The Tenth Annual Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Lecture, Law and the Political Culture of Israel, was presented by Professor Menachem Mautner, Danielle Rubinstein Professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University .
A brief panel discussion with Professor Moshe Halbertal, Co-Director of The Tikvah Center; Gruss Professor of Law; Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and Professor Ruth Gavison, Joint Straus/Tikvah Fellow; Haim H. Cohn Professor of Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Emerita); President, the Metzilah center for Zionist, Jewish, liberal and humanist thought, followed the lecture.
This event served as the official launch of Professor Mautner’s new book, Law & the Culture of Israel, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Some of the issues raised were: Is Israel a Multicultural State? Is it a Multinational State? Are the Jewish symbols of the State such as Hatikvah appropriate in a State with a large non Jewish minority? Should Orthodox Yeshiva Students be Exempt from Military Service? Does the Supreme Court reflect the full ideological spectrum of Israeli political culture? Should it? How does the sweeping activism of Israel’s Supreme Court relate to the kulturkampf in Israel?