In the Knesset this week, a piece of legislation known as “Rabbis Bill II,” has been making its way toward a final vote in the Knesset. Sam Sokol explains the original version of the legislation, advanced by the Sephardi haredi party Shas:

It aimed to create hundreds of publicly funded jobs for rabbis, while giving the Chief Rabbinate of Israel considerable say in the appointment of all new municipal rabbis, prompting criticism that its purpose was to provide jobs for Shas apparatchiks. It also lowered the minimum number of women on the rabbinical appointment boards from 40 percent to one-third, and essentially granted appointees guaranteed positions until the age of seventy-five.

Objections came from those concerned about the position of women, the extent of the expenditures involved, and preserving the independence of local rabbis—the last rooted in traditions going back to antiquity. In response to criticism, the governing coalition withdrew the bill, and Shas produced the revised version now before the Knesset, which is at the very least less objectionable on these grounds. Yet the outcome is not clear, and things beside principle are at stake:

Though it didn’t earn the same level of criticism as its predecessor, . . . the second Rabbis Bill also fell victim to opposition from within the coalition—with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir torpedoing the bill on three separate occasions in July as part of an effort to exert leverage on Prime Minister Netanyahu in an unrelated political feud.

Ben-Gvir’s objection points to an issue more urgent, and perhaps more consequential, than the questions of religion and state, the nature of the government-sponsored rabbinate, or the national budget: the survival of the governing coalition. Sokol continues:

“There is no coalition, there is no discipline, and the most frustrating thing is that Likud is a party made up of 35 separate factions,” one Shas official told national broadcaster Kan, warning that “the complete dissolution of the coalition is only a matter of time.”

If he is right, and the country must hold new elections, the results could be far-reaching.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.