17 national-religious rabbis call for protests against government

Seventeen prominent rabbis affiliated with the national-religious movement issue a call to protest the current government over its policies on religion and state.

In a letter, the rabbis decry planned reforms in kashrut and conversion and at the Western Wall. “We returned to Eretz Israel because we want a Jewish state and not a state of all its citizens,” reads the statement. “Now the government is promoting a series of laws that will endanger the essence of the state and change its identity.”

The rabbinic figures “call on the public to unite and protest against the attempt to make the state a state of all its citizens.”

Signatories include Rabbi Chaim Druckman — who was once closely affiliated with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — as well as rabbis Dov Lior, Eliezer Waldman and Shmuel Eliyahu.