Legislation For Uncivil Marriage Achieves Consensus

“There’s nothing more ‘status quo’ than uncivil marriage,” acknowledges MK Tzipi Livni.

Jerusalem, March 3 – Political, cultural, and religious forces continue to vie for supremacy in resolving the question of whether Israel will recognize civil marriage, but even the warring factions on that front agree that uncivil marriage does not represent an unacceptable departure from the status quo, and in fact must be legally supported.

Since its establishment the State of Israel has granted control over marriage and divorce to religious institutions such as the Chief Rabbinate, and a not-so-tacit understanding that such an arrangement would be permanent, a situation known as the religious “status quo.” In recent years, however, many in secular Israeli society have bristled at letting institutions otherwise irrelevant to them determine whether and how people may formalize unhappy marriages.

The movement for separation of religious and state institutions has taken on even more significance as some Israelis find themselves ineligible for marriage under religious law and seek an alternative path outside the Rabbinate toward obtaining that legal status. Naturally, the conservative establishment has balked at civil marriage, as it sees as its main role in administering marriages the prevention of unions that would further create offspring off-limits under religious law and thus compromise national unity and uniformity of practice. However, even the Rabbis most resistant to change recognize that official recognition of uncivil marriage would merely endorse what already exists in most families.

“There’s nothing more ‘status quo’ than uncivil marriage,” acknowledges MK Tzipi Livni, who spearheaded one of the civil marriage proposals in her erstwhile role as Minister of Justice in the outgoing government. “Whatever legislative obstacles remain for civil marriage, I see no such difficulties for uncivil marriage. In fact I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks it isn’t already mandated.” Livni has been married since 1984.

Religious leaders across the spectrum have uniformly embraced the formalization of uncivil marriage. “Our vision has always been one of marriage as a battelfront,” said Rabbi Huyim Sholbach of the ultra-conservative movement Marriage Exists for Religious Individuals and the Very Argumentative (MERIVA). “We have to think of our children, of the next generation. How are we going to inculcate sacred, traditional dysfunction in relationships without the proper, official context?”

Progressive Rabbis lent their weight to the cause, as well. “One of our movement’s chief premises is that religion should be molded to suit societal developments,” says Rabbi Tzeit Geist of Yeridat Hadorot, a Reform congregation. “In this case religion and societal developments have been in lock step for ages, and it’s the legislation that has lagged behind.”

Two competing proposals are in development, and the process calls for low-level bickering and passive-aggressive exchanges over the slight differences between them to progress over the next several months to outright hostility between the rival sponsors. By August, discussions over the bills will escalate to full-blown character assassination and direct verbal assault, giving way to mutual recriminations and resentment after both proposals fail.