The Israeli Supreme Court decided Monday that Israeli municipalities must permit the sale of pork where a majority of residents demand it — a ruling hailed as a victory by secular rights activists.
Orthodox Jews warned that the decision would undermine the nation's Jewish identity. The consumption of pork is forbidden under Jewish law.
The battle between observant Jews and secular Israelis over the role of religion in daily life has become heated in recent years.
Areas of friction include Jewish Sabbath observances — much of Israel still shuts down from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday — and the exemptions from compulsory military service granted to many ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Under a 1956 law, it is up to municipalities to decide whether to permit the sale of pork. Several towns have tried to limit the sale of pork or have banned it altogether.
Monday's decision came in a case brought against three municipalities that bar the sale of pork. The nine-judge panel annulled existing local laws and said new regulations must be devised to reflect the true wishes of residents.
Pork sales must be allowed in neighborhoods where a majority of residents want to buy it, the judges said. In areas where pork-buying residents are a minority, they must be able to have easy access to neighborhoods where it is sold, the judges ruled.
In areas where the makeup of the neighborhood is not clear, the city must determine the opinion of the residents, the judges said.
The case pitted Orthodox Jews against secular rights activists, many of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union who arrived in the past 15 years. Tens of thousand of the immigrants are not Jewish.
"This is a nail in the coffin of the Jewish identity of the state," said Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party.
Lawmaker Yossi Yasinov from the secular Shinui Party said the ruling sets a precedent, for the first time protecting the right of Israelis to buy pork.
"We are not fighting to make people eat pork," the head of Shinui, Justice Minister Joseph Lapid, told Army Radio. "We are fighting for the rights of people to eat what they want, when they want and where they want."
The owner of a large chain of non-kosher stores, Yaakov Maniya, said he did not see why Jews could not agree among themselves on the sale of pork. Muslim Arabs, whose religion also bans the consumption of pork, don't prevent Arab Christians from eating the meat in mixed neighborhoods in Israel, he said.
Maniya said the pigs are raised on Arab-owned land in northern Israel, since Israeli law prohibits the raising of pigs on Jewish land.