Reform in Israel Claim a Victory with High Court Ruling on Marriages

In a breakthrough decision, the High Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must recognize civil marriages, including intermarriages, of Israelis and other nationals that are performed in foreign consulates.

The ruling came in response to a petition filed by the Israel Religious Action Center of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, Israel’s equivalent of the Reform movement.

The movement has called the decision the latest step “toward the breaking up of the Orthodox monopoly in Israel.”

The Orthodox, for their part, are fighting the reformers in the political arena.

The Religious Action Center petition was filed on behalf of a Brazilian couple married in November 1990 in the Brazilian Embassy.

The wife, Eva Goldstein, was a Christian who married Uri Goldstein, a recent Jewish immigrant who had retained his Brazilian citizenship.

They chose to be married at the Brazilian Embassy because Jewish law in Israel dictates that only Jews may be married under Jewish law.

Since the British Mandate, foreign consulates have had the authority to marry couples who are citizens of the country represented by the consulate.

But in the Goldstein case, the Ministry of the Interior refused to recognize or register the marriage as legal. The ministry had argued that foreign consulates could not officiate at marriages where one of the spouses is Israeli.

But the court ruled that the ministry had overstepped the bounds of its authority by using its own discretion and failing to register the marriage.

Regev said the decision would help countless new immigrants from Russia, many of whom are not Jewish, who want to marry in Israel but are ineligible under the rules of the Orthodox rabbinate.