Dozens of corner
stores across Israel are at the centre of a divisive legal battle which is
tearing apart the traditional consensus about the character of the Jewish state
and who should be considered a Jew.
Gennady Ozadovsky's Super Ta'anug store - in the city of Karmiel in northern
Israel - is one of them.
It has shelves stuffed with everything from hummus, pretzels and pitta bread, to
low-fat yoghurt and beer. For the world it looks like any other corner
supermarket in Israel.
Ozadovsky, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, has offended the
sensibilities of his religious neighbours by stocking non-kosher products in his
shop, including pork meat, sausages and shellfish.
In response the local municipality, which passed a bylaw against the sale of
non-kosher food decades ago, has been trying to close him down.
Major victory
This month a petition to the High Court of Justice by several secular members of
the Israeli parliament, Knesset, resulted in a major victory for shopkeepers
like Ozadovsky.
In a unanimous decision, the judges ordered local authorities to change their
bylaws to allow the sale of non-kosher meat. The judges ruled that the councils
must take account of local feeling and allow the sale of pork in neighbourhoods
where there was demand for it.
The feud over the sale of pork has been become increasingly fraught –
and emblematic of a much bigger battle - in the past 10 years, since the arrival
of some one million immigrants following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s.
These "Russians", as they are universally referred to in Israel, are rarely
observant Jews and many brought with them spouses who were not considered Jewish
either under religious codes (halakha) or under the more liberal definition that
applies in legislation governing immigration to Israel, the Law of Return. Many
even considered themselves Christian.
The figure cited by Israeli authorities is that at least 300,000 of the Russian
immigrants are not Jewish by any criteria at all. A recent study in Russia
suggested that in 2000 only 27 per cent of those emigrating to Israel could be
classified as Jewish.
Knesset battle
These secular and non-Jewish Russians have settled in large numbers in
established Israeli communities, thereby challenging the dominance of the
existing inhabitants.
The biggest flashpoints have been in Tiberias and Karmiel in the Galilee and
Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem. There, in the late 1990s, a backlash from local
rabbis and religious inhabitants led to angry demonstrations outside shops with
protesters waving placards and shouting, "Pigs, go back to Russia!"
After the recent ruling the mayor of Beit Shemesh, Moshe Abutbul, said: "All we
want is that they [the Russians] should behave like Jews. Is that a lot? We
aren't in Leningrad and we aren't in Moscow."
Already the fight over pork is heading back to the Knesset, where legislators
belonging to the ultra-Orthodox community, known as the Haredi, are being forced
on to the defensive.
MK Igal Yassinov, of the stridently secular Shinui party, threatened last week
to survey workers in the Knesset to see whether a majority favoured pork and
other non-kosher food being sold in the building's restaurant.
During a Knesset debate he taunted the Haredi parties, saying: "We are no less
good Jews than you, and maybe even better. I don't tell you what to do, and you
should not tell us what to do."
In response the Haredi parties are threatening to introduce legislation banning
the sale of all non-kosher meat inside Israel.
Fragile consensus
The argument would be less inflammatory if it didn't reflect a much larger and
even more divisive struggle within Israel over the definition of who should be
considered a Jew.
Eli Yishai, chairman of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, described the judges'
ruling in apocalyptic terms. "The High Court has driven a central nail in the
coffin of Jewish identity in the state," he told Israel Radio.
The dispute threatens to tear apart the fragile Jewish consensus that has
existed since the state's founding in 1948.
Then, the Orthodox rabbinate managed to extract from the secular Zionist
leadership an agreement giving them exclusive control over personal status laws,
such as those governing marriage, divorce and death, and the right to define who
is a Jew for public records.
The rabbinate also requires public and government offices to observe the Sabbath
and kosher laws and controls the conversion process for non-Jews. The two other
main streams of Judaism, Conservative and Reform, have little influence on
Israeli life.
The Orthodox rabbinate's stranglehold on all the "Jewish" aspects of life in the
state has left the Russians - a fifth of the population - largely out in the
cold. Although they are expected to serve and fight in the army in the interests
of the Jewish state, they find the state reluctant to return the favour.
Identity crisis
The result is a social explosion in the making.
The Russian community has not been integrated into Israeli society: they still
live in their own neighbourhoods, watch Russian television and are often unable
to speak Hebrew.
Already there are hundreds of cases of Russian couples unable to marry in Israel
where there is no civil marriage. Jewish weddings are under the control of
Orthodox rabbbinate, but they refuse to marry off anyone who is not defined as
Jewish under halakha. Instead couples are forced to travel abroad, typically to
Cyprus, to wed.
The problem will only grow as more young Russians reach marriage age. Their
offspring, who will also not be Jewish under halakha, will be ineligible to
marry in Israel too.
There have also been numerous cases during the intifada of Russian soldiers
killed in action being refused burial in Jewish graveyards. There is continuing
bitterness over a decision to bar Russian teenagers killed in the Dolphinarium
suicide attack in Tel Aviv in June 2001 from consecrated ground.
On several occasions the death of a Russian has led to deportation proceedings
being enforced against a non-Jewish spouse or dependants.
Continuing dilemma
The legal discrimination against many Russians might at least be partially
reversible were conversion open to them. But the Orthodox rabbinate only allows
a few hundred people to convert in Israel each year.
In any case most do not want to convert. A poll presented this month by Marina
Niznick of Bar Ilan University found that few recent Russian immigrants
considered their identity Jewish. "I'm proud of being Russian," said one. "It is
humiliating to me to turn myself into something I'm not."
Still, the continuing dilemma of the community is written on even corner-store
fronts. Ozadovsky, the shopkeeper in Karmiel, said he has always made sure his
shop did nothing to offend religious sensibilities.
"We don't have any signs up," he said, "apart from advertising in Russian that
we sell ice cream from Russia."
