attend Mass in Hebrew.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

No More “Back of the Bus” in Israel

From Reuters yesterday, an article about a recent protest against segregated seating on public buses in Jerusalem. A group of women entered Bus No. 56 through the front door and sat in the front seats. The problem is that No. 56 runs through an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood that frowns on the public mixing of the sexes. In fact, until very recently, women on Bus No. 56 were told to enter through the rear door and sit in the back. Only this year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that women traveling on public buses cannot be told to sit in the back, and signs now say that people have a right to sit wherever they want. Segregation continues, however. Whatever secular law requires, many ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem — and not only men, according to the article — believe that the Torah forbids the mixing of men and women on buses; other Torah experts dispute this. The author draws on the protest to highlight the increasingly bitter divide between secular and religious Jews in Israel. – MLM

Posted on by

Brandes on Human Dignity and Constitutional Rights Jurisprudence in Israel

Tamar Hostovsky Brandes (Ono Academic College – Faculty of Law) has posted Human Dignity as a Central Pillar in Constitutional Rights Jurisprudence in Israel: Definitions and Parameters. The abstract follows.  –JKH

This paper examines the role the concept of Human Dignity has played in constitutional rights jurisprudence in Israel since the enactment of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, in particular with regard to the recognition of rights not explicitly included in the Basic Law.

The right to Human Dignity has served as the primary source of recognition of unenumerated rights in Israel. This paper examines the methods employed by the Supreme Court in determining which unenumerated rights fall within the scope of the Basic Law. It examines the theories of interpretation applied by the Court when recognizing unenumerated rights and the judicial rhetoric used throughout the years to justify recognition of unenumerated rights.

Posted on by

Einhorn on Family Unions in Israel

Talia Einhorn (Tel Aviv University) has posted Family Unions in Israel – The Tensions between Religious Law and Secular Law and the Quest for Coherent Law. The abstract follows. –JKH

In two decisions of the Israel Supreme Court concerning family relations, the meaning of traditional concepts has come to play a vital role in the debate. The first concerned a lesbian couple who were Israeli citizens. While residing for two years as students in Los Angeles, California, one of them gave birth following artificial insemination. The other spouse adopted the child. Both were entered in the LA civil register as the child’s parents. Upon their return to Israel, they each applied to be registered as ‘mother’ of the child (the Israeli civil register admits the registration of ‘father’ and ‘mother’ but has no neutral category of ‘parent,’ as in LA). The State authorities declined, arguing that they can enter the name of only one woman as being a child’s ‘mother’ in the civil register. Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Mautner’s “Law & the Culture of Israel”

I want to flag Law & the Culture of Israel (OUP 2011), by Menachem Mautner (Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University) as a very worthwhile looking contribution dealing with the question of how law, religion, and cultural have interacted and affected one another in Israel.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

Menachem Mautner offers a compelling account of Israeli law as a site for the struggle over the shaping of Israeli culture. On the one hand, a secular, liberal group wishes to associate Israel with Western culture and to link Israeli law to Anglo-American liberalism. On the other hand, a religious group wishes to associate Israeli culture with traditional Jewish culture, and to found Israeli law on traditional Jewish law. The struggle between secular and religious Jews has been part of the life of the Jewish people in the past 300 years. It resurged in the 1970s with the rise of religious fundamentalism and the decline of the political and cultural hegemony of the Labor movement. The secular group reacted by shifting much of its political action to the Supreme Court which since the establishment of the state has been the state organ most identified with entrenching liberal values in the country’s political culture. In a short span of time in the early 1980s the Court effected extensive changes in its jurisprudence, most strikingly adoption of sweeping judicial activism which is widely regarded as the most far-reaching in the world. The Court’s activism provided the secular group with the means for intervening in decisions of the state branches over which the group had lost control. With Arabs being a fifth of the country’s population, an additional divide in Israel is that between Jews and Arabs. Drawing on notions of multiculturalism, political liberalism and republicanism, the book offers fresh insights as to how to manage Israel’s divisive situation.