Bennett says New Right will push for religious services ministry after elections

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett is promising his New Right party will push for the Ministry of Religious Service following upcoming general elections.

“We’ll return the religious services portfolio to religious Zionism,” Bennett tweets.

“Our tradition and heritage needs to become the glue of unity, not a battleground,” he adds. “Approachable Judaism needs to be returned: On kashrut, on marriage, on conversion — on everything.”

Bennett was religious services minister from 2013-2015, when he headed the national religious Jewish Home party, but since then the ministry has been held by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.

Issues of religion and state figured prominently in the campaign for September’s elections, in which the right-wing secularist Yisrael Beytenu party emerged as kingmaker between the blocs after calling for a national unity government that did not include religious parties.

New Right has advertised itself as a partnership between religious and secular right-wing voters and as having a more liberal stance on religion than other national religious factions.