National-Religious Rabbis Protest Government’s Anti-Religious Agenda

A group of leading rabbinical figures in the national-religious camp have issued a call to protest the Bennett-Lapid coalition’s campaign to undermine the Jewish character of the state of Israel.

In a letter, the seventeen rabbis denounce the government’s proposals to change the existing system of kashrus and giyur, as well as plans for a built-up, Reform-managed area at the Western Wall.

“We returned to Eretz Israel because we want a Jewish state and not a state of all its citizens,” reads the statement as quoted by The Times of Israel on Wednesday. “Now the government is promoting a series of laws that will endanger the essence of the state and change its identity.”

The rabbinic leaders “call on the public to unite and protest against the attempt to make the state a state of all its citizens,” borrowing a term used to denote a state divorced from Jewish tradition.

Signatories include Rabbi Chaim Druckman — who was once closely affiliated with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — as well as Rabbis Dov Lior, Eliezer Waldman and Shmuel Eliyahu.