Yoram Kaniuk, Israeli Writer, Wins Right To Be Classed As 'No Religion'

In a ruling on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, an Israeli court granted author Yoram Kaniuk permission to be classed as "without religion." A ruling that some are calling "a giant step toward separation of religion and state," according to Haaretz.

The 81-year-old writer, who can now classify himself as Jewish by nationality, but not religion, told the newspaper that he was "thrilled" about the court's decision made on Sept. 28.

Before the ruling, a person needed to prove that he or she was not Jewish in order to be classified as "without religion."

Kaniuk brought the request to the court in May after the Interior Ministry told him he couldn't alter his religious status without proper documentation, AFP reports. Kaniuk never identified himself as a religious Jew and didn't want to be classified as having a religion.

The author is married to a Christian-American woman, and his grandson is listed as "without religion" since his mother isn't considered Jewish by the Ministry, the Jerusalem Post points out. Kanuik wanted to be able to share in the same classification by choice, not because of family history.

"Israel registers its citizens according to both their religion and their ethnicity, although it does not include an “Israeli” ethnicity, labeling its Jewish citizens as of "Jewish" ethnicity," the AFP points out.

Haaretz further explains the situation:

Currently Jewish Israelis can only marry other Jews in the country under the auspices of the Orthodox rabbinate. A law was passed last year that allows civil unions and considers them as marriage for all intents and purposes - but only under special, limited circumstances in which both parties are registered as having no religion.

The legislation was criticized for not allowing people to marry in a religious ceremony because they are not of the same religion, and for not allowing people who do not want a religious ceremony to get married in Israel.

The judge ruled that Kaniuk and all citizens had "the right to freedom from religion as protected by the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom," the JTA explains.

An opinion piece published in Haaretz questions how many people will opt to have their religious classification altered and what it would mean for Israel: "Will we become a state without a religion instead of a Jewish state?"

Comments

[Felixio]

07:43 PM on 10/05/2011

What a country....

[MoistvonLipwig]

04:00 PM on 10/05/2011

Judaism was created by men to control the Tribe and motivate that tribe to love the Tribe above all things. their god is just an extention of the tribe. The tribe chose the god, not the god the tribe.

Its the Tribe's religion and they can dang well change it when it suites them.

[trekie70]

08:57 AM on 10/05/2011

I applaud this decision. No one, regardless of where they live, should be forced to submit to being identified with a religion they don't agree with or shunned for wanting to be identified in a particular way. Evangelicals in America could learn a lot from this decision.

[rsttho557949]

07:38 PM on 10/04/2011

The whole point of the Israelite saga was to show the world that the only way man could live in peace with his fellow man and please God was by being as intimate as possible with God. This is what they signed up for back at Mount Sinai with Moses. The OT records their misfortunes when they tried to back out of the commitment. As brilliant as try are, the Jews still don't get it. As long bas they give into Secular beliefs, God will not bring them peace.

[owlafaye]

05:30 AM on 10/05/2011

rsttho...These are only things that man speculates as to the nature of god. Essentially you are threatening people...which all good Messiah religions do...threatening with what you "think" god means or intends.

Worshipping yourself you know? Go right ahead...laughter

[rsttho557949]

10:32 AM on 10/05/2011

Dear owlafaye,

Just making a point that is not threatening. Please read Exodus 24- especially what is recorded in verses 3-8. There is no speculation that God wanted the Chosen ( think about what that means) People to have reliance upon His Wisdom rather than man's. I will agree that stoning people to death for certain offenses was extreme, but they accepted His Gifts ( their unparalleled brilliance) and curses. I do not speculate or "think" what God or intends when I remind others of what is recorded about His decrees. The OT is the historical record that illustrates that when man walks away from God to rely upon his/hers understanding bad things usually happenens. The saga of the Chosen People proves that beyond any doubt.

[sq1972]

07:13 PM on 10/04/2011

When the most prominent feature of your national flag is a Star of David, is there even a point to discussing the separation of synagogue and state?

[Aryeh Melaris]

04:18 PM on 10/04/2011

Jews are a civilization. One of only three remaining ancient civilizations.

Judaism is a nationality, not a religion, since the corpus of Jewish Torah Law is the constitution of the Jewish Kingdom. The Torah is thus the only deed that exists to "Palestine" and the signatories are those Jewish citizens who are in compliance with it. [a disclaimer: according to Talmudic exegesis, no self governing nation may be created by act of war in the Biblical land of Israel without a divine mandate]. This has survived unchanged, (without a land) for 1946 years. To compound this fact, the members of this nation (except for the Ethiopian Jews) have greater genetic similarity than any "race" as defined by anthropologists.

"Israeli" is a Zionist bastardization of this concept and has clearly reached the end of its useful life. Thus, there can be no voluntary or involuntary surrender of ones "Jewishness" any more than one can surrender their "Blackness" or "Chineseity". This is a singular concept and has no parallel in any other society. The Israeli secular court invalidates its own shaky legitimacy by this ruling. You cannot on one hand claim rights to conquer and occupy a land and on the other, discard the title deed and its terms like so much rubbish (G-d forbid).

[Tuckerndfw]

04:50 PM on 10/04/2011

Jews are not a race and never have been.

Jewish blood & Arab blood are indistinguishable.

Most Jews have neither.

I challenge anyone to submit about 50 random samples of blood to independent, credible labs and ask them to identify "race" by their blood.

Can't be done.

[HotelDrama]

01:18 AM on 10/05/2011

There is some evidence to show that Jewish groups share DNA markers.
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts-nonjews.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/06/04/despite-the-diasporas-jewish-genes-worldwide-show-ancient-connections/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html

[owlafaye]

05:31 AM on 10/05/2011

Tucker...please don't addle their minds with more reality...laughter

[myopinion2]

05:18 PM on 10/04/2011

If you are a religious Jew, i understand your first paragraph. But the majority of Jews don't believe the Torah came from a divine source.

Israeli is a national identity. There are both Jewish and palestinian Israelis. Anyone with citizenship is an israeli.

Being a Jew is interesting. it is neither ethnicity, nationality or religion to those who neither believe nor practice. (Judaism is the religion). Jew is a peoplehood, rather unique in the world.

Can a person opt out of being Jewish. Why not. If they convert to Catholism, are they a jewish Catholic?

Anyway, shana Tova.

[Tuckerndfw]

09:15 PM on 10/04/2011

A Jew is a member of a religious ethnic group. It is not complicated at all.

The only thing that complicates it are all the lies that are told about Jews. The most common of which is that Jews are a unique race.

Genetics has disproven that claim. So, now we are on to other lies trying to establish a uniqueness that does not exist.

Jews are no different than Christians or Muslims, other than by faith.

Just as there are no atheist Christians or Muslims, there are no atheist Jews.

That would be impossible.

[josie klapper]

09:47 AM on 10/05/2011

I look at it as my ethnicity. You may look at our shared blood/DNA markers however you wish.

[Doublespeak Translator]

01:58 PM on 10/04/2011

Its interesting to read the logic of the supporters of Israel as a "jewish" state
They seem to be saying that Israel is not a state based on religion at all.
But instead say that is a state based on race

Apart from the obvious sillyness of claiming judiasm is a race; I'm not sure how they don't realize that saying Israel is based on race is clearly worse than saying it is based on religion. At least religion is controllable. Saying they only want people who think they way they do to have full rights is bad but its certainly better than saying they only want people who are genetically simlilar to them (which isn't even true) to have full rights

[NeutralLight]

07:23 PM on 10/04/2011

Well you can relax because the concept of "race" doesn't enter into it at all. There are no genetic tests or appearance tests for who belongs or doesn't belong.

If the Jews were once a country, (called "Judea") with a distinct culture, king, territory, and language, then at least once they were an ethnic group. To determine whether the concept still applies, you would have to both define what you mean by "ethnic group" as well as know more about the history of the culture than you do,

And if anyone happens to be reading this: it isn't based on keeping the wrong people away or on an assumption of racist superiority. It began as an attempted safe haven for people who were under threat of violence from pogroms and other forms of persecution. The people came from many places because the persecution was happening in many places.

Some people have decided that this banding together was out a position of self-appointed masterhood. That's about like saying Poland was created for the purpose of oppressing Russians, and is a projection from out of your own heads only.

[Doublespeak Translator]

08:51 PM on 10/04/2011

"And if anyone happens to be reading this: it isn't based on keeping the wrong people away or on an assumption of racist superiorit­y"
Yes it clearly is
What other meanings could the terms chosen people and promiced land have?

[OneFish]

12:42 PM on 10/04/2011

Their regulations surrounding marriage sound like primitive tribalism. One more reason the hold no moral high ground in the region. Just people. Not special.

[ResistImperialism]

10:38 AM on 10/04/2011

How can "Jewish" be an ethnicity when white Jews/Ashke­nazis are different from Mizrahim/A­rab Jews, or from Iranian/Pe­rsian Jews or from Ethiopian Jews or from Indian Jews, or from Yemeni Jews, etc., etc.

[Tuckerndfw]

12:12 PM on 10/04/2011

It isn't an ethnicity based on birth. It is an ethnicity based on religon. A religion that is based on mythology. The most common of which one guy produced two distinct "races" with two different women.

Who then passed this mythological race down through his grandson through four other women, known of whom belonged to the mythological race.

If Jews inherit the "Jew gene" from their mothers, they only survived one generation. Abraham had no female offspring.

[phal4875]

02:36 PM on 10/04/2011

Abram/Abraham barely had any male children. He twice prostituted his wife to another man. He might have lost her entirely, and, since Hagar was his wife's slave, he might have lost the mother of Ishmael, too. Abraham's main claim to fame is that he was quite willing to cut his favorite son's throat, cut him into pieces, and then burn the result.

[Myoho Mod]

01:18 PM on 10/04/2011

I forgot what then name of it is but there is a genetic desease that only Jewish people get. PS you forgot the Safardic Jews

[phal4875]

02:42 PM on 10/04/2011

I think they may be subject to Tay-Sachs disease.

[ResistImperialism]

06:31 PM on 10/04/2011

As someone else said below, that disease only affects the European/Ashkenazi Jews.

[rationaljimmy]

10:17 AM on 10/04/2011

After centuries of horrific religious wars and destruction, how about we create a new country based entirely on one religion, whose laws and actions must all support that religion, and plop it down in the middle of another religion. Just to see what will happen. Could be interesting.

[iLdoRight]

03:30 AM on 10/04/2011

Now if they could just be separated from the "Stubborn, stiff-necked attitude" God said the "Jews Old" had, they might become somewhat better people.

[phal4875]

02:44 PM on 10/04/2011

God was constantly making someone have a "stiff-necked attitude." He made Pharaoh obstinate and stiff-necked during most of the famous plagues.

[mflorian]

08:29 AM on 10/05/2011

And told some guy to kill his son for the lawls.

[Teacher 15]

02:05 AM on 10/05/2011

Idiotic, nasty comment.

[iLdoRight]

03:21 AM on 10/05/2011

Has someone prohibited you from reading and seeing just how forceful and condemning the Hebrew Scriptures from Our Creator were against the "Jews of Old"? If you would like to just listen to them the King James Old Testament reads very similar to my Isaac Leeser Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and you can find a free download audio copy or get a DVD on the net for $16 including postage and just listen and see for yourself.

[pixie66]

02:44 AM on 10/04/2011

Posted TWO comments praising this man and neither went through...
One needs to ask WHY?

[Tuckerndfw]

02:18 AM on 10/04/2011

Given the fact David Gruen, born in Poland, was a "secular Jew" (without religion), how does this ruling change anything?

Secular Jew is another term for "fake Jew" given the fact there is no such thing as "Jewish blood." Secular is also another term for "atheist."

David Gruen (aka David Ben Gurion):

"At age 19 he was what he would remain all his life: a secular Jewish nationalist . . ."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988160,00.html#ixzz1Zn6RHrHY

[mackdee]

11:20 AM on 10/04/2011

What bereft of knowledge.

FYI:
Secular and Atheism is NOT the same thing at all.

One can be Secular and Jewish or Atheist and Jewish or even all 3.

If one's Mother is Jewish then by Blood the child is considered Jewish.

There is a genetic commonality within Jewish population

You probably know very little or nothing at all about DBG life before the age of 19

"The most traditional Jews and the most liberal Jews and everyone in between would agree that these secular people are still Jews, regardless of their disbelief. See Who is a Jew? Clearly, then, there is more to being Jewish than just a religion."

http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm#Religion

[Tuckerndfw]

11:51 AM on 10/04/2011

There is no such thing as "Jewish blood."


According to the Bible (the ONLY source for the Zionist mythology):

Abraham's wife was reportedly from Turkey.

Abraham produced no female offspring.

Jacob aka Israel had four different women by which he produced twelve sons who became known as the "Twelve Tribes of Israel."

The claim that women carry the "Jew gene" is ridiculous on its face regardless how many times Zionists tell that lie.

The Bible itself, the only source for that myth, demonstrates it cannot be so.

Zionism is based entirely on lies.

The most common of which is the claim Jews are born with special blood making them Jews.

[NeutralLight]

07:38 PM on 10/04/2011

There is also no such thing as "Armenian blood", "Polish blood", "Irish blood", or "Turkish blood", --or "Palestinian blood" either, for that matter, but all those peoples, rightly or wrongly, have had national movements, without the matter offending your sense of logic.

If the Jews lived in countries where they had different languages, music, livliehoods, ancestories, and appearances from the majorities-- and more important, were often legally excluded from participation in the societies' various institutions-- then obviously they were more than just a religion. If someone belonged to that highly identifieable and communal group, he would be a "Jew", and if he didn't believe in the traditional religion of that culture, he would be a "secular" one. The term is not meaningless-- in 20th century Eastern Europe it meant something very real and significant.

[Tuckerndfw]

09:01 PM on 10/04/2011

I agree that nationality is not based on blood or ancestry. Which also includes Jews who claim nationality based on Biblical (mythological) ancestry.

The major and fatal flaw in your argument is that "Jewish history" is based primarily on the Bible. One cannot accept the Bible as history while at the same time rejecting the Bible (religion).

One cannot claim to reject religion while at the same time claiming a birthright based on religion (the Bible).

Your argument would support an atheist claiming to be a Christian based on spending Christmas with his family. And, just as nonsensical.

Secular Jews are fake Jews.

It's just that simple.

[Tuckerndfw]

07:29 PM on 10/05/2011

NL, to me, it is this simple:

IF a person considers the terms "non religious Christian" and "non religious Muslim" to be logically consistent, then there is nothing I can say to convince them otherwise.

Those terms are mutually exclusive.

The same is true for "non religious (secular) Jew."

If you choose to believe that Jews are something more than a religious group, that's your choice. But, Jews are the invention of religion. Without religion, Jews would not exist at all. Neither would Christian or Muslims.

And, in that respect, there is no such thing as a "non religious (secular) Jew".

There is nothing more for me to add or discuss.

[JackHoffman]

02:18 AM on 10/04/2011

This coming from a people that were once ethnically cleansed.

[moflard]

01:56 PM on 10/04/2011

Well, more than once actually, but ironically enough NOT from Palestine. France, England, Spain, Portugal and Arabia (some others I forget) but not that part of the world. Funny that.

[NeutralLight]

02:08 PM on 10/05/2011

You're right, not from "Palestine". When they were ethnically cleansed from there it was still called "Judea".

[busterggi]

03:48 PM on 10/04/2011

According to their magic book the ancient Hebrews practised quite a bit of ethnic cleansing themselves.

[molare88]

05:22 AM on 10/04/2011

you can say it until u are blue in the face it doesnt change a thing

[sunshine14]

06:22 AM on 10/04/2011

Interesting site one has found and explain this.Look up  & called, Israelite Heritage. Breaks this all down very interesting.

[Tuckerndfw]

11:54 AM on 10/04/2011

I have read all the Zionist mythology I care to read.

None of it makes sense.

And, it makes no sense because it is based on the lie that a guy produced two different "races" with two different women. And his grandson went on to propagate this non-existent "race" with four other women.


Jews do not inherit religion from their mothers.