The new survey by Hiddush – an organization dedicated to freedom of religion in Israel – gives many reasons for hope. It gives hope that Israel will gradually improve itself – and also gives hope that the level of hysteria concerning state-religion relations in Israel will be reduced. In fact, it ought to be reduced, as the survey proves that most of the great problems are going to be solved without much need for aggressive intervention. In other words: save the campaigns for something else – the Israeli rabbinate is crumbling anyways.
Take a look, for example, at the percentage of Jewish Israelis who’d rather have a non-Orthodox marriage ceremony. Last year, 63% of Israelis still said they wanted an Orthodox marriage even in case all marriages will be legally equal. This year, the percentage of Israelis insisting on Orthodox marriage declined by a whopping 10% to 53%. Among secular Israelis, almost eighty percent prefer other-than-Orthodox marriages (78%).
But Hiddush updated their survey this year and added an interesting question. Following the one about one’s preference if all marriages were equally legal, they then asked what they prefer in the current legal situation – that is, when only Orthodox marriages through the rabbinate are legally recognized by the state. The answer: 33% would still opt out of the Orthodox arrangement. These are Israelis who prefer to A. have civil marriage outside of Israel, or B. cohabite without official marriage. There is no great surprise in this. Alternative marriages are becoming the preferred choice for many Israelis. In other words: Israelis, rather than fight the rabbinate, choose to ignore it.
This is a healthy attitude, one that circumvents the political obstacles to changing the system in an up-to-bottom kind of way – that is, convincing the Knesset, changing the laws, battling with the Haredi establishment, going to courts. Instead, the Israeli public chooses to follow a path that is inherently Jewish. Jewish law urges never to commit to a decree that the public cannot tolerate (see Talmud, Avoda Zara 36a: We make no decree upon the community unless the majority are able to abide by it). And make no mistake: it is not Orthodox marriage that the public rebels against – it is the interpretation of the rabbinate that it rejects. To put it somewhat differently: a significant portion of the public rejects Orthodoxy because of the rabbinate, and not the rabbinate because of Orthodoxy.
It is interesting to compare two of the answers in the survey: the one about marriage and the one about the Western Wall compromise and Israel’s inability to implement a decision that was already made by the government. This morning, a number of organizations appealed to the High Court in their quest to force the government into implementing the compromise. The public surely supports the appeal – in the survey 66% support the compromise, including 22% of religious Israelis (not Haredi). Morevoer, 55% of Israelis say that they would use the non-Orthodox platform near the Kotel (either exclusively or alternately) if and when it is finally established.
But there is a marked difference between the issue of the Kotel and that of marriage. The support for the Kotel is mostly theoretical, because many Israelis rarely, if ever, go there and hence do not care much about the arrangement available to visitors. Yes, they’d support the least Orthodox suggestion because of their dislike of the Orthodox establishment, but don’t expect them to be invested in such a cause.
Marriage, on the other hand, is important. A marriage ceremony is a meaningful event in every person’s life, and that is why we see a growing number of Israelis not just making a stand in answering a survey the right way, but also making a stand by taking action. That is essentially what the Haredi rabbinate fails to understand. It can toy with many things as long as these thing don’t really matter – as long as these things are not real interruptions to people’s lives. But when the rabbinate becomes an obstacle to the way of life Israelis appreciate and want, it will be cast aside and turned extraneous.
Of course, such things do not happen in one day. There is a process of gradual change. And don’t believe it when people tell you that Israel is becoming more religious, or a theocracy, or use some bombastic terms to describe the terrible religious regime under which Israelis find themselves. The opposite is true: the percentage of Israelis who support public transportation on Shabbat climbed from 58% in 2010 to 73% today. Transportation, unlike the Kotel compromise, is an essential service. Thus, the more Israelis feel uncomfortable with the current arrangement, the less it will be possible for the political system, the rabbinate, the Haredi parties, and all of the other real or imaginary demons to prevent change.
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