From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Haredi leader blasts critics of new rabbinic courts law as ‘a disgrace’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Moshe Gafni, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah faction, declares that former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s and other opposition leaders’ public condemnations of the newly passed rabbinic courts law are “a disgrace.”
The passage of the law, which gives rabbinic and sharia courts the power to arbitrate civil disputes that are currently the purview of the secular court system, “is a move that respects Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state and grants freedom of choice to those who desire it,” insists Gafni, who was one of the sponsors of the law.
This morning, Bennett promised to roll back the law should his anti-Netanyahu bloc win the next election, stating that “there will be no state within a state here.”
Rabbinical courts were allowed to act as arbitrators in financial disputes until 2006, when a court decision determined that they had no standing to do so. The new law, passed overnight, stipulates that religious courts will only be allowed to rule on such issues with the consent of both parties. But critics say members of the relevant communities will likely face intense communal pressure to agree to the courts’ jurisdiction.
The Times of Israel Community.