Soldier mourns at Mount Herzl military cemetery
Soldier mourns at Mount Herzl military cemeteryMiriam Alster/Flash 90

The IDF will allow a "Reform rabbi" or "rabbah" to hold military funeral ceremonies, the state's representative announced today at a hearing in the Supreme Court.

The hearing was held following a petition filed by Attorney Uri Regev in 2017 on behalf of the Hiddush Association for Religious Freedom and Equality against the IDF, claiming that Reform soldiers were discriminated against in connection with a military funeral.

The petition claims the IDF does not allow every Jewish soldier to be buried according to his faith and forces him to submit to an Orthodox military funeral run by the military rabbinate.

Following the hearing in the Supreme Court, Regev said, "Conducting a ceremony by a Reform rabbi will be a rare event, but what is more common is a secular military burial. It seems to me that in the wake of our petition, we are entering a new era."

The right to secular military burial was anchored in IDF orders already in 2017, and the novelty now is the possibility of conducting non-Orthodox burial without having to forego the military aspects of the ceremony.

Infra-Reform?
Infra-Reform?Hadas Parush/Flash 90