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Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi) has negotiated changes to the daylight saving time bill that would allow observant Jews to be late for work if their reason is that they were busy with morning prayers.
Dahan cut a deal with coalition chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud) that the daylight saving time bill, which passed a first reading in the Knesset plenary earlier this week, will be amended to help those who are in the habit of praying every morning. The proposal was also approved in a faction meeting of Habayit Hayehudi last Monday.
The daylight saving time bill, if passed in a second and third reading, will begin daylight saving time on the Friday before the last Sunday in March and continue it through the last Sunday in October.
The proposed law, introduced by Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar (Likud) would sync Israel's daylight saving time with that of most European countries. The practical implication of the decision will be an extra hour of daylight each evening for an additional month.
The extension of daylight saving time brings to an end the ongoing dispute between secular and religious Israelis on the issue. The haredim (ultra-Orthodox) view the extra hour of daylight as an opening for Israelis to violate the laws of Shabbat because during daylight saving time, public transportation and other services resume before Shabbat ends on Saturday night. In addition, the morning Shacharit prayer cannot take place before sunrise, and during daylight saving time, sunrise occurs later, making it difficult for religious people to arrive at work on time.
In the last two weeks of October, sunrise is relatively late and therefore people in the habit of reciting the morning prayer before going to work will not be able to do so if Sa'ar's bill becomes law.
Those most likely to be affected are people who work in low-wage jobs or manual labor, since these jobs tend to start early.
To ensure that the daylight saving time law does not hurt those people, Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud) agreed to Ben-Dahan's request to add a clause to the law, according to which people will be permitted to arrive late for work without penalty during the last two weeks in October if their reason is that they were reciting the morning prayer. The weekday morning prayer takes around 30 to 40 minutes to complete.
"I welcome extending daylight saving time, which will help the Israeli economy. At the same time, I want to work to make certain that citizens, especially those with low income or those who do physical work, are not penalized and therefore I ask that they be allowed to pray according to their custom. This is a paramount social value," Ben-Dahan said in a statement released on Wednesday.
