Now is the perfect time to legalize civil marriage in Israel
Couples who are ineligible for marriage through the rabbinate are also now not able to fly abroad, making civil marriage an imperative.
By JPOST EDITORIALAs a masked woman looks on, Roni Ben-Ari and Yonatan Meushar celebrate their wedding at Ein Hemed, which is offering free, small-scale weddings for young couples due to restrictions imposed by the government to fight coronavirus on March 18(photo credit: REUTERS)
Thousands of Israeli couples cannot get married due to the COVID-19 pandemic, because they are not eligible to marry through the Chief Rabbinate and cannot fly abroad to conduct civil-marriage ceremonies.This is an untenable situation and now is a perfect time for the government to introduce legislation to permit civil marriage in Israel.It is an issue that touches many people and goes to the very heart of Israel’s nature as a democratic, Jewish state. There are an estimated half a million citizens of Israel, whose population now stands at over nine million, who are classified as having no religion and are not considered Jewish according to Halacha. Many are immigrants from the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, while others are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Others still, who had a non-Orthodox conversion must also marry through civil institutions.Israeli law does not accommodate civil marriages, and the state only accepts marriages performed through the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate or existing institutions of Islam, Christianity and other recognized religions. This essentially excludes matrimony of those with no religious affiliation and mixed couples.The Interior Ministry recognizes and registers marriages held abroad upon presentation of the proper documentation, including civil, interfaith and same-sex marriages but Israel’s religious authorities are prohibited from marrying couples unless both partners share the same religion meaning that interfaith couples can only be legally married if one of the partners converts to the religion of the other.Until the coronavirus outbreak, marriages abroad were popular, with thousands of couples registering weddings overseas every year. Since the country’s borders were closed due to COVID-19 six months ago, Israeli couples have been unable to travel abroad to places like Cyprus or the Czech Republic to get married.As reported by the Post’s Jeremy Sharon, the Knesset Interior Committee held a session on the matter on Monday, at the request of MKs Evgeny Sova (Yisrael Beytenu), Andrey Kozhinov (Yesh Atid-Telem), Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) and Sharren Haskel (Likud).Two possible solutions were proposed: The first, presented by Sova and Kozhinov, is to allow couples to get married in civil ceremonies at the embassies of foreign countries in Israel. The second, proposed by Horowitz, is to temporarily expand a law passed in 2010 allowing two people classified as “without religion” to marry in a civil ceremony in Israel to citizens who cannot marry through the rabbinate or other religious institutions.“What is the difference between registering for marriage at an embassy and a wedding in Varna?” Kozhinov asked.“The State of Israel is humiliating its citizens,” said Sova. “Thousands of couples are in a crazy situation unprecedented anywhere else in the world – people are not able to get married.”
“The reality of a half million Israelis who have no way to marry in Israel is intolerable,” said MK Tehila Friedman (Blue and White). “As a religious person, I prefer the registration of marriages in place of the current situation in which thousands of people cohabit without being registered anywhere.”Rabbi Aharon Leibowitz, founder of the Chuppot organization – which offers non-state, Orthodox weddings – noted that, regardless of the COVID-19 crisis, hundreds of Israeli couples are marrying outside the rabbinate in one form or another. “It is unconscionable that the only western country where a Jew can’t get married the way he wants is in Israel,” Leibowitz said.“There should be a possibility to have various marriage tracks and to maintain a register of who is married according to Jewish law and who is not. for the purposes of determining who needs a divorce in accordance with Jewish law.”In 2010, the Knesset passed the Civil Union Law for Citizens with no Religious Affiliation, allowing a couple to form a civil union in Israel if they are both registered as not belonging to any religion. Ten years later, we urge the government and members of Knesset to push through new legislation to legalize civil marriage in Israel, including same-sex weddings.Not only would the move indicate acceptance of non-orthodox unions, it could boost aliyah and improve Israel’s image as a democratic and inclusive society.
