Israel's High Court Unanimously Agrees with Hiddush
Rabbi Uri Regev, esq. was motioned not to speak - the Chief Justices already agreed with him
November 12 marked a major, promising step in our battles that will surely become a landmark legal case on the road to ensuring Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Privately issued "writs of refusal" excommunicating those who turn to Israel's legal system for justice are illegal - the private rabbinical courts continue acting illegally in defiance of the law.
14/11/2014 13:47
Tags: writ of refusal · excommunication · supreme court · elad · rabbi uri regev
Elad Resident CC and Lawyers Rabbi Uri Regev and Edna Meyrav
November 12 marked a major, promising step in our battles that will surely become a landmark legal case on the road to ensuring Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. The case involves the clash between religion and state, between the supporters of democracy and liberalism, and those who wish to establish a state within a state, a domain free of Israel’s courts and rule of law, governed by Torah laws as interpreted by sectarian, private, rabbinical courts. On this day, lawyers Rabbi Uri Regev and Edna Meyrav appeared before the Supreme Court to present a petition that we submitted on behalf of Hiddush and a resident of the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad. The Supreme Court rebuffed the attempts of the many respondents (ranging from the Chief Rabbi of Elad to the State Attorney, and including the Mayor, the Municipality, the private rabbinic judges etc.) who tried to argue that the Supreme Court should dismiss our petition. Instead, the Chief Justices accepted our position – issuing the Show Cause order we requested, ordering all respondents to answer our claims by the end of December, at which point a hearing will be scheduled for further deliberations. The comments of the Justices, headed by Chief Justice Grunis, left no doubt as to their mindset and their disapproval of the picture that emerged.
It began with a simple neighborly dispute. One Elad family chose to build a balcony for their sukkah above the petitioner’s patio against their objections and without obtaining the required building permit. The construction of this balcony rendered the patio below unkosher for a sukkah, as sukkahs must be built below the open sky. The upstairs neighbor “explained” to the mother living below: “You don’t really need a sukkah because you only have daughters, whereas we have sons.”
Elad Family and their Lawyers
The petitioner filed complaints with the municipality and the police to no avail. As suggested by her rabbi and the police officers, she then filed a lawsuit with the Petach Tikvah Magistrate Court and received an injunction ordering her neighbors to stop building. Disregarding the court order, her neighbors turned instead to an ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court, of which the Chief Rabbi of Elad is president, operating out of the local municipal Rabbinate building. The private rabbinical court issued the petitioner a “Warning” and an “Injunction” ordering her to call off her civil lawsuit and bring her dispute before the rabbinical court, or else be declared as “revolting against the Torah” and an “Informer” and be excommunicated, all of which are patently illegal. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the same private court issued a “Writ of Refusal” against the petitioner, excommunicating her family, as threatened.
After the ultra-Orthodox woman, CC, turned to Hiddush for help, upon hearing of our work on behalf of those victimized by religious harassment, Hiddush approached the Attorney General's office regarding this matter. This prompted the Attorney General to finally release new and revolutionary guidelines they were working on, stating the unequivocal prohibition on issuing a “Writ of Refusal” with the goal of pressuring individuals to refrain from turning to the civil courts or calling off litigation pending before such courts. The AG guidelines describe in detail the potential criminal nature of such acts, in addition to possible violations of administrative and disciplinary rules when it involves courts and rabbis who are part of the civil service and public agencies. In severe cases, a writ of refusal could even be considered a criminal offense of Extortion, Obstruction of Justice, etc. However, in defiance of the AG’s clear guidelines, the Writ of Refusal against CC was not lifted by the private rabbinical court, even after being informed of his instructions. Moreover, public attacks were waged by many Haredi rabbinic leaders on the actual issuing these guidelines, expressing refusal to abide by the civil and criminal law limitations on using the threat of excommunication to assert their authority and prevent individuals from turning to the state civil courts.
The growing phenomenon of excommunication writs in ultra-Orthodox communities not only impedes on the rights of individual community members, but also undermines Israeli rule of law.
Hiddush petitioned the Israeli Supreme court to rescind the writ of refusal, maintaining that the private court had acted criminally beyond its jurisdiction, obstructing the Israeli justice system. The growing phenomenon of excommunication writs in ultra-Orthodox communities not only impends on the rights of individual community members, but also undermines Israeli rule of law. Of course, lawyers representing the municipality of Elad, the Chief Rabbi of Elad and the rabbis who signed the writ of refusal all denied responsibility at Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing. Interesting and of note is the fact that the attorneys representing the Attorney General did stress that the actions of the rabbinical court and those associated with it were illegitimate and possibly criminal, but that they had instructed the police to investigate their actions, and that their investigation was underway and therefore the petition, the AG claimed, had exhausted itself and should be dismissed.
When Rabbi Uri Regev rose to explain the petitioner’s case, the Supreme Court Chief Justice motioned for him to sit back down. There was no need for him to explain further, as the Supreme Court was in agreement. Unanimously, the Court issued the requested “Show Cause” order, instructing the respondents to show cause by December 31, 2014 as to why the remedies listed in the petition should not be granted. Short of ordering on the spot that the writs be nullified and taken down, the ruling could not have been more favorable to Hiddush and to CC and her family. Supreme Court Chief Justice Asher Grunis commented during the deliberation that private courts may not operate by issuing writs of refusal, and Justice Salim Joubran asked cynically, “Can one imagine that a private court could punish somebody who has turned to the legal courts for justice?”
This ongoing, existential battle on religious grounds between the supporters and opponents of the basic tenets of democracy penetrates even the highest levels of the Israeli Rabbinate. For example, Rabbi Amar, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and current Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Jerusalem, has publicly claimed that the laws of the State of Israel are a manifestation of Satan. He maintains that the civil courts are in the halachic category of illegitimate “gentile courts,” and so are its laws. Israel should be ruled, he maintains, by the laws of the Torah, and he has referred to the State of Israel with the language of the High Holy Day prayers: “May all evil will be consumed in smoke, when You remove the evil kingdom from the earth.” Reading his words, one should be able to better understand the theological basis on which the phenomenon of the “Writs of Refusal” has mushroomed and the extent to which they represent the ultimate clash between fundamentalist religious views on the one hand and the principles of democracy on the other, and why this case is of such tremendous importance.
The legal system cannot possibly move quickly enough to repair all of the damages done to CC by the elements that insist on running a “state within a state”.
While Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling was a ray of hope in a story of real human suffering, Hiddush is already preparing for the next steps. Once all petition respondents respond to the High Court’s show cause order, the substantive hearing will be set. The petitioner and her family continue to suffer the pains of the illegal Writ of Refusal. Her daughters have been denied registration to school, and it was only Hiddush’s legal action, appealing to the Ministry of Education, that finally forced the school to accept them. Her husband has had to leave his synagogue, and her own health has suffered greatly due to the severe stress and heartache. The legal system cannot possibly move quickly enough to repair all of the damages done to CC by the elements that insist on running a “state within a state”.