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15 Adar 5759 - March 3, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Religious People Have Civil Liberties Too

There is a law on the books of the State of Israel, known as the law of Rest and Work Hours, which requires Jewish businesses to close on Shabbos and forbids Jewish workers from working on Shabbos. Another law is called Equal Opportunity in the Workplace. It states that one may not refuse to hire someone because he or she is shomer Shabbos, and also an employer may not require an employee to work on Shabbos.

Because these laws refer explicitly to Shabbos, which is a religious concept, they are portrayed as "religious laws" and are often held up as an example of religious coercion in the State of Israel. In recent weeks, the Leftist champions of "the rule of law" have encouraged a Yerushalayim store that demonstrably breaks the law of Work Hours by staying open on Shabbos, portraying their efforts as part of their struggle against religious coercion.

In fact, the opposite is true. These laws are essential to minimize anti-religious coercion by those who work on Shabbos against those who do not want to work on Shabbos.

No less an authority than the expert on labor laws of the Israel Civil Liberties Union, Omri Kaufman, stresses that the motivation for the law governing work hours is at least as much social as religious. "Flouting the law also is an affront to the law of Equal Opportunity in the Workplace, bespeaking discrimination on the basis of religion. . . . We are disturbed by this lack of enforcement of equal opportunity," he says.

The secular press is full of complaints by religious workers who feel that their keeping Shabbos makes things difficult for them. Ephraim Lachish, an electronics engineer who lives in Kiryat Gat where the American semiconductor giant Intel is building a billion dollar plant (with almost $400 million in Israeli government financial help) was invited for a job interview at Intel. The first question they asked him was if he works on Shabbos (presumably stimulated by the large kippa he wears). He did not get a job there, and the company claimed that it had nothing to do with his religious practices. However the fact that the plant does work seven days a week and that it was the first point raised in the interview, suggests that the truth is otherwise.

It is disturbing that the question of a prospective employee working on Shabbos is asked at all in a job interview. If Shabbos was kept as it should be in a Jewish state (even a non-religious Jewish state), it should not be an issue.

Many people who already have jobs and then become more religiously observant, also have difficulties and challenges that they should not have to face in a religiously neutral state. Many complain that when they start asking not to be scheduled for work on Shabbos, their managers undergo a very noticeable change in attitude toward them. Even when they are fired from their jobs and they are certain that the only reason is their religious observance, it is usually impossible to prove, since it is always easy to find other reasons to justify an action such as that.

Even those who own their own businesses, and are not subject to these problems, are not immune to pressures of their own. If the competition stays open on Shabbos, there is pressure on them to begin doing so as well. Certainly they are free to stay closed, but the commercial opportunities are thereby limited for Shabbos observers, which is contrary to democratic egalitarian principles.

The rights of Shabbos observers in Israel should be protected. We argue this from a purely democratic and egalitarian standpoint, but we cannot resist adding some of our own truth.

"The Shabbos is the pearl and friend of the Jew.

" . . . Little do they know what a treasure they are casting away, who turn their backs upon this friend of their soul. Little do they know how poor they leave their children, who fail to bequeath unto them this pearl." (from "The Jewish Sabbath," by HaRav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch, in Judaism Eternal.)

He was truly a source of light to the entire generation.


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