Court Allows Tel Aviv Markets To Open on Shabbat
A Tel Aviv court ruled that supermarkets may remain open on the Sabbath in the municipality.
Tuesday’s ruling denied a city request that the court require the stores to heed municipal attempts to keep stores closed on Saturdays.
It is illegal in Israel to open retail businesses on the Jewish Sabbath, which begins at sundown Friday and ends after sunset Saturday. Businesses that remain open are levied modest fines.
More than a year ago, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality to enforce a by-law that bans its businesses from opening on Saturday.
The municipality had been working to find a way to allow a percentage of the city’s grocery stores to receive permission to remain open on Saturdays, using an amendment to the existing law. The stores would have been spread out throughout the city, with fewer open in areas that are more religious and more in secular areas. But outgoing Interior Minister Gideon Saar did not approve the amendment.
Since Saar did not respond either in the affirmative or negative to the amendment request, the court ruled Tuesday that the amendment became valid.
Under the ruling, most stores operating on the Sabbath in Tel Aviv can continue doing so, and the Tel Aviv municipality cannot submit new requests to close down businesses operating on the Sabbath, according to the Israeli business daily Globes.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
