Localizing Religion in a Jewish State

Yishai Blank Prof., Tel Aviv University

Abstract

Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether to close down roads during the Sabbath, whether to limit the selling of pork meat within their jurisdiction, whether to prohibit sex stores from opening, and whether to allocate budgets and lands to religious activities. They do all that by using their regular local powers as well as special enablement laws which the Israeli parliament enacts from time to time. The immediacy of these issues, the fact that the traditional powers—business licensing, traffic and road control, spending and more—of local authorities touch upon many of them, and the inability of the central government to obtain a nationwide consensus over religious matters have caused the localization of religious liberty in Israel. In addition, some legal rules induce and even force religious-based residential segregation, thus resulting in a relative religious homogeneity of local population. Hence, cities are able to decide to advance a religious—or a secular—agenda much more easily than the national councils. This process, however, had gone unnoticed by most scholars and courts. As a result, religious liberty doctrine has failed to live up to the challenges Israel is now facing: growing religious and national extremism and the ensuing risk of fragmentation and oppression of minorities. This Article shifts the focus from the role of the central government in regulating religion to that of cities. I argue that the particular form of decentralization of religious liberty in Israel had mixed outcome: it helped weakening the monopoly of orthodox Judaism in some locations and enabled diverse communities to flourish and express their unique religious vision; but it also radica-lized some religions, exacerbated tensions among competing religions and denominations, heightened religious-based residential segregation and jeopardized minorities.