Dozens of shuls in Tel Aviv won a significant legal victory after a court rejected the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality’s attempt to require them to sign a new agreement as a condition for continuing to use municipal properties. In a sharply worded ruling, the court criticized the municipality’s conduct, opening its decision with the words, “This shall not be done in our midst,” and ordered the city to pay legal costs, according to a report by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

The dispute centered on the municipality’s demand that nonprofit organizations operating shuls sign a revised agreement before they could continue occupying city-owned buildings. Among the provisions was a requirement that religious services be provided “without distinction based on age, gender, or faith.”

Shuls that refused to sign the new agreement were instructed to vacate the premises, and in several cases the municipality filed eviction lawsuits against them.

During the legal proceedings, representatives of the shuls argued that the requirement went far beyond a technical contractual matter and could force them to operate in ways that conflict with halachah. Attorney David Shov, who represented the shuls on a volunteer basis, argued that the disputed clause would undermine the independence of the shuls and their ability to maintain traditional tefillah practices.

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, for its part, maintained throughout the case that the provision was simply a standard anti-discrimination clause used in other public institutions across the city and would not alter the religious character or practices of the shuls.

The dispute has been unfolding for more than a year. One of the earliest cases involved the Shul in Memory of the Kedoshim of Antopol, which faced eviction proceedings after refusing to sign the agreement. In a separate case, the Rabbinical Court declared the Tiferes Tzvi Shul to be a religious trust in an effort to prevent its eviction, prompting the municipality to petition Israel’s Supreme Court against that ruling.

The controversy also sparked widespread public debate and drew criticism from cabinet ministers and members of Knesset, who argued that the municipality’s policy threatened the religious character and autonomy of the city’s shuls.

The latest ruling represents a major legal victory for the shuls and a significant setback for the municipality. The court’s decision to open its opinion with the words, “This shall not be done in our midst,” has been widely viewed as an unusually strong rebuke of the municipality’s handling of the dispute.

{Matzav.com}