300,000 reasons for change.
Rabbinic monopoly on family matters must be broken
Zamira Segev, 3/3/06 (Ynet.com)

Anat was born in Israel, the daughter of a reform convert from the United States and an Israeli man. She grew up here, a few years ago met Yaron, fell in love, and the couple decided to get married.

The rabbinate demanded documentation and witnesses, and Anat – a native Israeli, a counselor in the Scouts youth group and a veteran of a high-ranking IDF unit, was told she is not considered Jewish, and therefore cannot get married in Israel.

Yaron and Anat are currently considering destination options for their marriage.

Difficult choice

They are not alone. Each year, thousands of Israelis travel overseas, forced by their country to buy plane tickets in order to realize their basic right – the right to get married and establish a family.

Maybe they'll go to Prague – a romantic city by any standard. Or perhaps they'll go even further abroad – to New York, Las Vegas, even Tokyo. The most common choice is Cyprus, and daily flights from Tel Aviv are full of couples who have purchased "wedding packages."

The choice depends on the couple's budget to appear before a foreign Justice of the Peace. There, far from home, family and friends, they'll listen to a recording of the traditional wedding march, exchange vows and rings, and at the end receive a marriage certificate that will pronounce them man and wife in the eyes of their country.

300,000 reasons for change

Each year on Family Day – an equal-opportunity variation of Mother's Day and Father's Day – newspapers and TV shows inundate us with personal stories of interesting families – single parents, older couples, young couples, single-sex families, and of course a mountain of statistics about marriage and divorce.

Out of these, the number that most sticks out is 300,000 – the number of Israeli citizens that cannot get married here.

Democracy?

Since its founding, the State of Israel has fancied itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. But the country has granted a monopoly to the Orthodox rabbinate in all personal matters. There is no civil marriage alternative, as there is in all other Western democracies.

This issue has always concern various sectors of Israel's population, but the problem has taken on new and devastating proportions over the last decade. In that time, 1.2 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union have arrived in the country using the Law of Return, but 25-30 percent of them are not recognized as Jews or there is a question about their Jewishness.

Most say they have "no religion," and therefore cannot get married via the rabbinate as members of other religions. De jure and de facto, the state has decreed them citizens for all intents and purposes, but refuses them the right to get married here.

Changing the law

Buried under a sheath of papers at the ministry of justice is a proposal for a "Covenant of matrimony" law, all ready for a Knesset vote. Will the government established after the upcoming elections choose to erase this disgrace and pass this pluralistic law that will give all Israelis the choice to get married?

The sheer number of Israelis who cannot get married according to Jewish law should concern all candidates currently competing for votes.

This anesthetized election campaign has yet to wake up. The Shinui Party, which promised in 2003 to push for civil marriage, has disintegrated, just like that promise.

The public issues currently in vogue move from Hamas to Qassam Rockets to targeted assassinations. There are promises of a social revolution and new social agenda; and the comatose prime minister.

But Yaron and Anat are still waiting, trying to decide where they'll go in the spring to get married.

Zamira Segev is the director general of HEMDAT -- the Council for Freedom of Science, Religion and Culture in Israel and the coordinator of the Forum for Freedom of Choice in Marriage