A storm in the ultra-Orthodox parties following the High Court ruling: Deputy Minister Meir Purush (Torah Judaism) spoke today (Tuesday) with Ben Caspit and Winon Magal on 103fm about the High Court ruling regarding the recognition of the Reform and Conservative conversions and sharply criticized: “The State of Israel is the State of the Jews. We have no other words.”
Purush argued: “The court takes itself, sets for itself the laws as if it were elected or qualified or impartial. Every person has a good instinct and an evil instinct even the judges are not exalted from the people, in my eyes not the elite people and therefore put themselves as judges, as landlord, decide “For us in things unrelated to them. They have no mandate to speak.”
On the timing of the ruling, three weeks before the election, Porush said: “The High Court has waited 15 years, why did it not wait? He could wait. “He added:” The High Court cannot interfere in the basic halakhic things that it must not interfere in. The parties change the halakhah can not change why I have to explain why I am in the state of Jews and in the rule of Jews, the halakhah can be ridiculed when it “Our basis? We did not change a people, we are the same people who received the Torah. I do not change Halacha.”
“The High Court accepts the conversion of the same Reformer who stands with a priest and a groom, a man and a woman, it is a laughing matter of Halacha, of the Jewish religion. I do not think the Reformers need an audience of recognition. The conversion of people in whose eyes a priest and a rabbi can stand and sanctify a man and woman who in my eyes is wrong and it is anti-Jewish. “Do you want me to be moved by the fact that they also knew each other abroad? I am in the State of Israel, under Jewish rule. I am not moved by the fact that the reforms are respected around the world.”
Earlier today, the Knesset member spoke Uriel Bosso (Shas) with Golan Yokfaz and Anat Davidov on 103FM and defined the decision as “a very bad evening for the Jewish state,” protesting mainly against the decision at this time – three weeks before the election.
“There are things that the High Court had to roll down its steps from the beginning. “I do not think the High Court can make a decision that a judge can be a judge without studying law,” he said and attacked: “The problem is the High Court. There is no doubt that yesterday the High Court laid down the basic guidelines of the next government. A potato that we did not ask for to be rolled over to us, the same thing that the High Court intervenes in the outline of the Western Wall, now says compromise and see what you do. Why should I compromise? There is a regulator that decides what about the vaccines and the rules of the corona that the Ministry of Health calls it. There is one regulator on the subject of Judaism – the Chief Rabbinate. “
“In the Jewish state, the regulator – the chief rabbinate – must be trusted. There are rabbis who were elected and they are loyal to the issue. I do not require anyone to convert, you removed the concept of Jew and non-Jew from the identity card? I do not require anyone, there is a law of return. I want to know that my child will marry a Jewish girl properly and not legally. “
Also MK Jacob which Protested in the High Court of Justice on the decision: “It is difficult for me to understand the timing two weeks before the election, a political timing designed to put the issue on the agenda, it was possible to give the ruling a week after the election. I see this as a gross interference in the elections and politicization of the judicial system. “
Minister of Religions Jacob Avitan Threatened the High Court: “We are trying to preserve the status quo, but once the High Court has slaughtered this sacred cow, there is no choice but to enact the overcoming clause now.”
As mentioned, along with the legal debate, this is also a significant political issue, about three weeks before the Knesset elections and the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox parties reinforces the assessments regarding their intention to advance the enactment of the post-election escalation clause, in order to preserve the status quo. When Bosso was asked to insist that there be an overcoming clause at every entry into the next government, he replied that “I do not know if this is called an overcoming clause, but certainly a condition for the formation of any government – immediate treatment and regulation on the issue of conversion.”
The ruling was approved by a panel of nine judges by a majority of eight against one (Noam Solberg). In their rulings, the judges emphasized the procrastination on the part of the state that did not regulate the legislation. “We refrained from deciding on this issue for nearly another five years – out of a respectful attitude toward the respondent’s position, in order to allow the promotion of orderly legislation on the issue,” Judge Dafna Barak Erez wrote. “However, we can not wait until Bush, when the rights of the people are at stake, and legislation on the subject is not at all in sight.”