Israel Urged to Separate Politics, Religion
The president of U.S. Conservative rabbis says religious parties should not be part of Israeli politics.
“The time has come for Israel to adopt the separation of synagogue and state as practiced in America,” Rabbi Kassel Abelson of Minneapolis told a meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly.
He said Israel’s rigidly Orthodox political party is “more concerned with its own interests than with the nation and the unity of the Jewish people.”
Reform and Conservative rabbis are barred from officiating at Israeli marriages or funerals, restricted to Orthodox rabbis, although both other groups have Israeli congregations.
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