The annual row over how Israeli religious patients can observe Pesach in hospital reached a controversial pitch on Sunday, when a bill passed its first reading in the Knesset, allowing hospital administrators to ban chametz, or non-Pesach foods, during the festival.

The bill, backed by strictly Orthodox Knesset members, went through by 51 votes to 46. It will enable the administrators of public hospitals in Israel, where it is thought necessary, to “establish protocols banning or limiting the entrance of chametz into the hospital building, in full or part, during the Passover holiday”.

The proposed legislation is once again tied to the potential judicial reform, aimed at clipping the wings of the High Court. In 2020, the High Court ruled that hospitals could not force security guards to search visitors’ bags for chametz during Pesach. Last year it made a similar ruling relating to army bases.

The row over whether or not to allow chametz in hospitals is an illustration of the growing divide between secular and religious Israelis. Some religious legislators, in fact, have previously argued that forcing secular Israelis to eat only Pesach-approved food while in hospital is more likely to push them away from observance, rather than embrace it.

But the latest bill has highlighted what has been called “religious coercion”, with former prime minister Yair Lapid, now opposition leader, accusing the government of pushing the bill through its first of three readings “like thieves in the night.” On Twitter, Lapid complained: “This government is two months old, it hasn’t passed anything for the public good, but most urgent tonight [was this] religious coercion”.

United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni, a longtime critic of the High Court, shouted in the Knesset that opponents of the bill “don’t care about people who keep mitzvot!”

For hospital patients, this Pesach, at least, will not be a question of “why is this night not like other nights”, but more “why, when I don’t keep Pesach when I’m not in hospital, can I be forced to keep it when I am?”