Ministerial panel backs bill to guarantee prisoners access to religious items

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation backs Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni’s bill guaranteeing prisoners access to objects necessary for religious observance, such as prayer shawls and tefillin (phylacteries).

“The State of Israel, as a Jewish state, sanctifies the practice and observance of religious commandments for every individual. There are detainees and prisoners who are refused access to basic religious articles, including study and prayer books, and the opportunity to don tefillin daily,” Gafni charges in the bill’s explanatory notes.

“Therefore, legislative amendments are proposed to allow every detainee and prisoner to continue practicing their faith and religious commandments even during imprisonment and detention, and to allow them to possess religious articles according to their faith, including the donning of tallit (prayer shawls) and tefillin during daylight hours, from sunrise until noon.”

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers harshly criticized the military last week after an IDF spokesperson confirmed reports that an ultra-Orthodox draft dodger had not been allowed to put on tefillin for one day while being held in military prison.

In a statement, the IDF said that the man had indeed been prevented from wearing tefillin — small leather boxes containing Torah verses, which Orthodox Jewish men don every weekday morning during prayers — due to a delay in his transfer to a detention unit. The spokesperson added that it was contrary to regulations and that “procedures in the prison have been sharpened” to prevent a recurrence.

At the time, Gafni compared the IDF to the Roman Empire, while Shas MK Yoav Ben-Zur questioned how people are being prevented from putting on tefillin “in the state that rose from the ashes of the terrible destruction after the Holocaust, a state that was established with the vision of protecting the Jewish people and tradition.”