What Will Elul Bring Us?

30 Menachem Av 5785
Rosh Chodesh Aleph

And the War on Torah continues.  Without shame, without yirat Shamayim... 

Equal access requirements spark legal drama in Tel Aviv’s battle over synagogue control

In 2023, gender-segregated Yom Kippur prayers nearly brought Tel Aviv to a standstill. Now the city, often hailed as Israel’s bastion of secularism, finds itself in the middle of a quieter but no less charged dispute: a legal struggle over the status and character of its synagogues.

Tel Aviv has hundreds of synagogues, many dating back before the founding of the state. Some were built on privately purchased land, others on plots allocated by the city. About 130 of them, however, suffer from faulty or incomplete registration, leaving the land listed under municipal ownership.

That bureaucratic detail has given the city leverage. In recent months, officials began quietly approaching dozens of synagogues with new lease agreements that commit them to operate on the principle of equality—“without distinctions of gender or faith.” Congregations worry that such language could be used to challenge their Orthodox practices. Some agreed to sign; those who refused have been hit with eviction lawsuits.

The new contracts stipulate that each synagogue must provide services to “all residents of the neighborhood and nearby areas without distinctions of age, gender, or faith,” and that the style of prayer must be set by its managing committee accordingly. No activity deviating from this purpose would be allowed.

Among the institutions affected are the Great Synagogue on Modigliani Street, once led by Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the IDF’s famed chief rabbi who blew the shofar at the Western Wall in 1967, and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau’s synagogue on Smuts Street.

Courtroom battles

Those resisting the city’s demands are already finding themselves in court. In one case, the rabbinical court ruled that Tiferet Zvi Synagogue on Herman Cohen Street was a religious endowment, preventing a municipal takeover. The city has appealed to the High Court of Justice to overturn that decision.

City Hall argues synagogues are public resources akin to community centers, and therefore it must oversee their use. One official put it bluntly: “It cannot be that in a completely secular neighborhood a synagogue stands empty except on Saturdays, when ultra-Orthodox worshippers arrive from outside, instead of the building being used for local needs.”

Worshippers counter that the equality clause would erase the Orthodox character of their congregations, outlawing gender separation and potentially obliging them to accommodate non-Orthodox or even non-Jewish prayer....