Dei'ah veDibur - Information & Insight

A Window into the Charedi World

1 Adar 5759 - Feb. 17, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
NEWS

OPINION
& COMMENT

HOME
& FAMILY

IN-DEPTH
FEATURES

VAAD HORABBONIM HAOLAMI LEINYONEI GIYUR

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

HOMEPAGE

News
Why Are we Afraid of the Bagatz? -- Important High Court Statistics Complied by Manof

by Betzalel Kahn, Mordecai Plaut and Yated Ne'eman Staff

Manof, the Center for Chareidi Information, quoted a long list of former judges, writers, professors, politicians, and lawyers criticizing the interventionism of the court, especially in its capacity as High Court of Justice.

Moshe Landau, former president of the High Court, said, "What kind of democracy is it to give the task of reviewing decisions that were taken democratically [by the Knesset] to an oligarchic group like the High Court?" (Ha'aretz, October 10, 1997)

Nachum Barnea, a columnist for Yediot Acharonot wrote, "The State of Israel is not a democracy, it is a bagatzcracy." [Bagatz = Beis Din Govoha Letzedek, the High Court of Justice]

Attorney Gidi Frishtik wrote in Hatsofe (August 18, 1995): "I looked through all of the decisions written by Barak . . . and I did not find, in all those hundreds of pages, even one quotation from a Jewish source. I did find citations and precedents taken from sources in America, Britain, Australia, Germany and India . . ."

There were also very pointed remarks directed at Aharon Barak personally. "The approach of Barak is a danger to the basis of democracy," wrote former Israeli President Chaim Herzog in his book Derech Chaim. The late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin wrote, "My faith in Aharon Barak was undermined. He acted under the pressure of public opinion . . . He seeks to present an image as free from influences, but in fact he caves in to the pressure of public fashion" (from his autobiography Pinkas Sherut).

In a sheet they handed out at the atzeres, Manof also lists anti-chareidi rulings of the court in the past year. They include the following:

* against withdrawing a kashrus certificate from a hall which has a Xmas tree;

* against cancelling the kashrus certificate of a hall which has a New Year's Eve party;

* against the deferment of yeshiva students from military service;

* for a Meretz petition to stop the Jerusalem Religious Council from setting its budget for next year;

* for secular burial;

* to accept a woman in a course for men, given by the Employment Service;

* to force Religious Affairs Minister Eli Suissa to sign appointments of Reform and Conservative members to the religious councils;

* against the expulsion of a woman who is half-Jewish;

* to return a girl to a secular school after her father withdrew her;

* against political activity by town and moshav rabbis;

* a neutral stand on whether one must wear a kippa in a rabbinical court;

* for registering a Reform conversion;

* allowing an antisemitic campaign to encourage secular voters in Yerushalayim;

* against allowing the distribution of oil blessed by a rabbi to voters;

* in favor of including Reform and Conservative representatives on religious councils (2);

* in favor of holding exams for women pleaders in rabbinical courts;

* against double subsidies for Bnei Akiva.

* against political activities of state rabbis.

Altogether the list comprised 19 decisions of the High Court in the last six months of 1998, of which the High Court ruled against the religious position in 18. Twelve of these were in the month of December alone, giving the feeling of increasing momentum.

Other court rulings include rejecting a petition to allocate scarce special gas masks to wearers of beards, rejecting a petition calling to end discrimination against chareidim in subsidies, removing former Sephardi chief rabbi Rav Ovadia Yosef from his post on the Rabbinical Court of Appeals, allowing television broadcasts on Shabbos, rejecting the petition of a chareidi school in the Jerusalem quarter of Ramot to occupy vacant space in a community center, and extending the remand of a religious youngster for a month, although he was not charged.

The center also listed a series of court decisions negating the rulings of rabbinical courts in matters of marriage and divorce, division of property, and custody, and that a common- law wife may use her husband's name

Manof quoted legal scholar and journalist Ben Dror Yemini as writing, "As far as equal access, for example, the High Court is very wise about what the Netanya religious council should do, but much less wise about itself . . . in Barak's opinion there is no need for equality in the High Court." (Ha'aretz, October 1, 1997)

The sheet listed the backgrounds of the High Court justices. Twelve of the 14 justices are Ashkenazi, and 11 are male. Thirteen are secular and the fourteenth is a very close associate of Barak's whose background is only in academia. All of them studied at the Hebrew University law faculty.


All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is restricted.
Click here for conditions of use.