Controversial bill to ban leavened bread at hospital advances in Knesset

The Knesset Health Committee passes second and third readings of a bill proposing to allow hospital directors to announce bans on bringing leavened bread into their institutions on Passover.

The bill, submitted last year by seven lawmakers for Orthodox parties, does not qualify administrators to search bags or enforce the ban, but merely to inform those coming into the hospital about the regulations forbidding it, one of the lawmakers who cosigned the bill says at a debate in committee.

An opposition lawmaker calls the law the first salvo in future legislation to restrict individual freedoms and coerce seculars to practice religious principles.