Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich hopes to use his powers of persuasion, as in this November 2015 photo, to sell a new right-wing diplomatic plan.. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
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MK Betzalel Smotrich of the Union of Right Wing Parties said that he wants a halachic state in which Israel is governed in accordance with Torah law.
Smotrich made his comments on Kan Radio Monday morning, following similar remarks in a speech he delivered on Sunday at the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he said was seeking the justice ministry “in order to restore our judges as of old,” and “to restore” Torah law to the Jewish state.
The position of justice minister is currently vacant since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Ayelet Shaked on Sunday. Smotrich and the Union of Right Wing Parties demanded the justice portfolio during the coalition negotiations after the April general election.
“For sure, my will is that in the long term that the State of Israel be governed by Jewish law, that’s how it needs to be in a Jewish state,” Smotrich said during his Monday interview.
“If you ask me how long it will take, it will happen only when the Jewish people want it, not when I want it or you want it, but when the Jewish people want it,” he continued.
Smotrich rejected criticism of such a step by asserting that Torah law was preferable to what he described as “a state of law.” which he claimed has been instituted by the Supreme Court and its justices through judicial activism.
“The laws of Torah are far more preferable than the state of law instituted by Aharon Barak,” said the MK in reference to the Supreme Court justice who advanced judicial activism in the 1990s.
“Why is a state of law in which the person who determines the laws is Aharon Barak, and a small group of people who were not elected, ok?” he asked.
“The State of Israel and the state of the Jewish people will return to be governed as it was governed in the days of King David and King Solomon by Torah law, obviously in accordance with our days, and our challenges and economy, and how society lives in 2019,” asserted Smotrich.
He evaded a question as to whether or not Shabbat violators would be stoned under such a regime, answering only that stoning was a very uncommon phenomenon under Jewish law since the Talmud greatly restricted the use of capital punishment.
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