by Zhang Yanyang, Ma Xiaoyan

    JERUSALEM, April 1 (Xinhua) -- As Israel welcomes its 18th parliament, the issue of civil marriage remains a central point of conflict for many constituents that make up its biggest government to date.

    BATTLES IN POLITICAL FIELD

    Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, which was the third biggest party in Israel's Feb. 10 elections, managed to make the civil marriage issue central to its negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he struggled to cobble together a coalition.

    Lieberman's party, which has traditionally represented the interests of Israel's large Russian immigrant minority, many of whom aren't Jewish, had demanded a guarantee that legislation regulating marriage between non-Jews would be passed within two months, and that a legal solution for other individuals who do not want to marry according to Jewish law would be reached within 15 months.

    The religious Jewish authority currently controls marital affairs in Israel. Although Arab-Israeli citizens do not fall under their jurisdiction, Russian immigrants of Jewish descent, who are themselves not Jewish, do.

    With no way of getting married according to the Jewish tradition, which requires that each member of the couple can prove their matrilineal Jewish heritage, non-Jewish Israelis generally get married in Cyprus and subsequently have their marriage registered in Israel.

    Shas, the fifth biggest party to come out of the elections, however, is vehemently opposed to any reform of the current system.

    "On the subject of civil marriage, we have made it absolutely clear that we will not stand for any solution outside of the Halacha (Jewish law)," said Eli Yishai, the leader of Shas, which represents Israel's Sephardic Jews.

    "We will do all that we can to keep the sanctity of (the Jewish nature of) Israel and if we were - heaven forbid - to go against the Halacha or against the great sages - we may end up dividing the people," Israel's chief Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Rabbi Yona Metzger said.

    INSTITUTIONAL OBSTACLE

    The religious establishment currently considers the suggestion of allowing non-Jews living in Israel to wed in a civil ceremony, but it has drawn heated debate and nothing has been decided.

    Shimon Shetreet, a professor of Law at Hebrew University, noted that the process of adjusting Israeli society to such a revolutionary change was more difficult than it looked from the point of view of an observer.

    "Whatever reform or adjustment that is made is done with great sensitivity," Shetreet said, noting that the terminology was especially important.

    "There are so many people who live without registering their relations... the number of people who have spousal relations but not marriage are increasing, therefore it is a social issue not just a political one between religious and non-religious entities in the Israeli government," he said.

    Baruch Levin, a religious Jew who immigrated from Moscow, said he saw the inflexibility concerning the civil marriage issue as potentially damaging to Israeli society.

    "In a democratic country like Israel it is absurd that people can only get married through a religious authority... and especially when it concerns non-Jews," Levin told Xinhua.

    He noted, however, that the problem from the Rabbinate's point of view was that it doesn't want to deal with the issue of non-Jews because it opens a possibility for further development.

    CREATIVE SOLUTIONS NEEDED

    Some rabbinical leaders agree that civil marriages in Israel should be allowed. Former Chief Sephardi Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, for example, published an essay years back condoning civil marriages.

    He noted that the sole option of religious marriage in Israel exerted pressure over mixed couples to convert and resulted in many ill-performed conversions, done for the sake of the ceremony alone.

    Rabbi Francis Nataf, the educational director of the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem, noted that it really became an issue, however, when a couple would seek a divorce.

    Under strict religious law, a couple that is either married through a rabbinical ceremony or by the act of publicly living together under a committed relationship requires a "Get" to be divorced.

    Should they neglect to obtain a "Get" the next relationship would be considered adulterous by Jewish law and any children born from such a union would be precluded from any involvement in religious activity.

    Nataf noted, however, that the Jewish community in the United States, which comprises some 5 million people and is not subject to any religious authority, managed to circumvent this issue through the decree of one of its most respected religious authorities, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.

    Rabbi Feinstein ruled that a non-religious marriage is not a marriage, thereby avoiding all the issues that could otherwise arise concerning the status of the children that are born from subsequent marriages according to Jewish law.

    Nataf said he believed there was both a need and a potential for creative solutions.

    The best way to draw people into the Jewish fold was to live the way Judaism dictated, morally, correctly, and in celebration of the beauty of the tradition, not through coercion, he said.