After months of the largest religious party’s membership waffling on participation in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coaltion - on issues as divisive as partitioning Jerusalem and a ceasefire with Hamas - Olmert might find his coalition collapsing over an unexpected blindside: matzah.

As the Forward reports, a landmark ruling by the Israeli court system abrogated a law illegalizing the sale of leavened bread during Pesach (NY Times article from 2001 on the chametz police here). The ruling cited that restuarants and stores are private property and thus not violating any “public display” of bread.

But further, the judge ruled that “Hametz prohibitions as they are outlined in the Halacha,” are not relevant. The secular law only prevents the display of goods that look like bread, such as “bread, rolls and pitas.”

Needless to say, the ultra-Orthodox are pissed. The three major religious parties (worth 40 Knesset seats) have demanded an early end to the parliamentary break to resolve the issue. The Shas party has even threatened to pull out of the governing coalition, wherein Olmert’s number of supporters might dip below 50%. Meanwhile, secular parties are celebrating a victory for separation of church and state.

This would be less significant if this chametz/matzah embroglio didn’t carry with it religious party condemnation of democratic principles:

Israel’s minister of religious services, Yitzhak Cohen of Shas, released a statement: “We must get rid of the court like we get rid of hametz.”

That’s pretty intense. We’ve talked on this blog about the power of food — both to unite and to divide Jews — and yet I don’t think we’ve ever brought up how Jewish tradition’s approach to food might undermine the stability of the Jewish state. Perhaps that’s reaching.

But we are touching here on how our approaches to Jewish pluralism - in this case, the nature of kashrut - are under feirce debate in Israel. On one side, we have secular Israelis fighting for a life free from “religious coercion,” as the Forward article says. On the other side, we have if not fundamentalist then certainly intolerant religious Jews who claim that failing to impose a very sectarian interpretation of Jewish tradition puts a “black stain on Israel’s Jewish identity.”

And the debate is really open: 69% of Israelis won’t eat chametz on Pesach, yet the country’s religious sector ranges between 25%-40% (20% of Israelis are Arabs, at least half of Israeli Jews are not observant, and another 10%-15% are of liberal streams).

Pardon my editorializing, but Israel is surrounded by countries in which some elements are fighting for Sharia Islamic law. In that, I guess Israel is unexceptionally like her neighbors. But luckily Israel possesses a free court and a modest canon of civil rights law which stands to defend the public space where the definition of “Jewish tradition” can be fought.

Even - and perhaps especially - when it comes to kashrut and who can and can’t eat what food in the Jewish state.