As he waited to be interrogated by the Israel Police for conducting a non-Orthodox wedding, Rabbi Dov Haiyun began a Facebook post with three words: “Iran is here.” Haiyun awoke at 5:30 a.m. Thursday at his home in Haifa to a knock on the door from two police officers who detained him, put him in the back of a van and sought to question him. His crime? Conducting a Jewish wedding outside the auspices of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate.
“I feel disappointed in my state that this is what’s happening in my country,” Haiyun told JTA on Friday. “The only country that discriminates between Jews in the entire Western world is Israel. In the United States, I can perform weddings and they recognize me.
“The police don’t catch criminals this quickly,” he added later.
The law that landed Haiyun in a police van outlaws any traditional Jewish marriage performed outside the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, the state-sanctioned body dominated by haredi Orthodox rabbis that controls all recognized Jewish marriage, divorce, burial and conversion in Israel.
— source timesofisrael.com By Ben Sales. 21 July 2018