A new Knesset law lets state-run religious courts arbitrate some civil disputes by consent, setting up a likely Supreme Court battle over equality, coercion, and state authority
The Knesset has passed a law allowing state-run rabbinical and Sharia courts to arbitrate certain civil disputes when all parties agree, reigniting a long-running fight over the role of religious courts beyond marriage and divorce. Supporters say the measure restores an arrangement halted by a 2006 Supreme Court ruling. Critics say it gives state-backed force to religious rulings in civil disputes in a way that may violate constitutional principles.
The bill, formally titled the Adjudication of Religious Courts Bill (Arbitration), 2025, passed its second and third readings last week by a vote of 65-41.
Its approval followed years of failed efforts to revive powers that supporters say religious courts had exercised in practice before the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that rabbinical courts lacked explicit statutory authority to conduct arbitration.
Under the new law, rabbinical and Sharia courts may hear certain civil matters as arbitrators if all parties sign an official arbitration form. The law excludes criminal matters, administrative cases, disputes already under a religious court’s statutory jurisdiction, matters between married or formerly married spouses, cases involving the state or local authorities, and several categories of labor and disciplinary disputes.
Rulings may follow religious law but may not violate certain protected rights under Israeli law, including women’s equal rights, nonwaivable labor protections, disability rights, and other mandatory statutory protections. Unlike many private arbitration decisions, these rulings will be enforceable as court judgments.
For Simcha Rothman, chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and one of the law’s leading defenders, the legislation has been badly misrepresented. Rothman told The Media Line that the measure is “about restoring the status quo and respecting the rabbinical court system that has existed in Israel since before the state was founded.”
“In 2006, the court decided that if it is not explicitly written in law, then religious courts cannot conduct arbitration,” Rothman said, describing the ruling as a break with a long-standing arrangement. In his view, the Knesset has now written into law what had existed in practice for decades.
Rothman also rejected the claim that the law masks coercion behind formal consent. Asked how “free and voluntary consent” can be guaranteed in close-knit communities, he answered with a broader philosophical argument. “If you try to imagine a person completely free of cultural, social, or family influence, then there is no such thing as consent in the world,” he said. “People agree to things because of their culture, their community, their environment. That is not coercion. That is how society functions.”
He also argued that critics ignore the alternative that already exists in Israel: private religious arbitration outside the state system, often with less oversight. “What this law does is give a person the ability to say: I want religious arbitration, but in a state-sanctioned court with rules, oversight, and legal protections,” Rothman said.
Rothman made a similar argument on contractual pressure. “If I want disputes to be resolved under Singapore law, or under halachic law, that is my right,” he said. “That is freedom of contract.”
This is not an expansion. It is a restoration.
He insisted the law should not be seen as a step toward theocracy. “This is not an expansion,” he said. “It is a restoration.” Rothman added that he has no current plans to seek criminal or tort powers for rabbinical courts absent the parties’ consent, and said claims that the law turns Israel into a halachic state are detached from both history and the law’s actual text.
Some of the strongest criticism, however, has come not from secular activists but from observant lawmakers.
Religion, first and foremost, is something between a person and God. The less the state interferes in that relationship, the better.
Moshe Tur-Paz, a religiously observant lawmaker from Yesh Atid, told The Media Line that for him, the issue begins with a principle larger than the bill itself. “Religion, first and foremost, is something between a person and God,” he said. “The less the state interferes in that relationship, the better.”
Tur-Paz said the problem is not religious arbitration in theory but how it works in real life. “The idea sounds good in theory. People choosing their preferred court,” he said. “But the moment you introduce choice, problems begin.”
He said formal consent could mask practical pressure from landlords, employers, or even future spouses who insist in advance that disputes be heard in a religious court. “A landlord can say: if you want to rent my apartment, you must agree in advance to go to a religious court,” he said. “Most people will give up their right to go to a civil court.”
“In many cases, this is not a decision between two equal parties,” Tur-Paz added. “It is between a strong person and a weaker one.”
Tur-Paz also cast the issue as one of democratic standards. “Some democratic principles are not fully reflected in religious courts,” he said, pointing in particular to the absence of women judges in rabbinical courts. “This law does not make Judaism more beloved. It risks making religion appear more aggressive in the eyes of the public.”
Barak Medina, a constitutional law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the core issue is not private religious arbitration itself but the state’s decision to enforce religious rulings through public courts. “It is arbitration in the sense that both parties must agree, but it is not arbitration in the sense of enforcement, because the decision is binding like a court judgment,” Medina told The Media Line.
For Medina, the key question is whether the state should operate, fund, and enforce a system that may produce outcomes inconsistent with equality protections. Private religious arbitration already exists, he said, but this law goes further by giving religious rulings the force of court judgments. “The government should not provide or enforce services that are discriminatory,” he said. “I do not think that the government should sponsor, provide public funding, and enforce decisions of an institution that discriminates so harshly against women.”
Medina also rejected Rothman’s argument that the law merely restores powers that were wrongly taken away. The 2006 Supreme Court ruling, he said, did not strip the rabbinical courts of authority they lawfully possessed. Rather, it clarified that they had never had that authority under existing law. “The Knesset tries to provide them a new power that the court [in 2006] ruled that they did not have in the first place.”
The outcomes can be completely different
He further warned that the law could produce different outcomes for citizens in similar disputes depending on which forum they use. Asked whether religious adjudication could diverge from the standards of Israel’s civil legal system, Medina did not hesitate. “The outcomes can be completely different,” he said. He argued that the underlying sources of religious law “do not reflect values of equality,” especially on gender, and said this is one reason some litigants may actively prefer those forums.
Medina added that concerns about unequal bargaining power are not unique to this law. Private arbitration clauses and private religious courts already raise similar issues, he said. But in his view, the law changes the picture by giving state-backed force to decisions made under a religious legal framework. “It will be much harder to challenge issues like consent or the application of law under this framework,” he said.
The law applies not only to rabbinical courts but also to state-run Sharia courts, extending the same arbitration model to Muslim religious tribunals. Still, much of the public and legal debate has centered on rabbinical courts, where critics have focused most sharply on questions of gender equality, state authority, and the relationship between religion and democratic norms.
The law includes procedural safeguards meant to address those concerns. Judges must verify at the outset that consent was freely given and that the parties understand they are entering arbitration rather than ordinary adjudication. The courts also may not take substantive action before all parties have signed the arbitration form. Even so, the law authorizes religious courts to rule under religious law and gives their decisions, with limited exceptions, the status of court judgments.
Supporters say that the framework expands freedom and respects communities that want disputes resolved according to their own norms. Critics say it gives public force to institutions that the state should not be deepening its ties to in the first place.
The legislative battle may be over, but the legal one now appears headed for the Supreme Court. The justices are likely to face a direct question: whether the state may give rabbinical and Sharia courts binding authority in civil disputes without violating equality and other protected rights.
