The World - News from May 31, 1988

Israel’s two chief rabbis said the Supreme Court meddled in religious affairs by ordering a woman seated on a religious council and declared that any man who agrees to sit with her is a weakling. The decision by Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu pitted the secular law of the Jewish state against religious law, or Halacha, which many Orthodox Jews believe is the higher. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ordered the religious affairs minister, Zevulun Hammer, to seat Leah Shakdiel on the religious council of Yeruhan, a town 90 miles south of Jerusalem. But local religious officials refused.