WUNRN
ISRAEL - COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN USA
CALLS ON ISRAEL TO PERMIT CIVIL MARRIAGE & DIVORCE
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the head of the Reform movement in
April 9, 2013
NEW YORK – In the latest in a growing
chorus of Diaspora Jewish groups looking to be heard on issues related to the
Israeli religious status quo, an American Jewish women’s advocacy group has
called on the Israeli government to adopt civil marriage and divorce.
The board of the New York-based National
Council of Jewish Women unanimously adopted a resolution at its last meeting in
March, made public on Monday, which called on the Israeli government to “take
immediate measures to create a mechanism for civil marriage in Israel and to
sanction marriage under alternative religious avenues.”
The statement decried “the monopoly of
authority given to Orthodox rabbinical courts in Israel regarding issues of
personal status, particularly marriage,” which it said “weakens rather than
strengthens the state itself by causing disunity, disrespect for the law, and
even hostility among Israelis and between Israel and Jews abroad.”
The latest statement is a signal of the
growing confidence with which American Jewish groups are beginning to tackle
issues related to Israel’s religious status quo.
For its part, NCJW has said it is committed
to pushing the issue of women’s equality in Israel squarely onto the American
Jewish agenda.
“We’re asking organizations to sign on,”
explained NCJW CEO Nancy Kaufman — especially organizations affiliated with the
Task Force on Gender Equality in Israel, a coalition of some 20 US Jewish
groups that work to support women’s rights and equality in Israel.
In 2011, the NCJW was one of the architects
of the task force, which includes the liberal religious streams, defense
organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, and groups affiliated with
communal federations, such as the Israel Action Network.
At the task force’s last meeting on March
23, just three days after NCJW’s board took the vote on civil marriage, “we had
a conversation about the next step.”
NCJW is not a large organization – it took
in just over $6 million in 2011 according to its annual report – but it seems
to believe it can make up for what it lacks in size through sheer activity. In
January, it announced grants to seven organizations in Israel, six of them
dealing with “gender segregation” and the seventh a group that supports gay
youth. The grants were followed by a trip to Israel for American women’s rights
groups in February, organized jointly with the Israel Action Network.
The NCJW statement makes a detailed case
against the lack of civil marriage in Israel.
“Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens
are denied the right of marriage solely based on issues of religion,” it said.
“Among those affected by the rule of
rabbinical courts are: Approximately 350,000 Israeli citizens from the former
Soviet Union (who gained citizenship under the Law of Return) whose mother or
grandmother is not halachically Jewish; all diaspora Jews who are eligible to
obtain Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return but who, nevertheless, may
not be recognized as Jews by the Chief Rabbinate because of non-Orthodox conversions
and, therefore, cannot marry; any couple in which the bride is a divorcee and
the groom’s name is derived from the traditional priestly caste (eg. Cohen,
Katz, Kaplan, Azoulay, etc.); individuals who have been declared mamzerim
(illegitimate by a religious court, such as children born from a second
relationship after the first marriage was not terminated by a halachic get
(writ of divorce), unless they marry other mamzerim; and same-sex couples or
couples of different religions who are not allowed to marry each other in
Israel but must marry elsewhere in order for the marriage to be registered by
the state.”
It is untenable to maintain a system that
denies such relationships the right to marry, the group charged.
The institution of civil marriage “will
not only deepen respect for Jewish and religious diversity,” but will “enhance
the principles of democracy in Israel and strengthen the ties between Israel
and world Jewry.”
Kaufman recognizes the sensitivities of
such a declaration.
“We’re an American organization,” she
notes, “so we respect the fact that the Israeli organizations will have to
advance this. To the extent that it’s possible, [our job] is to get American
organizations to put this on the agenda, whether at the [President’s]
Conference, the [JFNA] General Assembly in Israel next year… We want this to be
raised. We think it’s time.”
The declaration, she vowed, “was the beginning of the process. We’ve just begun.”