Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israeli Ministry Waits for Jewish Ruling on Women Eulogizing

The Religious Services Ministry is waiting for a halachic ruling before deciding whether to allow women to give eulogies in cemeteries, even though a ministerial committee authorized them to do so, a ministry official said Wednesday.

“It is unthinkable that a halachic ruling” — a rabbinic ruling on a point of Jewish law — “should dictate a government ministry’s decision,” said Culture Minister Limor Livnat, head of the interministerial task force set up to deal with a recent spate of ultra-Orthodox violence and discrimination against women. “I will not allow it.”

A ministerial committee to advance the status of women decided a few weeks ago that the Religious Services Ministry should amend the licenses of the burial societies, known as chevra kadishas, to clearly state that women may accompany the dead to their graves and eulogize them at funerals.

But when Livnat’s task force held its first meeting in the Knesset yesterday, Deborah Eiferman of the Religious Services Ministry told it, “we are waiting for [Chief Sephardi] Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s halachic ruling on the matter.”

Read more at haaretz.com

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.