A leading American Jewish scholar charged today that “there is full freedom of religion in Israel for everyone–except Jews” because Orthodoxy is the only officially recognized (Jewish) religious group in Israel today.” He said that the union of religion and state as it presently exists in Israel “is not normative in Judaism.”
These comments were made by Rabbi Robert Gordis, Professor of Bible of the Jewish Theological Seminary, at an Institute on religious freedom sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Rabbi Gordis commented on the union of religion and state in Israel, saying that “in spite of the attempt to invest the contemporary situation with the halo of tradition, the historical truth is that such a formal union was not normative in Judaism. The creation of the office of a chief rabbi in Israel today represents, therefore, not a return to tradition, but an innovation, the value of which is highly debatable.”
Rabbi Gordis noted that “the innate tradition of dissent” in Judaism is such that “when the new and magnificent headquarters of the Chief Rabbinate was erected in Jerusalem, many of the leading Orthodox scholars announced that it was religiously prohibited to cross the thresh old of the building!” He predicted, however, that “the disestablishment of religion in any sectarian form is inevitable” in Israel.
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