Police expand the law

In an operation involving hundreds of agents, police arrested one Goel Ratzon, a well-known Israeli guru. He had dozens of wives and children.

For a decade, no one had bothered to arrest Ratzon for polygamy, though less famous Jews are routinely jailed for that offense.

Now the police plan to indict him for holding slaves, a recent innovation in Israeli law designed to diminish the number of foreign prostitutes here. Israel’s totalitarian courts are accustomed to activist readings of laws, but even they might find Ratzon’s case to be too much. The women practically deified him, and lived with him more than willingly, so where is the case for slavery?