The latest battle in Israel’s Shabbat wars is more than the usual case of political infighting, though it is certainly that. Israel Railways wants to schedule repair work to its lines on Shabbat, when the trains don’t run, in order to avoid painful disruptions of service during the week. The prime minister, dependent on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties for his Knesset majority, bowed to their demand that the repair work be banned on Shabbat. To be fair, the ḥaredim do have tradition (and not only halakhah) on their side. For the railroad to undertake this work would violate Israel’s religious status quo, an informal yet historic arrangement (it has its own poorly-footnoted Wikipedia article) that determines just which public institutions are allowed to function on Shabbat. So you could say that it’s the railroad and not the ultra-Orthodox parties that touched off this particular fracas.  On the other hand, while the status quo may have served well in the past as a good ceasefire agreement in the Shabbat wars, there’s nothing necessarily sacred about it; it’s been broken frequently, and by both sides. The railroad controversy might therefore be a good opportunity for Israelis, as well as for all who care about the nature and place of Jewish religion in the Jewish state, to come up with a better solution. Continue reading Working on the Railroad: Observing Shabbat in a Jewish State →