Tel Aviv – In a landmark ruling on a deeply contentious issue, the High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that grocery stores can remain open on Shabbat in Tel Aviv following a decade-long struggle against the practice between small business owners and the city’s municipal authority.

Haredi lawmakers reacted with fury to the ruling, vowing to introduce legislation that will override the ruling and even give the Knesset the ability to overide High Court rulings more broadly, as has also been proposed of late by the Bayit Yehudi party.

In the ruling, Naor was critical of Interior Minister Aryeh Deri’s position, saying it did not grant sufficient autonomy to the Tel Aviv Municipal Authority, which she said is the basis for local government.

Outgoing Supreme Court President Miriam NaorNaor pointed out in her opinion that the law specifically grants municipal authorities the right to legislate bylaws determining if shops can be open in their jurisdictions.

She also rejected the interpretation of the Law for Hours of Work and Rest advanced by the petitioners that it constitutes a blanket ban on opening businesses on Shabbat. The law states explicitly that employing a citizen to work on his day of rest is prohibited and that a business owner should not work in his business on his day of rest, but Naor argued that these stipulations do not mean that businesses cannot be opened.

She acknowledged that opening businesses on Shabbat does a certain amount of damage to the rights of tradespersons and business owners who would prefer not to open on Shabbat, but might be forced to for reasons of business competition, if others do. But she said that the rights regarding freedom of occupation and freedom of conscience, and that these conflicting rights must be balanced.



“The balance does not favor one worldview over the other, does not detract from the status and importance of the Sabbath as a national asset of the Jewish people and as one of the values ​​of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” she wrote. “[But] while protecting the special character of Shabbat every individual must be allowed to formulate his Shabbat in accordance with his own path and his beliefs, and fill it it with content that is appropriate for himself.”

Deri, chairman of the Shas party, claimed that he has already come to an agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rapidly advance two government bills which would grant the Interior Minister the requisite authority “to protect the public character of the Jewish Sabbath.”

United Torah Judaism chairman Yaakov Litzman labeled the ruling “anti-religious” and “a crass effort to harm the Jewish character of the state.” He said that there was “unanimity” among all haredi and religious MKs to halt such rulings by the High Court through legislation.

“We will fight to change this injustice through legislation,” vowed Litzman.

Meanwhile MK Moshe Gafni, another senior UTJ lawmaker said that the High Court justices were “routinely injuring the holy Torah and Jewish tradition,” and that UTJ would be advancing an amendment to the law to circumvent the High Court ruling.