…which seems to be becoming a continuing series.
Israel’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the national ban on the sale of pork products was unconstitutional. So Nissan Ratzlav-Katz comes up with this particular piece of idiocy, asking what’s the difference between banning pork and banning, say, whale or gazelle (which are also banned in Israel). These are “cultural norms”, sez he, ratified by the people who told the Knesset what they wanted.
The ban on pork – just like the ban on whale – is a cultural norm, and not an issue of “freedoms” and such abstract principles. The people, through the Knesset, expressed their will to put their cultural norms into practice; hence, the court’s latest decision is amputated from the people’s will to preserve Jewish cultural norms.
In yet another seriously flawed decision, the High Court has shown itself removed from the Jewish consensus, by ruling in favor of Israel’s inconsistent, hypocritical, anti-religious and, ultimately, anti-culture activists.
I disagree. The High Court told the Knesset that in a free society, all should be free to eat what they want. There should be no restraint of trade based on cultural (read “religious”) bias. The country is either free or it is not; if the government is denying people the right to purchase non-kosher foods on cultural grounds, then the government is wrong and once again theocracy threatens the freedom of those who are not observant.
Now before someone says “what about the US cultural norm of not eating dog?”, my attitude about that is, eat what you want. If my supermarket doesn’t want to sell dog steak, that’s their business. If the Korean or Vietnamese or Chinese market wants to, that’s their business, too. But DON’T pass a law saying that NO market can sell dog.
I have to ask what the difference is between theocratic parties running things in Israel and theocratic thugs running things in the Arab states. Israel was supposed to be a model of a free society, not a place where priests rule and people conform. The more Israelis let the religious parties dictate to them, the more they become indistinguishable from their neighbors.
(Which is hyperbole, but in time you end up with Talmudic law, and while I’d rather live under Talmudic law than sharia law, I still prefer SECULAR law to either.)