Religion & State
Civil marriage
Marriage in Israel should stay in the hands of the religious authorities.
Israel has no civil marriage. Thousands of couples marry in Cyprus instead, and the state then registers them.
What is at stake
Israel has no civil marriage. Jews may marry only through the Chief Rabbinate; Muslims, Christians and Druze through their own courts. Couples the Rabbinate will not marry — many olim not registered as Jewish, interfaith couples, same-sex couples — fly to Cyprus, and the state then registers the marriage.
The case for
- A single Jewish marriage registry is what keeps the Jewish people one community able to marry within itself.
- Two parallel tracks would produce, within a generation, families of disputed status who could not marry one another.
- The answer is a better-run, more welcoming Rabbinate that resolves the hard cases, not a registry split in two.
The case against
- Whether a citizen can marry at home should not depend on a religious court's view of their ancestry.
- The current rule sends couples to marry in Cyprus and leaves many in common-law status, without the protections of marriage.
- A civil track takes nothing from anyone. A religious wedding stays available to whoever wants one.
Both sides get the same number of points at comparable length. That is a rule of this site, not a coincidence.
What the next Knesset could decide
The Knesset would have to amend the 1953 law giving rabbinical courts exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish marriage and divorce, or widen the existing civil-union register for couples of no religion. Coalition agreements have blocked both.