Sixty years ago, the Knesset passed the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law (1953), which stipulated that only the rabbinical courts had jurisdiction over marital status among Jews in Israel. The rabbinical courts' powers were broadened, rabbinic judges were released from being subject to the law of the land, and it was explicitly determined that "the marriages and divorces of Jews in Israel shall be performed according to the laws of the Torah."
No other democratic country on earth has such a law, and when we speak of the flaws in Israeli democracy, this is the oldest and most prominent of them.
When the British received the mandate over the Land of Israel in 1920, they consulted with the Arab majority and the Jewish minority as to whether to continue the millet system that had existed during the Ottoman period. This system had granted autonomy to the country's various religious communities, whose leaders represented them before the government. The Arabs supported the continuation of the system, while the Jews preferred to be under civil law. The British decided according to the majority.
Also in 1920, the Jewish community established a body known as Knesset Israel, a registry of Jews who were living in the country at the time who had the right to vote for the Assembly of Representatives, the parliament that existed at the time, whose executive branch was the National Council of the Jewish Community in the Land of Israel. Seven years later, the British recognized Knesset Israel. The haredim, who had joined it at first, left it. So did the communists.
To leave the Assembly of Representatives, one had to notify the British Mandate authorities. Everyone who was part of Knesset Israel paid taxes to it and agreed to obey the institutions it established, including the Chief Rabbinate, which controlled marriage and divorce. Those who were not members could marry in a civil ceremony and be recognized as a married couple by the Mandate government.
The state was in no hurry to legislate a new marriage and divorce law. As in other areas where no new laws were legislated, laws from the Mandatory period (and the preceding Ottoman period as well) were adopted, some of which are with us to this day -- until the story of Aharon Cohen and Bella Buslik changed the situation.
The couple, who had each been divorced from previous spouses, moved to Israel after the state was established. In 1949, they went to the rabbinate and asked to marry in a Jewish ceremony. The rabbinate refused because Jewish religious law did not allow a kohen, or member of the Israelites' priestly class descended from Moses's brother Aaron, to marry a divorced woman. Aharon Cohen appealed the ruling at the rabbinical court, claiming that he was not a descendant of Aaron and that his surname, Cohen, did not mean he was a member of the priestly class. Rejecting his claim, the rabbinical court ruled that he was a "kohen of doubtful status."
Although the couple lived together, they never gave up their dream of being married. Then, someone suggested that they take advantage of the fact that they were not registered with Knesset Israel (simply because no one registered for it once the state was established and it was abolished). This enabled them to take advantage of the loophole in Mandatory law and marry in a civil ceremony that the state would be compelled to recognize.
The political aspect
The couple approached attorney David Ganor, who gladly married them in his office. Before he did so, he took out advertisements in two newspapers stating that he was going to marry the couple. In the advertisement, he asked anyone who felt that either one might be unfit to marry the other to contact his secretary, Haya Tomshin, and notify him before the ceremony, which was to take place on Dec. 16, 1952. No one did.
On the day of the wedding, the couple arrived at Ganor's office in Tel Aviv together with two witnesses, a Mr. Fischer and a Mr. Hirsch. Also there were two uninvited guests, Sgt. Katz and Sgt. Fechter, police officers from the Tel Aviv District's investigations department. After the fact, the court defined them as "accidental witnesses." Cohen gave his bride a ring -- an act that made them husband and wife under Jewish law -- and the two witnesses, together with the bride and groom, signed a financial agreement that the couple had drawn up.
A few days later, Aharon Cohen went to the citizen registry office in Tel Aviv and asked to change his marital status on his identity card. The office refused to do so, claiming that the marriage was illegal. When the couple appealed to the District Court, Ganor represented them.
The couple claimed recognition on the grounds that the non-recognition of their marriage caused them social embarrassment and prevented them from receiving tax breaks and other benefits that the law provided only to married couples. A ruling was handed down 10 months after the appeal was submitted, but in the interim, the political establishment was in an uproar.
The National Religious Party, which was a member of Mapai's coalition, approached then-Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and said it would quit the coalition if Jewish couples were allowed to marry in Israel without the rabbinate. Sharett could not cope with so powerful a threat. He had to bring the new law before the Knesset himself, and his statements showed that he had been compelled to do so.
"The law's longevity depends on the adaptation of its implementation to concepts of equality, human dignity and human rights, which exist in contemporary civilized societies ... There are concepts in contemporary society that will prove resistant to any attempt to impose outdated ways of life in the future as well," he said. But Sharett was mistaken. The law's unsuitability for the evolving situation did not affect its longevity at all.
The first and only case of its kind
The legal establishment continued to deal with the issue in the shadow of the legislative process, which was rapid and firm. The court's ruling, which was issued about a month after the law was passed, rejected the couple's request for recognition of their marriage both because of lack of authority and for reasons of substance.
The couple appealed to the Supreme Court. Justice Moshe Silberg, who presided over the panel, represented the majority opinion.
"On December 16, 1952, in Tel Aviv, the appellant, Aharon Cohen, wed the appellant, Bella Buslik, by giving her an object of monetary value. On the basis of that act, they are to be regarded as husband and wife as of the aforementioned date," Silberg wrote in his ruling.
"People who have a religious outlook will avoid transgressing religious prohibitions in any case, and will not act as the parties in this case did. But in our country, those who are not religious have no way to enter the covenant of marriage in a civil ceremony under the supervision of the state authorities. In my opinion, the best way to prevent a recurrence of cases such as this one is to legislate a law for civil marriage that will allow those who do not choose a religious ceremony to wed in a civil ceremony."
It was a victory for the Cohens, and the Interior Ministry was required to register them as a married couple.
But this was the first and only time that civil marriage was recognized in the State of Israel. The new law, now 60 years old, prevented the possibility of such an event from happening again.
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