Let's raise it till the age of 30! THERE! THE FINAL & PERFECT SOLUTION

What does a 16 year old know about anything? They are all looking through rose coloured specs - they shouldn't be allowed to marry at such a young age.

Secular self-appointed judges to tell haredim or other religious Jews, or even arabs when to get married. What a joke! They'll get married whenever they want and file for secular marriage papers (after who knows how many children) whenever the legal marriage the self-appointed judges will decide. In the meantime young secular 12-16 old kids are having sex without mariage and becoming pregnant. As if they too care less what these self-appointed judges decide. What a dumb bill!

I'm glad they are doing this, and I must admit that it is a shock. A higher marriage age is a sign of an advanced country. Weren' t some of the haredim calling for the mariage age to be lowered, to as low as fifteen a year or so ago?

By the increasing divorce rate worldwide it is obvious that man is no monogamous. Marriage is not essential to "procreation"! The Good Book, Genesis Chapter 1, tells us "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." It says nothing about getting married and then doing what people do best! Marriage is an archaic institution the main beneficiaries of it the the divorce lawyers!

Look at some of the scathing comments that Nehari got in the Hebrew edition and rightly so. Seems like this man represents the worst of the primitive Shas centered attitudes that unfortunately still persist even in the 21st century.

Marriage is a serious enough lifestyle decision for the partners to be of adult status to decide for themselves. Its not accidental that at 18 young people are called into the army, and have the right to vote for their government. If you get a hopeless government you can vote a for a different lot in a few years. Marriage is a much more long term commitment and parents and cultural pressure forcing these arrangements onto underage teens is wrong. The shocking promiscuity today of very young school children in the hiloni world is not a reason to lower the legal age to contract a marriage. Also, something should be done to enforce the country's laws against polygamy.

Mary would have been inillegible to get married with this law to Joseph.

a mother is a HIGH responsability which can be given 2 a MUTURE person ONLY. 18 girl is STILL a kid. full stop.

There never has been. There's nothing more magically mature about an 18 year old than a 17 year old. It's simply a legal convention because we can't evaluate every little case to judge whether so and so is truely ready. Personally, I think Israeli youth are more mature and ready for something like marriage, even at 17, than are most American twenty somethings I meet.

I agree with #11.

... for 21st century Jews in an advanced country to get married?