The status and place of religion in the law of Israel has been the subject of public controversy, leading to highly emotional outbursts and fervent debate. It is not surprising, therefore, that lawyers and serious writers have shunned this stormy field and have preferred calmer subjects. But this is not the only reason for avoiding a legal discussion of religion in Israel. The subject is strewn with difficulties, legal and extra-legal. The absence of a constitution and the almost unlimited power of the Knesset have resulted in a patchwork of laws which make generalization almost impossible. The provisions of law relating to religion in Israel are not governed by any general scheme. History, political expediency, party politics and, even more, chance are responsible for an amorphous body of laws which baffles outsiders as well as some Israelis dissatisfied with the present state of the law in this field. The present writer belongs to those who resent the use of secular laws to curb religious freedom and to enforce religious practices on non-religious persons. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the present account and analysis of the state of the law is not tainted by personal bias and that in this article a wall separating, if not State and church, at least opinion and fact, is established.
This article discusses the decline of the multicultural doctrine that has governed Western political philosophy and practice in the last part of the 2ff h century. This decline is felt in the USA as well as in EU countries and manifests itself in new cultural restrictions on immigration policy, in stricter loyalty tests for immigrants who seek naturalization and in statutes regulating behavior in public places (such as the anti-veil acts in Europe) and proscribing deviant acts based on religious tradition (such as the American law criminalizing female genital circumcision). This decline is also accompanied by rethinking the theoretical foundations of the multicultural approach. This rethinking was accelerated by the onset of the Islamist-as distinct from Moslem-crisis, but started before the 9/11 events.The article surveys the state of multiculturalism in a number of Western countries and pays special attention to the cases of the USA, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The case of Israel is discussed separately because of its unique features as a society plagued by a national conflict. In all these countries the principal issue is how to tolerate intolerant communities, how to treat religious communities whose tenets clash with the democratic and liberal values of the host country and how to balance the rights of the individual against the rights of the cultural group to which that individual belongs.The author challenges the notion that all cultures are entitled to equal treatment and excludes from this ambit cultures that clash with the values of democracy and human rights. The author denies the notion that consent of the sufferer validates such cultural practices and demonstrates this by referring to the former Hindu practice ofSeti-burning a widow alive, with her consent. Such consent is irrevocable and is always subject that it was given under social and cultural duress.The main brunt of this article is that the norms of democracy, equality, and human rights are not a culture in the ordinary sense of the word, as they are distinct from all traditional cultures and are the result of an intellectual construct founded upon the autonomy of the individual and on a rejection of traditional culture. This is the reason why these liberal norms should supersede any custom, even when based on cultural tradition, when there is a clash between the two. When there is no such clash, a compromise solution ought to be reached resorting to traditional judicial means of balancing contradictory values.
Israel is a country in which even simple matters become complicated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the relationship between state and religion has acquired a degree of complexity which baffles even those familiar with the local scene. The complexity is caused by three different and unrelated factors: (a) the nature of Judaism, the Jewish religion and, consequently, of Israel as a Jewish state; (b) the political system prevailing in Israel, which gave rise to an influential Jewish religious block; (c) the legal system governing personal status.The Jewish people combine an ethnic identity with a common religious tradition; religion could not be simply divorced from the ethnic factor. The experience of the individual Jew who forsakes his religion but nevertheless remains Jewish by instinct, could hardly be applied to all Jews, as an ethnic entity. The very unity of different communities, scattered the world over, was based, at least historically, on a common religious belief.The most dramatic demonstration of that sense of unity came to Jews in different countries every Passover, when, seated at festive tables laid according to tradition, they repeated the same ancient Hebrew text, ending in a prayer to be the following year in Jerusalem. That this yearning for homeland, for a return to Zion, had a religious origin, is beyond dispute. The very claim to establish a Jewish state in Palestine was corroborated by a Divine promise and by a long tradition of religious teaching and prayers. Yet out of this common faith, out of this religious bond, grew a common fate which gave a new sense to Judaism. Jews became united not only by their religion but also by a sense of unique isolation, periodically accentuated by outbursts of active antisemitism. It was on this sense of shared persecution, made more bitter by frustrated attempts at assimilation, that Zionism grew. It was possible to think of the Jewish people as a secular, nonreligious entity. Indeed, the mainstream of Zionism tried to introduce an element of normalcy into an abnormal situation, the norm at University of British Columbia Library on June 22, 2015 jch.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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