June 23: Civil Marriage Defeated in Israel

[caption id=“attachment_10727” align=“alignleft” width=“298” caption=“The Climate-Control Khupe — from Babushkin’s Catalogue of Jewish Inventions”][/caption]

A bill introduced into the Knesset by MK Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, to legalize civil marriage for couples unable to marry under Orthodox Jewish law, was defeated by a 58-18 vote on this date in 1976. The defeat preserved the Orthodox rabbinical monopoly over marriage, divorce and other personal status issues. A similar law had been defeated in 1963 by a vote of 37-13, with support largely confined to leftwing parties; another effort to institute civil marriage, including gay marriage, was defeated in 2012. However, since 1951, civil marriages, interfaith marriages, and same-sex marriages that are entered into outside of Israel have been recognized by the Israeli government; one out of every ten Israelis who married in 2000 did so out of the country, most often in nearby Cyprus. In 2010, Israel also recognized civil marriages for a very limited population of people (30,000) who have no religious affiliation. Nine Christian denominations are recognized by the State for the purposes of marriage, and Muslim marriages are conducted by Muslim religious authorities (mostly Sunni in Israel). Critics of Israeli marriage law contend that it conflicts with the Declaration of Human Rights, which states in Article 16 that “men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.”

“In 2009, a poll conducted by Tel Aviv University found that 65% of the Jewish Israeli community supports civil marriage, but 70% still say that it’s important to them to marry in a religious ceremony. . . . [T]hese results suggest that civil marriage would not undermine the Jewish character of the state, because the majority of Jewish Israelis would continue to marry in religious ceremonies” —Rachael Gelfman Schultz