Israel’s Interior Ministry has escalated its fight over commerce at Big Fashion Glilot, sending a sharply worded letter at the end of last week to the mayor of Ramat HaSharon demanding enforcement of the city’s bylaw banning businesses from opening on the Sabbath. The move comes as the municipality seeks to amend the bylaw, apparently to legalize the complex’s operation after the fact.
Interior Ministry director general Israel Ozen wrote that if the purpose of the amendment is to align the law with existing reality, then that reality was created by conduct that violated the law. He said there is “no place to agree to and accept a wrongful situation in which the sinner is rewarded.” The ministry’s position is that a municipality cannot let a long-running violation become lawful through retroactive rule changes.
Ramat HaSharon city director Yoram Abrami responded on Sunday in an interview with Mako, saying the city will not back down. “The complex will remain open,” he said. Abrami accused the ministry of selective enforcement, arguing that it aggressively targets Sabbath violations while ignoring other breaches of the municipal bylaw, such as hair salons opening on Mondays. The dispute is not new, last year the city’s legal adviser already ruled that the complex’s activity was illegal, but the municipality continued to avoid fines and pursued legislative fixes.
The controversy has also deepened החרדי opposition. Councils of Torah Sages previously issued an unprecedented letter calling the opening of the complex a “public desecration of the sanctity of Shabbat,” and rabbis across the country have joined a consumer boycott of Big and chains operating there. In Beit Shemesh, leading rabbis, Rabbi Mordechai Goldstein, Rabbi Natan Kopshitz, and Rabbi Shlomo Zafrani, signed a letter urging residents to avoid buying from chains that violate Shabbat, including stores that themselves close on Shabbat but are owned by groups that operate elsewhere on the Sabbath. The confrontation between the ministry and the city is expected to intensify in the coming weeks.
