Israelis Win Right to Secular Tombstones
In what supporters call a victory for religious freedom, Israelis now have a choice between religious and secular calendars for date inscriptions on their tombstones.
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of a petition from the family of Rosa Greital, who died in 1986 and was buried in a cemetery in Rishon Lezion, a city south of Tel Aviv.
The family requested that Western dates be inscribed on her tombstone, but the Orthodox burial societies that oversee almost all Israeli cemeteries permitted only the Jewish dates. The Jewish calendar dates back more than 5,000 years and uses Hebrew characters for numbers.
The Supreme Court, in a 2-1 decision, ruled Tuesday that the burial societies could not require families to abide by their rigid religious rules.
“If, in this non-theocratic state, the court fails to set the limits of religious freedom, we will be totally neglecting the feelings of the population,” Chief Justice Aharon Barak wrote in the majority decision.
Lobbyists for religious freedom in Israel said the decision to allow secular dates marked a great step forward in limiting the powers of Orthodox rabbinical authorities in Israel.
The Israel Religious Action Center, which represents Reform Judaism, helped the family take the case to the Supreme Court.
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