During the three election campaigns, Blue and White made several promises on such issues, including introducing a form of civil marriage for the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who cannot marry through the Chief Rabbinate, making the conversion system more accessible and less severe, and implementing the Western Wall agreement, among several others.
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz made these issues a central part of his maiden political speech before the April 2019 election, and repeated his promise on the Western Wall at the AIPAC conference a day before the most recent election in March.
In Blue and White’s coalition agreement with the Likud, however, there is not one mention of any of those issues or others such as public transportation and commercial activity on Shabbat.
In the Likud’s agreement with United Torah Judaism, Shas and Bayit Yehudi however, there is a stipulation that the “status quo” on religion and state, meaning the lack of religious pluralism and the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate on such issues, will be preserved.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Stern pointed out that Blue and White would be bound by that clause no less than everyone else and said that there would be no change on any such issues throughout the duration of the government.
“This is a total betrayal. They put everything in the hands of the ultra-Orthodox, they capitulated on everything, just like they capitulated in the war for democracy,” fumed Stern, a long-standing campaigner for religious moderation.
He also noted that United Torah Judaism has for the first time been given the chairmanship of the Knesset Constitution Law and Justice Committee where legislation on religion and state issues are often heard, meaning that the ultra-Orthodox party will have even greater control over these matters than ever before.
Stern said the most damaging consequence of the failure to tackle any of the pressing issues was that the Jewish public would grow increasingly apathetic to these problems and circumvent them, leading to a diminution in its attachment to Judaism.
“People are already marrying outside of the Chief Rabbinate, those who might of are not converting, mayors are instituting public transportation on Shabbat without a broader societal agreement such as the Gabison-Medan contract to balance such things,” asserted the MK.
“People see they can live without sorting out these problem, so why should they bother. This government will continue to make Judaism loathsome to the public.”
Stern said he would continue to “knock on the moral compass” of government MKs when a threat emerges to religious moderation.
“I will expose their nakedness, but also nourish hope in the Israeli public for a different type of Judaism, not the Judaism this government represents, but a Judaism that embraces people and does not distance them.”