Gay marriage in Israel cannot be performed on Israeli soil, but the government registers same-sex marriages performed in other countries, including marriages conducted online through Utah by video call. Registration updates a couple’s marital status in the population registry and, combined with decades of court rulings, gives same-sex couples access to most of the rights heterosexual married couples have, though the legal path to each right was built case by case rather than by a single statute.
Why No Wedding Can Happen Inside Israel
Israel has no civil marriage. The country inherited the Ottoman-era Millet system, which puts marriage and divorce in the hands of religious authorities rather than the state. For Jewish citizens, the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate has sole authority over weddings. Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities each have their own recognized religious courts for their members. None of these authorities perform same-sex marriages, and there is no secular alternative.
This shuts out roughly 700,000 Israeli citizens from a domestic wedding, not only same-sex couples but also interfaith couples, people the Rabbinate does not consider Jewish, and couples whose unions are forbidden under religious law. The workaround is the same for all of them: marry abroad, then register the marriage at home.
Marrying Abroad and the Utah Video Option
The legal foundation for registering foreign same-sex marriages is the 2006 High Court of Justice ruling in Ben-Ari v. Director of Population Administration. Five couples who married in Canada asked to have their marriages recorded in the population registry, and the registrar refused. The court held that the population registry serves a statistical function, and that a clerk presented with a facially valid foreign marriage certificate has to record it. The clerk has no authority to investigate whether the marriage would be valid under Israeli domestic law.
The nuance matters. The court expressly said it was ruling only on the registrar’s powers. It was not recognizing same-sex marriage in Israeli law, not creating a new legal status, and not deciding whether foreign same-sex marriages carry domestic legal force. Those questions, the court said, were “difficult and complex” and it left them open.
The second big development came with Utah. Utah began allowing marriages to be performed entirely by video call shortly before the pandemic, and Israeli couples used it heavily. By some estimates more than 1,200 Israeli couples married through Utah county clerk offices by video between 2020 and 2022. When then-Interior Minister Aryeh Deri ordered a halt to registering those marriages on the theory that the ceremonies really took place in Israel, the Supreme Court ruled the Population Authority must register them. If Utah issues a valid marriage certificate, the registrar’s duty to record it is the same whether the couple flew to Toronto or logged on from Tel Aviv. The ruling applies to same-sex couples, interfaith couples, and anyone else shut out of the religious system.
How to Register a Foreign Same-Sex Marriage
Registration happens at a Population and Immigration Authority office, in person. Both spouses attend together when the certificate was issued abroad. The documents you need are:
- The original marriage certificate issued by the foreign government where the marriage took place.
- An apostille stamp certifying the certificate’s authenticity for international use. For U.S. marriages, state-issued certificates are apostilled by that state’s secretary of state; federal documents go through the U.S. Department of State.
- A notarized Hebrew translation of the certificate. Certificates in Arabic do not need translation.
- Both spouses’ current Israeli identification documents.
The clerk reviews the change-of-status form, the apostilled certificate, and the notarized translation against the formal criteria. Once processed, the couple’s marital status is updated in the population database and they can schedule an appointment to receive an updated identity card.
What Registration Actually Gives You
Because the court declined to rule on whether foreign same-sex marriages carry full legal recognition, the rights that follow registration were built by individual court decisions over several decades rather than by a comprehensive law. Israeli courts have recognized same-sex partners as spouses in specific contexts:
- Surviving relatives’ pension rights under both employment agreements and National Insurance.
- Employer-provided benefits for couples. A 1994 case against El Al established that workplace benefits limited to couples must extend to same-sex partners.
- Protection under family violence prevention law.
- Inheritance rights, with courts recognizing same-sex cohabitants as spouses under inheritance law.
- Access to the family court system as spouses.
A registered same-sex couple ends up with most of the same practical benefits as a married heterosexual couple, but the route to each benefit has been less predictable, and enforcement has sometimes required advocacy.
Common-Law Partnership as an Alternative
Couples who do not marry abroad can establish legal standing as Yedu’im BaTzibur, a status roughly translated as “publicly known couple” or common-law partners. It applies to partners who share a household and live a domestic life together without a formal marriage certificate.
To document the status, many couples sign contractual marriage agreements or obtain Domestic Union Cards through organizations such as the New Family Organization. These are recognized by the National Insurance Institute, government ministries, hospitals, banks, and insurance companies, and confer rights largely equivalent to those of married couples at most government agencies. The common-law route does not update the registry to “married,” so it is a different legal instrument than registering a foreign marriage, but for day-to-day access to spousal benefits it covers much of the same ground.
Adoption and Surrogacy
The High Court of Justice ruled unanimously that same-sex couples may adopt under Israel’s 1981 adoption law, reading the law’s reference to “a man and his wife together” as distinguishing two-parent from single-parent households rather than excluding same-sex couples. In July 2021 the Supreme Court ruled that Israel must end its ban on surrogacy for gay men and single men, ordering the government to expand the definition of “intended parents” to include heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, single women, and single men. The change took effect in early 2022. Surrogacy in Israel remains difficult in practice because of a limited number of available surrogates, and egg donation is heavily regulated, so many intended parents work with donors abroad.
Divorce
Dissolving a same-sex marriage runs through the Family Court, not the rabbinical courts. The Rabbinate has said that because same-sex marriage has no significance under religious law, it will not intervene in dissolution. The Family Court process resembles a civil divorce elsewhere: the couple files a petition addressing property division, child custody, and support. Couples who agree can sign a consent divorce agreement; contested issues go to the court. Couples who established their relationship through a common-law partnership agreement instead of a foreign marriage dissolve it by filing a petition for a declaratory judgment to cancel the partnership certificate.
Immigration Under the Law of Return
The Law of Return grants citizenship to Jews and their family members who immigrate to Israel, and the Interior Ministry has instructed the Population and Immigration Authority and the Jewish Agency to grant citizenship to the same-sex spouse of a Jewish person on the same terms as a heterosexual spouse. That policy does not change the marriage rules once the couple arrives, but it removes what had been a significant barrier to same-sex couples making aliyah together.