Petition to High Court seeks to strike down new rabbinical courts arbitration law

Coming roughly two weeks after the law’s enactment, the challenge contends that the legislation is not simply about giving consenting parties another forum for dispute resolution.

Rather, it says, the law creates a new model in which a state religious tribunal is given public resources, institutional authority, and enforcement power to conduct civil arbitration under religious law.

At the center of the petition is the claim that the law discriminates in the allocation of public resources. Private arbitration in Israel is often costly, with arbitrators charging hundreds or even thousands of shekels per hour, especially in commercial disputes.

Under the new law, by contrast, parties willing to submit to religious arbitration through the rabbinical courts would be able to access the process for only nominal fees.

Israel Hofsheet argues that no comparable subsidized arbitration framework exists for the general public, or for litigants who do not agree to resolve disputes under religious law, meaning the state is effectively funding a civil dispute-resolution track for one sector alone.

The petition further argues that the problem is compounded by the source of those resources. In its telling, the law does not create a separate corps of publicly appointed arbitrators, but is instead built around the use of the rabbinical courts’ existing infrastructure and personnel.

That, the petition says, means time and resources from a state institution already charged with handling matters such as marriage and divorce will now be diverted to a parallel arbitration function serving a narrower religious public.

A second line of attack focuses on equality and representation. The petition argues that even if the historic existence of rabbinical courts in matters of personal status has long been embedded in Israeli law, the Knesset cannot now expand the authority of those institutions into new civil territory without confronting the constitutional implications of doing so.

In particular, it argues that the state cannot enlarge the powers of a public institution whose judicial roles remain closed to women, and that if arbitrators are to be appointed under the law, adequate representation requirements must apply to those positions.

The petition also takes aim at what it presents as a deeper structural problem: the blurring of the line between private arbitration and state judicial power.

In ordinary arbitration, private parties may agree to resolve disputes outside the courts, but enforcement of arbitral decisions still depends on judicial oversight by the civil courts.

Here, Israel Hofsheet argues, the new law goes much further by allowing state religious courts, acting under religious law and outside the ordinary judicial framework, to produce decisions that carry the force of state-backed enforcement.

On that point, the petition challenges several specific clauses. It objects to the provision allowing the court to contact an additional party who has not yet joined the arbitration process, arguing that this already places the prestige and authority of a state tribunal behind an ostensibly voluntary proceeding.

It also challenges language preserving the court’s powers “under any law,” arguing that this risks importing ordinary judicial authority into what is supposed to be a consensual arbitration framework. Another target is the provision equating an arbitral award under the law, aside from appeal, with a court judgment - a step the petition says erases the normal distinction between a private arbitral ruling and a state judicial decision.

Israel Hofsheet also argues that the law is unconstitutional because it allows state coercive machinery to be activated on the basis of decisions rendered outside the ordinary judicial model and by adjudicators whose expertise is in religious law rather than Israeli civil law.

The petition says that this is the first time state authorities, such as the Enforcement and Collection Authority, and potentially the police, could be required to act on decisions issued in such a framework. In its view, that arrangement offends basic constitutional principles of legality, equality, and the rule of law.

Alongside its constitutional arguments, the petition raises an implementation issue as well. It argues that the apparent intention to have serving rabbinical judges act as arbitrators is itself unlawful, citing legal statutes which restrict religious judges (dayanim) from engaging in outside roles beyond their judicial office.

If the state wants to create an arbitration service, the petition argues, it cannot simply have rabbinical judges put on a second hat.

The challenge goes to the heart of a law that was controversial from the moment it advanced in the Knesset. Supporters, led by Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman, framed it as a voluntary mechanism that would allow communities that want to resolve disputes according to religious law to do so through an official framework.

Critics, however, have long argued that the legislation was designed to bypass a previous Supreme Court ruling, which rejected attempts by rabbinical courts to function as arbitrators under the cover of their state status.

In that sense, the petition is not merely asking whether religious litigants may choose arbitration under halachic norms - something they can already do privately. It is asking whether the state may itself build, subsidize, and enforce that framework from within one of its own official religious court systems.

“The powers of the Rabbinical Courts should be curtailed, not expanded,” Israel Hofsheet CEO Uri Keidar said in a statement. “The State must not establish a parallel judicial system, heavily subsidized by public funds, to support a flawed system that excludes women and advances a vision of Israel as a theocracy rather than a democracy.”