Following an extended opposition filibuster, a government-backed law significantly expanding the authority of the state’s rabbinic and Sharia court systems was passed into law by the Knesset in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with 65 lawmakers voting in favor and 41 against.

The bill, sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism and Shas parties, gives the religious tribunals the power to arbitrate civil disputes which are currently the purview of the secular court system. Rabbinical courts were allowed to act as arbitrators in financial disputes until 2006, when a court decision determined that they had no standing to do so.

Rabbinical courts are part of Israel’s judiciary, currently handling legal matters such as divorce, wills and inheritances, and conversions. The system comprises 12 nationwide regional courts, with the Great Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem serving as the highest appellate authority. The president of the Great Rabbinical Court, a role held by one of Israel’s chief rabbis, oversees the rabbinical court system. Currently, the position is held by Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef.

The law, which initially was set to allow the courts to rule on child custody issues, was amended during the legislative process so that it does not apply to married or formerly married couples. It also does not apply to labor law cases unless the matter was freely initiated by an employee rather than an employer.

The legislation stipulates that religious courts would only be allowed to rule on such issues with the consent of both parties and that the rulings reached through rabbinic arbitration cannot violate the Women’s Equal Rights Law or other civil rights statues.

However, critics have asserted that such protections are not enough, given the pressures litigants in religiously conservative communities are likely to face, and that the bill would create a power imbalance that’s harmful to weaker segments of society, with women’s rights likely to be affected.

During Monday evening’s debate, Yesh Atid MK Merav Cohen argued that the male-dominated courts could not provide women, who cannot serve as rabbinic judges, with equal treatment.

“There are no female rabbinic court judges, there’s not even a word for it” in Hebrew, she said. “A system that does not allow women to be partners cannot provide them with equality.”

The Democrats MK Merav Michaeli, meanwhile, called the law “another step toward a halachic state, which is not a democratic state,” using the Hebrew term for Jewish religious law.

Michaeli’s rhetoric echoed that of Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who earlier in the day declared that the law had destroyed the country’s religious status quo, which he described as “dead, buried, eliminated [and] canceled.”

This legislation creates a “halachic state,” Lapid told reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.

“Remember this day when the next government comes, when we pass legislation stating there will be no more money for any education system that does not teach a full core curriculum… including civics and democratic studies,” he said.

If elected, Lapid added, the opposition will pass additional laws cutting off draft evaders from all government assistance; allowing mayors to “fire city rabbis, or to hire Reform and Conservative rabbis”; instituting civil marriage and establishing “public transportation on Shabbat in secular majority localities.”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman also slammed the law, telling reporters ahead of his own party’s faction meeting that passing such a law when “millions of citizens are running to shelters several times a day” was “absolute madness and moral bankruptcy.”

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Seth Farber, an Orthodox rabbi who serves as director of the ITIM nonprofit, which helps Israelis navigate the country’s religious bureaucracy, said that the law “could further alienate large segments of Israeli society from Judaism itself.”

“We must ensure that religious institutions serve the people with compassion, transparency and respect for individual rights — not coercion. The future of a Jewish and democratic state depends on finding that balance, not tipping the scales toward unchecked religious control,” he said.

“During a war, the passing of this bill adds insult to injury demonstrating that national concerns of are no consequence to the ultra-Orthodox politicians.”

Similarly, Uri Keidar, the chair of the Israel Hofsheet religious freedom advocacy group, called on the “next government” to “immediately undo this disgraceful legislation” within its first 100 days.

Pushing back, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers asserted that they were, in fact, reestablishing the status quo, castigating the High Court of Justice for ending half a century of rabbinic court arbitration.

“To say that the status quo is dead because of this law, is there a greater stupidity than that? After all, the status quo is built on how things were at the founding of the State. For 50 years after the state’s founding, rabbinical courts deliberated on these matters,” UTJ MK Yitzhak Pindrus told lawmakers.

Similarly, UTJ MK Moshe Gafni released a statement framing the law as something whose passage during wartime is good for the public, arguing that “specifically during this time of war, when we are in need of salvation from the almighty, when two people come forward wishing to adjudicate financial matters according to Torah law with mutual consent, what is wrong with that?”

Gafni’s comments were consistent with the bill’s explanatory notes, which argued that religious Israelis need “to resolve disputes solely in courts that rule according to Jewish law” and that to allow this “conforms to the principle of ‘judicial pluralism,’ according to which the state should provide populations with unique characteristics with tools for dispute resolution by an alternative legal method that is acceptable to their communities.”

Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) declared that it was “a great privilege for the Knesset” to pass the law, calling it “a correction of an injustice of many years.”

“It is a simple and trivial proposal that should have been agreed upon by everyone because there is nothing more liberal than this, to allow two adults to say that they want to discuss by agreement an issue in a dispute between them according to Torah law,” Rothman said.

Last year, the Knesset passed a similar law, expanding rabbinical courts’ powers to rule on child support.

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