In the XXI century

In Israel “bastards” (people that were born outside wedlock) are not allowed to marry!

At 5:30 a.m. on July 19, police officers knocked on the door of Dov Haiyun, the Conservative rabbi of the Moriah community in Haifa, and took him to the police station for questioning. How did this come about?

In addition to civil courts, the Israel Police also serve religious courts. When a religious court submits a complaint, the police can detain the suspect for questioning and, if need be, arrest him. In the Kafkaesque case of Rabbi Haiyun, the Haifa Rabbinical Court complained that Haiyun had officiated a marriage for a woman who was forbidden to marry, and did not report the marriage to the rabbinate.

The rabbi is a well-known and well-connected person. He managed to contact Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who directed the police to release him. The questioning will take place at another time, but the incident exposed one of the most embarrassing aspects of Israeli democracy: that religious matrimony laws are also part of the state's canon.

Today, Israel is one of the only democracies in the world where all citizens are obligated to marry and divorce in a religious framework, even if they are atheists. They are not allowed to marry outside of their religious community, meaning, for instance, that an Arab Christian cannot marry an Arab Muslim in Israel. Anyone who wants a civil marriage must marry abroad, and only then will the Israeli Interior Ministry register the individual as married according to the foreign wedding certificate. This is not a result of lenient legislation, but rather a Supreme Court ruling from 1963 in the Funk-Schlesinger case..

Israel's chief rabbinate only recognizes the Orthodox stream of Judaism and ignores Conservative and Reform rabbis. Orthodox Judaism determines who is allowed to marry couples in Israel, and it has published a list of about 1,850 rabbis who are exclusively allowed to officiate traditional Jewish wedding ceremonies. Unlisted rabbis are only allowed to officiate private ceremonies, which the state won't recognize.

The marriage and divorce ordinance, which is part of Israeli law, is a 99-year-old British ordinance that is based on a similar Ottoman ordinance. Only five years ago was a clause added to say that "anyone who does not make sure to register his marriage or divorce, or to register a marriage or divorce that he officiated for someone, is to be sentenced to two years in prison."

Rabbi Haiyun has been accused of this crime, even though he is not among those authorized to officiate, and the ceremonies he officiates have no official standing.

But this is not the whole story. The couple whose marriage caused the rabbi's detention was forbidden to marry, according to the Orthodox view, because the woman is defined as a "bastard" meaning she was born out of wedlock. According to Rambam’s Mishneh Torah book of law, such a person is not meant to "be part of the Jewish community" and is sentenced to eternal singlehood, unless she marries a slave, a convert or another person born out of wedlock. In the two years that passed since the wedding, the rabbinic court decided, "out of the goodness of its heart," to nullify this terrible sentence and release the woman from bastard status. Yet this development did not interest the religious jurists who directed the Israel Police to arrest Rabbi Haiyun.