Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar have reached an agreement on the text of a proposed law regulating marriage and divorce of 
The bill also includes the establishment of special rabbinical courts for matters of conversion.
couples who do not fall into the jurisdiction of any of the religious courts, be they Muslim, Jewish or Christian. According to the proposed arrangement, these couples will be married by a civil court and any proceedings between them will be handled by the Family Court.
In Israel, state-sanctioned marriage and divorce is in the purview of the nation's religious courts, serving Jewish, Christian and Muslim couples. The existing system has no mechanism for legally recognizing marriage between members of different religious sects, nor between those whose religious identity is undefined. The proposed Civil Marriage and Divorce Law would apply only in the event that both the bride and groom fall into the "undefined" category.
The new arrangement, if passed into law by the Knesset, would affect primarily more than a quarter of a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose fathers are Jewish, but whose mothers are not. Such individuals are non-Jews according to Jewish Law, yet they do not fall into the jurisdiction of Christian or Muslim religious courts either.
The bill also includes the establishment of special rabbinical courts for matters of conversion, which will be under the sole purview and jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate.
Minister Friedmann called the agreement on the bill an important step in expanding the right to get married, which, he said, "is not fully recognized in Israel to the appropriate extent." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his support for the proposed law, and both he and Friedmann expressed satisfaction over the fact that the bill was drafted with significant religious sector support.
Member of Knesset Yossi Beilin (Meretz-Yahad), however, called the agreement between Justice Minister Friedmann and Rabbi Amar "a deception." Rather than establishing "civil marriage" as an option in Israel, the proposed law would entail "a deepening of the isolation and discrimination of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not defined as Jews. Instead of finding a solution that will enable them to fit into Israeli society, they are creating a ghetto for them to get married in," Beilin said Wednesday.
The Meretz chairman charged that in exchange for this reform, "Prime Minister Olmert paid off the hareidi-religious[sector] by widening the Chief Rabbinate's authority with regard to conversion to Judaism."
Chairman of the Jewish Agency Ze'ev Bielski praised the Friedmann-Amar agreement, saying, "This is a step in the right direction, which will relieve the distress of many citizens, primarily among the immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Parallel to this, the process of conversion must be made easier for citizens interested in conversion. ...We brought them here and it is our responsibility to make it possible for them to integrate into society and into the state."