The furor around the appointment of the 15 new rabbinical court judges must have surprised those who appointed them. In the past, such deals (like the present one between Shas and the Haredi-Ashkenazi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv) were made clandestinely. The National Religious Party (NRP), now frantically trying to defend its honor, was itself partner to similar deals in the past.

The problem is therefore not in most of the appointers being ultra-Orthodox and certainly not in leaving out the NRP, but in the character and function of the rabbinical courts and the effect the new appointments will have on them.

What is upsetting is not the color of the new appointees' skullcaps or even their not having served in the army, but their subordination to a hard-line halakhic worldview that in recent years has received an even more stringent interpretation by Elyashiv's followers. This interpretation refrains from forcing recalcitrant husbands to divorce their wives and coerces women to agree to all their husbands' demands as a condition for divorce. In the spirit of this radicalization Elyashiv torpedoed four months ago a conference initiated by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar to find ultra-Orthodox solutions to the problem.

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In the past, this situation was seen as fate, but in recent years, a dramatic transition has taken place. More and more secular people are bypassing the rabbinical system, opting for a civil marriage service. Some even ignore the divorce issue and start life with a new spouse without divorcing the old one. Secular husbands aren't prone to refuse divorce anyway, knowing they would not be able to force their terms on their spouses.

The religious women are the main victims of the rabbinical courts' tyranny. The National-Religious community, fearful of rebelling against the system, has opened a campaign to improve it. Organizations are acting energetically to protect women whose husbands refuse to divorce them, while at the same time initiating halakhic solutions to the problem.

The ultra-Orthodox may enjoy their achievements for a while, but this is a pyrrhic victory because they are imposing decrees the public cannot tolerate.

This is another test the new justice minister, Daniel Friedmann, has failed. It is hard to understand why a man who conducted fierce struggles against the ultra-Orthodox establishment and against nepotism hastened to approve the improper appointments of judges who are anti-liberal, lack legal education and are committed to the Haredi hierarchy.

The religious establishment must understand that all of society, religious and secular, refuses to knuckle under to discrimination and injustice. However, all the signs - especially the political wheeling-dealing power balance - indicate that this process will not take place spontaneously.

Therefore the public had better draw clear conclusions from the last appointments, demand pluralism and free choice in religious services and do without the religious establishment, thus pushing it into its appropriate place. The time is fast approaching for the silent majority in Israel, both religious and secular, to demand, by public and political pressure, to break up the ultra-Orthodox monopoly and cancel its affiliation with the state.