Between State and Synagogue (Cambridge Middle East Studies, 42) by Guy Ben-Porat

Author:Guy Ben-Porat [Ben-Porat, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

The court addressed a similar problem when it ordered the HK to allow a widower to inscribe his wife's name in English and the date she died according to the Gregorian calendar (HCJ 294/91, Hevra Kadisha Jerusalem v. Kastenboum). “I wonder,” wrote Supreme Court Judge Mishael Heshin, when another appeal to the court was brought, “if there is any other nation so occupied, with such relentless intensity, with the writing on headstones” (HCJ 6024/97, Shavit v. Hevra Kadisha). The court, again, has ruled that in the clash between the HK concern for uniformity and the individual right to choose the latter should have the upper hand so that individual freedoms apply also in the cemeteries.

The court, in a liberal manner, has also defended individual equality when it ruled in favor of women's rights when an appeal against a decision of the rabbi of the city of Petah Tikvah that prevented women from taking an active part in funerals was presented. The petitioner, Rivkah Luvitch, a religious woman and the daughter of Charles Liebman, one of Israel's leading sociologists, wanted to deliver her father's eulogy, but the funeral home representative blocked her way, claiming that women could not eulogize. This so-called Jerusalem practice, separating men and women in funerals, adopted in Petah Tikvah, was not used in most cemeteries in Israel. Another petitioner, a religious man, joined the petition after his mother's female friends were not allowed to speak at her funeral. The two petitioners explained that they had no problem that strict separation was kept in ultra-Orthodox funerals, but there was no reason that this separation should be enforced in other funerals, especially in a city where the ultra-Orthodox were a minority and the HK was funded by the state (Ha'aretz, August 17, 2005). The practice of the Petah Tikvah HK, the plaintiffs argued, violated human liberty, freedom of speech, and religious freedom. The court in this case ruled in favor of individual liberties and ordered the Petah Tikvah HK to allow women to speak at funerals.

The court was also used by secular entrepreneurs as a stage to criticize the public conduct of the HKs and the government. Reports of corruption, unjustified high salaries, and financial mishandling at the HKs were often brought up by the media, and complaints of citizens being overcharged for services were common. In 2010, the court ordered the dismantling of the HK in Rishon Lezion after its managers were found guilty of corruption. Another report on misconduct in the HK in Tel Aviv was brought to the court with a demand to dismantle the HK (Globes, December 12, 1999). In the same vein, the Reform movement appealed to the court in 2007, requesting that the HK of Tel Aviv be prevented from transferring funds (public money) to charity, mostly for yeshiva students. Before the court's ruling, anticipating the results, the government announced that HKs could give only 5 percent of their earnings to charity and, according to fair and equal criteria, that only HKs not in deficit could give money to charity and that the charity would be supervised.

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