The Knesset Constitution Committee approved the proposed Basic Law: Torah Study for its first reading Tuesday following a heated debate, advancing legislation that seeks to enshrine Torah study as a foundational value in Jewish heritage and the State of Israel. Ten Knesset members supported the proposal, while four voted against it. The full plenum is expected to vote on the bill Wednesday.
The text of the bill, following revisions by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, seeks to establish Torah study as a basic value within both Jewish heritage and the State of Israel. The committee debate centered on whether the proposal genuinely defines a clear constitutional value and on its possible legal and practical implications.
Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky told the committee that lawmakers could not proceed to a first reading without first clarifying the law's purpose. She said that, based on what the bill's sponsors had stated during committee discussions, the legislation stemmed from a view that the standing of Haredi citizens within Israeli society is currently unbalanced, which she said places the discussion in a different context requiring further debate on issues such as obligations and rights. She acknowledged that the questions raised in committee over who qualifies as a Haredi person were serious and substantive, but said the bill as currently written does not answer them.
Shas lawmaker Yossi Taieb defended the bill's legal grounding, telling the committee that its constitutional logic was clearly defined and free of ambiguity. He said the law carries both a values based status, intended to establish a kind of identity card for the Jewish people, and a declarative status, meant to give judges a constitutional framework for weighing the value of Torah study against other foundational values.
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf laid out the rationale behind the proposal, telling the committee that its purpose is to recognize the Torah of Israel, given at Mount Sinai, which he said all Jews believe in. He asked how it could be that in Israel, after everything the Jewish people had endured, Jews were now arresting fellow Jews over Torah study. He said the law was being sought because something had changed in the country, and that Haredi lawmakers did not want to find themselves on the wrong side of a reality in which someone studying Torah is punished as though he were a thief. He said the situation had reached a point where those who study Torah find themselves at the bottom when it comes to receiving leniency.
The debate also raised questions about the bill's practical implications. Yesh Atid lawmaker Vladimir Beliak said that while there was broad agreement on the bill's first clause, its second clause was operative in nature, and he questioned what the relevant balancing of values would actually mean in practice and whether the law carried budgetary implications. He said he had not received an answer to that question, and suggested there was likely a reason why.
Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni responded that no one had ever asked whether Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty or Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation carried budgetary implications, arguing that such questions were directed at a particular agenda. He said the proposed law would not infringe on any right or benefit currently afforded to soldiers or reservists, and that it deals exclusively with the value of Torah study itself.
Opposition lawmaker Merav Michaeli voiced strong objection to the bill, saying that when a Basic Law is cheapened and turned into a political stepping stone rushed through in three days, it raises questions about what one can then expect from the Supreme Court. She argued that the Torah existed before the establishment of the State and does not need this law, and characterized the legislation as a law intended solely for men who study Torah, one that would place them above other laws.
