ISRAEL: Put down that croissant!

In what's becoming a semiannual event, modern and traditional interpretations of religious law are clashing when it comes to everyday Israeli life.

The latest battlefield is the upcoming Passover holiday, when observant Jews refrain from eating any leavened bread products, known as hametz.

Israeli law forbids the public display of such goods for the duration of the holiday, which runs for one week starting April 20. But a Jerusalem Municipal affairs judge has ruled that restaurants, cafés and grocery stores are not considered public places, and can operate normally.

Religious politicians and activists immediately slammed the ruling. Representatives of the right-wing Shas Party hinted they would withdraw from the fragile coalition government if the ruling wasn't appealed.

"This is a Jewish state, with everything that means, and nobody will succeed in turning the state of the Jews—the only one the Jews have in the world—into a state of all its citizens," said Shas member and Religious Affairs Minister Yitzhak Cohen.

Others defended the ruling as a necessary division of temple and state.

"I think that the less the legislators deal with the question of who is kosher and who is hametz, the better it will be for all of us," said Avshalom Vilan, a Knesset member from the left-wing Meretz Party.

Columnist Yair Lapid drew comparisons to other failed attempts to legislate Jewish morality in the Jewish state.

"If someone threatens to call the police because he does not like what I am chewing, he cannot expect me to treat him with respect," Lapid wrote in Friday’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"Time after time it has been proven that the most damaging thing for Jewish life in Israel is the religious laws. Ever since the 'pork law,' many more spare ribs have been put upon our plates; ever since the 'Sabbath law,' many more commercial centers have opened on Saturdays; ever since the 'leavened products law,' crumbs have been flying in all directions every Passover."

--Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Matzo, unleavened bread. Credit: Larry Crowe / Associated Press

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[Amir Mizroch]

Today, the proprietors of a grocery store chain buckled to pressure by the ultra-Orthodox and decided to close some of their stores on the Sabbath.