The Attorney General must enforce the law!

Hiddush demands appointment of women to religious councils

The ultra-Orthodox Shas party's Minister of Religious Services David Azoulay has appointed six “appointees” for four religious councils since assuming office after the May 2015 Knesset elections. Minister Azoulay, like his predecessors, has not appointed a single woman, despite Israeli law and the commitment the Ministry made to the AG office in the past to exercise affirmative action in this arena.

08/01/2016 11:42

Tags: gender ·  affirmative action ·  religious councils ·  Ministry of Religious Services ·  David Azoulay

Throughout Israel there are 132 municipal religious councils which oversee the rendering of religious services to the Jewish population in their respective communities. They are meant to be democratically elected. However, since the law governing the creation of these councils was designed to primarily meet political needs, it requires “advice and consent” by the local municipal council, the local chief rabbi and the minister of religious services. This is a sure prescription for trouble and deadlocks, and therefore it’s no wonder that 95 of the 132 councils (that's 72%!) remain un-elected.

By law, these 95 un-elected religious councils are replaced with two “appointees", selected by the Minister of Religious Services, who are responsible for administrating local religious affairs instead of a full panel of Religious Council members (who would represent the diverse makeup of the local municipal council). The appointment process gives further political clout and control to the Minister. An ongoing, systemic failure in this process, which Hiddush has taken up, is the rejection of women applicants for these senior positions. It is, we maintain, in breach of Article 6 of the 1951 Law of Equal Rights for Women, which mandates that women should be equally represented in public bodies, if they hold the necessary qualifications. It is also utterly in breach of the promise we received from the Attorney General’s office when we raised this matter in the past.

According to research conducted by Hiddush, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party's Minister of Religious Services David Azoulay (whose name may be familiar to our readers, for he is the cabinet member who reacted vehemently to the Women of the Wall, misguidedly identifying them with Reform Judaism, and declaring that he has a difficult time accepting Reform Jews as Jews) has appointed six “appointees” for four religious councils since assuming office after the May 2015 Knesset elections. Minister Azoulay, like his predecessors, has not appointed a single woman, despite Israeli law and the commitment the Ministry made to the AG office in the past to exercise affirmative action in this arena. Also unacceptable to us is the fact that as of now only 46 women serve on the 37 elected religious councils, an absurdly low average of one and a quarter women per council!

The data on the discrimination of the religious councils is completely embarrassing. This is not just an issue of exclusion of women; this means their voices go entirely unrepresented in local religious decision making. It's all bad, but the worst of it is Shas's Minister Azoulay and his refusal to appoint a single woman to the head of a council.

The data on the discrimination of the religious councils is completely embarrassing. This is not just an issue of exclusion of women; this means their voices go entirely unrepresented in local religious decision making. It's all bad, but the worst of it is Shas's Minister Azoulay and his refusal to appoint a single woman to the head of a council.

Having actively monitored and pursued this matter since we published our 2011 Report on Women on Religious Councils, we once again turned to the Attorney General and Minister of Religious Services demanding immediate change in policy and mending that which has been done to date.

We demanded that the Religious Ministry's selection process be frozen until an unequivocal policy is instated to ensure that women are given equal opportunities to head the State's religious councils and the shameful ratio of 1 and 1/4 female members per council be drastically changed. While we hold little hope that Minister Azoulay will heed our demand, we do expect that the Attorney General will take a firm stand against the Ministry's gender discrimination, and protect Israel's identity as a Jewish-democratic state. Hiddush informed the State officials that we will pursue legal action at the Supreme Court if the Ministry of Religious Services continues its disregard of the law.