Couples who are refused marriage by the Chief Rabbinate for halachic reasons may soon be able to have a Jewish wedding without rabbinical approval, Israel Hayom has learned.
Hashgacha Pratit, part of the Modern Orthodox group Tzohar, already offers an alternative kashrut certification for restaurants, and told Israel Hayom that it would start officiating weddings for couples deemed by the rabbinical authorities as not meeting the Jewish religious criteria to marry.
Under Israeli law, Jewish couples can only marry and divorce through the rabbinate. Hashgacha Pratit says it would bypass this by requiring couples to sign legally binding civil union documents to cover the marriage and possible divorce. In the case of divorce, the contract also sets a timeframe for dissolving the marriage through the rabbinical courts and stipulates sanctions for men who refuse to grant a gett (a religious divorce document).
Hashgacha Pratit has launched a crowd-funding campaign to help get the initiative up and running.
"We want to disrupt marriage the way we disrupted kashrut certification," a Hashgacha Pratit spokesperson told Israel Hayom.
The group said the initiative is specifically tailored for cases in which a couple is refused marriage because one member (or both) was converted to Judaism by an organization unrecognized by the chief rabbinate, or cases in which halachic obstacles disqualify a couple from being married as Jews according to rabbinical authorities.
