Nrp Threatens Crisis over Bill Permitting Either Religious or Civil Marriage

The National Religious Party threatened a coalition crisis today over a private bill before the Knesset which would permit Israelis a choice between religious or civil marriage. The women’s rights measure, introduced by Shulamit Aloni of the newly formed Yaad faction, failed to pass the first of the three Knesset readings required to become law.

But the very fact of its introduction raised the hackles of the Orthodox bloc which issued a statement denouncing “this attempt to change the marriage and divorce law” in “violation of the status quo on which the coalition is based.” The NRP threatened to “take the necessary consequences.”

Justice Minister Haim Zadok, speaking for the government, conceded that there was still room for improvement in the status of women in Israel but warned that the proposed bill was too far-reaching and divisive. Civil marriage and divorce do not exist in Israel where such personal matters are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Orthodox rabbinical courts.

The system, inherited from the days of the British Palestine Mandate and the earlier Turkish rule which permitted each religious sect autonomy on religious matters, is part of the uneasy status quo that governs relations between the secular majority and Orthodox minority in Israeli polities.

It has come under increasing criticism from more liberal elements in Israel but the governing Labor Party has always found it expedient to perpetuate the status quo as the price of NRP participation in the coalition government and in order to avoid a “kulturkampf” in a nation that has been menaced by its neighbors since its inception while struggling with internal economic, political and social problems.