Who can get married in Israel, and who can’t

The Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau, 2016

Yossi Gurvitz write in Mondoweiss, “People have been asking me: Yossi, what’s the mess with the right to marriage in Israel? I can’t make head or tail of it. Well, the issue is complicated. Let’s start with the basic facts: there is no way for anyone in Israel to marry in a civil service. Judges and mayors do not have the power to marry you. You need your local rabbi, priest or qadi. Why? There’s a long and tiresome explanation at the end. Let’s deal with the facts first.

The only courts which are allowed to perform marriages in Israel are the religious courts. A rabbinical court can marry Jews (well, some of them; see below for more.) A church court (of which each Christian sect has its own) can marry Christians, and the sharia courts can marry Muslims. There is also a Druze religious court, which – you guessed it – deals with marriage of the Druze.

The important bit is, there’s no possibility of intermarriage. A Jew cannot marry a Christian here. One of the couple will have to convert. If you’re unwilling to convert, or if you’re unwilling to submit yourself to a religious court, you will have no option but to marry in another country. The most common option is Cyprus, which is very close and where a small cottage industry related to Israelis coming to get married has already developed; Prague, in the Czech Republic, is also a popular option.

The Israeli government will then begrudgingly acknowledge your marriage. If you’re a Christian marrying a Muslim, a Buddhist marrying a Christian, or a Ba’hai marrying a Mormon, the state will probably ignore you afterwards. But if one of the partners is a Jew and the other isn’t, then the couple should brace themselves for harassment by the Interior Ministry. If the non-Jewish partner is also not a citizen, this can – and often does – end in an attempt to expel him or her from the country.

Also, if you’re a non-Jew who fell in love with a Jew, and you wish to convert, tough luck: if you convert to a non-Orthodox version of Israel, chances are you’ll go through hell before the government will recognize the conversion. And if you wish to be converted by the only state-sanctioned Jewish court, an Orthodox one, be advised that they will reject you outright if you admit the cause of conversion is love and marriage. Also, if you wisely chose not to burden them with this fact and they learn of it later on, they can annul the conversion. In which case, I highly recommend hiring one of the excellent advocates of Lucifer and Sons, as they’re basically the only ones who can get you out of this mess.

Hey, you wanted a Jewish state, right?”

The article goes on to describe who won’t the rabbinate marry and the historical reasons since the Ottoman empire and why the situation remains to date. Read more here.