In pursuit of immediate material goals \u2013 budgets, benefits, and discounts \u2013 haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political leaders are endangering what they claim to protect above all else: Torah.<\/p>\n
The proposed Basic Law: Torah Study would grant constitutional status to Torah study, but in practice it would turn a sacred obligation into a political and legal instrument. That would harm Torah, its students, and the Jewish identity of the State of Israel in both the short and long term.<\/p>\n
As the legal and social history of religious legislation shows, such laws rarely produce more Judaism or greater observance. More often, they distance Israelis from Jewish values and degrade religion and halacha (Jewish religious law). It is not too late to prevent the debasement of Torah and those who study it.<\/p>\n
Israeli law already contains statutes that enshrine religious commandments. Prominent examples appear in personal status law, where legislation anchors halacha as a binding norm in Israel, and in the Hametz Law, which prohibits the sale of leavened products on Passover. In practice, these laws have not made the commandments more beloved or more widely observed. Many Israelis seek alternatives to marriage through the Rabbinate; the Hametz Law is treated largely as symbolic, with virtually no enforcement; and Shabbat legislation has become a recurring source of resentment rather than reverence.<\/p>\n
Such laws rarely deepen Jewish commitment. More often, they make Judaism feel coercive \u2013 and therefore alienating \u2013 to many Jews in Israel. The proposed Basic Law: Torah Study is unlikely to be any different. It, too, is likely to become less a source of honor than a symbol of coercion, pushing people away from Torah and those who study it rather than elevating them and their learning.<\/p>\n
Moreover, like every law in Israel, this law, too, would be interpreted by the legal system and by the High Court of Justice. In order to secure daycare discounts, haredi political leaders would be inviting the very judicial institution they distrust to determine what Torah study is and who counts as a Torah scholar. Instead of leaving such questions to heads of yeshivas, the decision would move into the legal arena. The day is not far off when the High Court would have to decide whether Torah study in a secular beit midrash (study hall), in a university department of Jewish philosophy, or in a Reform beit midrash also falls within the definition of \u201cTorah study.\u201d The likely answer is yes.<\/p>\n
No less troubling, the law is expected to turn Torah study into yet another political punching bag in Israel\u2019s culture wars. That is especially painful. When the people of Israel received the Torah at Mount Sinai, the verse says, \u201cIsrael encamped there opposite the mountain\u201d in the singular, which Rashi famously explains to mean \u201cas one person, with one heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torah was what united the Jewish people. So it was throughout the years of exile. Torah and its commandments were the axis around which Jewish communities across the world gathered; Torah bound them together. Basic Law: Torah Study does exactly the opposite. Instead of uniting Jews in Israel around Torah and its study, it turns Torah into another source of polarization and dispute.<\/p>\n
Double harm of Torah study<\/strong><\/p>\n This law, which proposes to recognize Torah study as a value with constitutional status, is shaping up to be one of the most contentious laws advanced here in recent years. Instead of deepening love of Torah, it is producing division and hostility toward Torah and its students.<\/p>\n If such a Basic Law is passed by a single-vote margin, through a divisive political maneuver, it will guarantee that the value of Torah study continues to be debased. It is reasonable to assume that a future government in which the haredi parties lack a veto would repeal this harmful law. Torah and its study would then be harmed twice: first when the law is enacted, turning Torah into a force that divides the people; and again, when the law is repealed.<\/p>\n The alternative is not abandoning the world of Torah. There is a better way to honor Torah study: broad national agreement about responsibility, service, and recognition. Torah students who share in building and defending the country deserve such recognition. But a value that has lived within the people of Israel for 3,000 years does not need the protection of a limitations clause.<\/p>\n On the contrary: subordinating it to the constitutional matrix, where it becomes merely one value alongside Freedom of Occupation and Human Dignity, diminishes it and gravely damages the Jewish-Israeli consensus around it.<\/p>\n