Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev arrives to the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem on January 29, 2017. Photo by Ohad Zwigenberg/POOL

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel will not have a representative of Diaspora Jewry light a torch this year at the annual Independence Day eve ceremony on Mount Herzl.

The decision by Culture Minister Miri Regev announced Monday comes two years after she instituted reserving a torch for a Diaspora Jew at the ceremony in 2017.

The decision comes in the wake of a difficult year in relations between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, and days after tensions over egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall boiled over into violence and vitriol.

The Ruderman Family Foundation in a statement condemned what it called Regev’s “misguided decision.”

“Minister Miri Regev is wrong to disrespect millions of Jews around the world and their vital connections to Israel by discontinuing the Diaspora torch at the Yom Haatzmaut ceremony,” said Jay Ruderman, the foundation’s president. “Regev’s misguided decision threatens to unnecessarily set back relations between Israel and worldwide Jewry.”

In 2017, Birthright Israel founder Michael Steinhardt and Simon Wiesenthal Center founder Rabbi Marvin Hier lit the Diaspora torch. Last year, actress Mayim Bialik was chosen to light a torch but declined the invite because of her “Big Bang Theory” commitments. The slot was never filled.

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