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Israel
Religious Institutions
The basis of all religious
institutions in Israel dates back to the Ottoman Empire (1402-1921)
and its system of confessional group autonomy called the millet
system. Under the millet, each religious group was allowed limited
independence in running its own community under a recognized (usually
religious) leader who represented the community politically to
the imperial authorities. Matters of law relating to personal
status--marriage, divorce, inheritance, legitimacy of children--were
also left to community control, so long as they did not involve
a Muslim, in which case the sharia (Islamic law) courts took precedence.
The Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine was represented by
its chief rabbi, called the Hakham Rashi or Rishon Le Tziyyon
(the First in Zion), who was a Sephardi. The Orthodox Ashkenazim
in Ottoman Palestine, who never formed a unified community, resented
Sephardi preeminence. The secular European Jews who began to arrive
in large numbers after 1882 ignored the constraints of the millet
system and the standing of the chief rabbi and his council as
best they could.
Under their League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, the British
retained this system of religious courts (the Jewish Agency became
the political representative of the Yishuv as a whole). In recognition
of the growing numerical preponderance of Ashkenazim, however,
the British recommended the formation of a joint chief rabbinate,
one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi, and a joint chief rabbinical council.
This system was implemented in 1921, together with a hierarchical
court structure composed of local courts, regional appellate courts,
and the joint Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem. After Israel's
independence--even with the establishment of autonomous secular
and military judiciaries--this system of rabbinical courts prevailed.
An addition to the system was a Ministry of Religious Affairs
under the control of the religious political party that sat in
coalition to form the government, originally Mizrahi and later
the National Religious Party (see The Judicial System; Multiparty
System , ch. 4).
In 1988, in addition to the two chief rabbis and their Chief
Rabbinical Council, local chief rabbis were based in the larger
cities (again, generally two, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi)
and on local religious councils. These councils (under the Ministry
of Religious Affairs) functioned as administrative bodies and
provided religious services. They supervised dietary laws (kashrut)
in public institutions, inspected slaughterhouses, maintained
ritual baths, and supported synagogues--about 5,000 of them--and
their officials. They also registered marriages and divorces,
that is, legal matters of personal status that came under their
jurisdiction.
Israel's Proclamation of Independence guarantees freedom of religion
for all groups within the society. Thus, the Ministry of Religious
Affairs also supervised and supported the local religious councils
and religious courts of the non-Jewish population: Christian,
Druze, and Muslim. As in Ottoman times, the autonomy of the confessional
groups is maintained in matters of religion and personal status,
although all courts are subject to the jurisdiction of the (secular)
Supreme Court. (This was true technically even of Jewish rabbinical
courts, but outright confrontation or imposition of secular appellate
review was, in fact, avoided.) Among Christians, the Greek Catholic,
Greek Orthodox, Latin, Maronite, and Arab Anglican groups operated
their own courts. In 1962 a separate system of Druze courts was
established. Sunni Muslim (see Glossary) judges (qadis)
presided over courts that followed sharia.
The Ministry of Religious Affairs also exerted control over Muslim
religious endowments (waqfs), and for this reason has
been a political presence in Muslim communities. The ministry
traditionally was a portfolio held by the National Religious Party,
which at times also controlled the Arab departments in the Ministry
of Interior and the Ministry of Social Welfare. This helped to
account for the otherwise paradoxical fact that some Arabs--8.2
percent of voters in 1973--supported the neo-Orthodox, Zionist,
Nationalist Religious Party in elections.
Besides Christian, Muslim, and Druze courts, there was yet another
system of Orthodox Jewish courts that ran parallel to, and independently
of, the rabbinate courts. These courts served the ultra-Orthodox
(non-Zionist Agudat Israel as well as anti-Zionist Neturei Karta
and other groups) because the ultra-Orthodox had never accepted
the authority or even the legitimacy of the official, state-sponsored
(pro-Zionist, neo-Orthodox) rabbinate and the Ministry of Religious
Affairs. In place of the rabbinate and Rabbinical Council, Agudat
Israel and the community it represented were guided by a Council
of Torah Sages, which functioned also as the highest rabbinical
court for the ultra-Orthodox. The members of this council represent
the pinnacle of religious learning (rather than political connections,
as was alleged for the rabbinate) in the ultra-Orthodox community.
The council also oversaw for its community inspectors of kashrut,
ritual slaughterers, ritual baths, and schools--all independent
of the rabbinate and the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
In 1983 this state of affairs was even further complicated when
the former Sephardi chief rabbi, Ovadia Yoseph, angry at not being
reelected to this post, withdrew from the rabbinate to set up
his own Sephardic ultra-Orthodox council and political party,
called Shas (an acronym for Sephardic Torah Guardians). Shas ran
successfully in the 1983 Jerusalem municipal elections, winning
three of twenty-one seats, and later in the national Knesset (parliament)
elections in 1984, where it cut deeply into Agudat Israel's hold
on ultra-Orthodox Oriental voters. Shas won four seats in 1984,
Agudat Israel only two (see Religious Parties , ch. 4). In this
context, Shas's importance lay in the fact that it split the Oriental
ultra-Orthodox from Ashkenazi domination under Agudat Israel,
adding yet another institutionalized variety of Israeli traditional
Judaism to an already complicated mix.
The practical result of all these separate and semiautonomous
judiciaries based on religious grounds was that, for a large area
of law dealing with matters of personal status, there was no civil
code or judiciary that applied to all Israeli citizens. Marriages,
divorces, adoptions, wills, and inheritance were all matters for
adjudication by Christian clerics, Muslim qadis, or dayanim
(sing., dayan; Jewish religious judge). An essential
practical difficulty was that, in strictly legal terms, marriages
across confessional lines were problematic. Another result was
that citizens found themselves under the jurisdiction of religious
authorities even if they were themselves secular. This situation
has posed the greatest problem for the Jewish majority, not only
because most Jewish Israelis are neither religiously observant
nor Orthodox, but also because the hegemony of Orthodox halakah
has from time to time forced the raising of issues of fundamental
concern to modern Israel. Foremost among these has been the issue
of "Who is a Jew?" in the Jewish state.
Data as of December 1988
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