A new poll commissioned by the organization Hiddush found that a clear majority of Israeli Jews want more choice when it comes to marriage. As things stand, only Orthodox Jewish weddings are legally recognized by the Israeli authorities, although many have resorted to alternative solutions and expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Hiddush is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting “religious freedom and conscience” and “full social and political equality” regardless of religion, according to its website. For more than ten years, it has been conducting surveys to gauge public opinion on the issue.
According to Hiddush, the results of the survey have been consistent since 2010: Israeli Jews want more freedom in how they marry in Israel.
The study, conducted by the Smith Institute in collaboration with Hiddush, surveyed a sample of 800 Israelis and found that two-thirds of Israel’s Jewish population support legislation that would abolish the Orthodox monopoly in Israel and allow freedom of choice.
According to the results, which were published on Tu B’Av (an Israeli day of love, similar to Valentine’s Day in the West), reported“Sixty-seven percent of the Jewish population in Israel supports state recognition of all types of marriages, including civil, Conservative and Reform marriages. Among the secular population, 92 percent are in favor, and even 31 percent of those who identify as religious do so.”
Currently, Arab Christians can marry freely in all churches in Israel and Muslims can enter into a legally binding marriage under Islamic Sharia law. However, Jewish couples must have a religious Orthodox wedding supervised by the Rabbinate. Mixed couples or people of Jewish descent who are not recognized as Jews by the Rabbinate, Halachamust travel abroad to get married and then have their documents approved by the Population and Immigration Authority in Israel.
During the COVID-19 restrictions, lockdowns led to many creative online solutions for conducting a wedding ceremony, including one couple who discovered it was possible to marry legally online in the state of Utah without leaving Israel. Since then, many have chosen to marry via “Utah” to save the cost of traveling abroad.
The Hiddush survey also asked questions to gauge public opinion on the use of this option and what people would choose if they had the freedom to do so:
“According to the survey results, only 50% of the Jewish population would choose an Orthodox marriage, 22% would choose a civil marriage (8% – civil marriage abroad and 14% – “Utah marriages”), 13% would choose a Conservative or Reformed marriage and 15% would choose non-marital cohabitation.”
The current restrictions on marriage in Israel go back to a letter written by David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, in 1947. The letter was addressed to religious Jewish parties, especially Agudat Israel, an ultra-Orthodox political party, as it attempted to unite disparate sections of the Jewish population to form a functioning state.
Ben-Gurion repeatedly assured that the State of Israel would remain distinctly Jewish by protecting religious customs, including the observance of Shabbat, kosher laws in public places, the retention of the Jewish educational system, and the preservation of marriage through rabbinical courts. The resulting agreement, known as the Status Quo Agreement, was further developed over the years as details in each area were worked out and enshrined in law.
Since the war began on October 7, the Israeli government has withdrawn from the status quo agreement that exempted Orthodox Jews from military service. Hiddush now hopes that the State of Israel will also make changes to the law in the area of marriage.
“The irony is that the rabbinate has succeeded in turning tens of thousands of couples away from the institution of marriage, making them prefer to live together without formal marriage. Thus, the rabbinate has become the greatest threat to the institution of marriage in Israel,” Hiddush explained.
