The Constitutional Crisis in Israel: Religious Dimension

Many observers call Israel’s current constitutional crisis the biggest political challenge for the state since its establishment in 1948. Both parties—the coalition government and the opposition, as well as their supporters—are extremely polarized, with little room for compromise. While the major cause of the crisis (the reform of Israel’s Supreme Court) seems to be purely secular, a deeper look reveals a variety of religious aspects to the crisis.

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Interview: Ori Aronson on Religion and the Constitutional Crisis in Israel

Ori Aronson is an associate professor of law at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, where he also serves as the deputy director of the Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law. He is a scholar of constitutional law and theory, courts and judicial decisionmaking. Much of his research concerns the institutional conditions of adjudication and the organization of legal power more broadly, with a focus on the ways legal systems accommodate, reflect, and challenge cultural and ideological difference. During the 2023–24 academic year Ori is a visiting scholar with the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies. Ori Aronson was interviewed by Dmytro Vovk.

This interview was recorded before the first law to limit the Israeli Supreme Court was adopted by the Knesset on 24 July 2023. The text has been lightly edited.

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The Radical Regime Transformation in Israel Marks the Start of an Intra-Jewish Religious War

Gila Stopler is Dean of the Law School and an associate professor of law at the College of Law & Business in Ramat Gan (Israel).

Introduction

Simcha Rothman, member of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) and chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, is working with Justice Minister Yariv Levin to change the Israeli regime by taking over the judiciary and removing checks on the executive branch and its leader. Rothman was quoted in closed conversations in April 2023 saying that Israel is at the start of a religious war and that he has no intention of withdrawing from passing the reform. Rothman’s statement reveals the deep divide in the Jewish-Israeli public regarding the status of religion in the country and religion’s centrality in the current national crisis as well as in the question of the nation’s continued shared existence. The intensity of the intra-Jewish religious rift and its effect on the state are surprising when considering the starting point, in the days of the establishment of the state, when the religious minority in the largely secular Jewish population was small and its political power so scant that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion believed it would become extinct within a few years. [1]

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