Amendment to allow workers to arrive late in order to pray at end of DST.
By JEREMY SHARONReligious Jews praying(photo credit: REUTERS/Darren Whiteside)
Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan has initiated an amendment to the legislation on daylight saving time that would allow religiously observant workers to arrive late to work in the last weeks of October in order to be able to pray in the morning, without any deductions from their salary.The new law, which passed its first reading in the Knesset this week, will extend daylight saving time until the end of October from its previous endpoint before Yom Kippur.But by late October, sunrise, the earliest time one may say the morning prayers according to Jewish law, is relatively late in the day, making it harder for people who wish to pray before going to work.Ben-Dahan’s office said this problem particularly affects workers employed in manual labor and in low-wage jobs.Coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud) agreed to the deputy minister’s proposal that workers who are accustomed to pray the morning service could arrive late to work in the last two weeks of October, without deductions from their salary.The coalition will now support the proposed amendment in the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee.“I welcome the extension of daylight saving time which will benefit the Israeli economy,” said Ben-Dahan. “At the same time, I’m working to ensure that Israeli citizens, especially those with low wages or who do manual labor, will not be harmed, and so I have requested that they be enabled to pray, according to their sacred custom.”
