Israel's bread war

A Lemur eats a matza, a cracker-like bread eaten during the Jewish festival of Passover, in the Ramat Gan Safari outside Tel Aviv on Monday, April 14, 2008. The eight-day Passover holiday, during which observant Jews do not eat leavened foods, including bread, begins April 19. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In Egypt, the troubled masses have been fighting - and dying - for the right to buy scarce bread. (Something my colleague, Hannah Allam, wrote about last week on her blog...)

In Israel, the battle isn't over a lack of bread, it's a war over the right to sell it.

Anguished ultra-Orthodox leaders are battling a new court ruling that will allow restaurants and stores to sell bread during Passover, which begins this weekend.

Normally during Passover, stores, restaurants and homes are cleared of most leavened products to commemorate the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. (The stuff is usually burned or "sold" to a non-Jew.)

But four Jerusalem restaurants challenged Israel's Passover Bread Ban Act and argued that the law only banned the public display of such things, not the actual sale of them.

In something of a surprise move, a Jerusalem judge agreed.

Last week's ruling has sparked outrage, parliamentary hearings and ominous warnings that the very Jewish identity of Israel is in danger.

Eli Yishai, head of Israel's influential Shas party, called the decision "an affront to Judaism."

Yitzhak Cohen. Israel's Minister of Religious Affairs, said the ruling was "a loaded gun pressed to the temple of the Jewish people."

"There is no Jewish identity if there is pitas on Passover," declared Zevulun Orlev, head of Israel's National Religious Party.

A disgusted Labor lawmaker, Yoram Marciano, bluntly declared that, if the court was going to allow the sale of bread during Passover, "let's abolish the Jewish state."

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert urged critics not to turn the issue into a "cultural war."

And Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged everyone to chill out.

"Unfortunately," Livni said, "ever since religious parties began to monopolize Jewish matters in a manner that concerns itself only with religious issues and inflated budgets for religious interests, tensions have arisen between the secular and religious communities in Israel. This tension and animosity has eroded what should be a central concern: Preserving each Israeli’s sense of Jewish identity irrespective of the specific concerns and interests of the haredi community.”

Comments

[Kristie Mansfield]

Drama Queens....

I'm sending this to the Daily Show.

LOL