The arrest of Rabbi Dubi Haiyun for conducting a chuppah and kiddushin ceremony without a permit from the Rabbinate is a shocking disgrace. Indeed, Haiyun broke the law, but in this case the law itself is a disgrace, a law with a black flag flying over it. A law that states that marriages, even Orthodox, outside the framework of the Rabbinate, will not only not be registered, but they will constitute a criminal offense punishable by up to two years in prison, is a law that had no right to exist in the first place, a law that should be deleted as soon as possible from the Israel’s book of laws, and until that happens, we must ensure that it will not be enforced, just like the law that in the past that defined sex as a criminal offense, which was also not enforced until it was simply canceled.
By the way, this law illustrates how critical the Supreme Court’s power of disqualifying is, because our politicians do not hesitate to exercise the tyranny of the majority, and in this case even the tyranny of the minority that holds the government by the throat. After all, there is really no majority in the public that supports such a delusional law, and it came into the world only because of the surrender to the ultra-Orthodox and the Zionist ultra-Orthodox. And who knows, perhaps the true outcome of this day will be the final burial of the override clause and of the Orthodox monopoly in the field of marriage.
Yair Sheleg is a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, journalist, author, and publicist. Yair Sheleg has been an astute observer of the religious-Zionist world for many years. He served as a reporter for the newspaper Nekuda and was a member of the editorial board of Haaretz.