CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - Israel's Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann says all Israeli citizens should be able to marry and that it is the responsibility of the state to allow them to do so.

His statement comes in the midst of a heated legal debate over the status of new immigrants in Israel who wish to marry Jews.

"I wouldn't say anything if there was another way to get married. The problem is that the same strict group doesn't allow others to get married in different places," Friedmann said in response to previous rulings by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical courts.

Friedmann suggests that the debate involves two issues: first, how new immigrants can convert to Judaism and second, how new immigrants can marry Jews. Because many of the new immigrants are not considered Jewish according to the Halacha [Jewish religious law], the marriages go unrecognized by the rabbinical courts, creating a myriad of future bureaucratic problems for the families.

"I believe that the approach in Israel needs to be completely different," Friedmann said.

"When we are on our own land and there is Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, if somebody wants to join us, it is worth it to make it easier on them," he added. "The same strictness is not fitting because people share the same fate just by virtue of them being here."

Source: Ynet News