A power struggle between Otzma Yehudit and Shas sharpened in the past few days after Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir attempted to block a bill that would give Shas near-complete control over rabbinical appointments in cities, towns and even neighborhoods nationwide.
Shas, the Sephardi haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party, controls both offices that have the most influence on religious services – the Religious Services Ministry and the Interior Ministry, and is attempting to pass two laws that intend to consolidate its power at all levels of the rabbinical hierarchy.The first bill is to postpone the election for the country’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis and the Chief Rabbinate Council by approximately eight months, from July (chief rabbis) and August (rabbinical council) 2023, to April and June 2024, respectively.
Israel has two chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi, who are elected every 10 years by a 150-member committee made up of 70 elected officials at the local and national level, as well as 80 rabbis from the neighborhood to the city level. This committee also elects 10 out of the 17-member Chief Rabbinate Council, which is elected every five years. The other seven members of the Chief Rabbinate Council are the two chief rabbis, four chief rabbis of Israel's "big cities," and the IDF Chief Rabbi. The Chief Rabbinate Council has statutory power over a number of fields, including marriage and divorce, burial, and kashrut certification.Cause for delay
Shas’s central argument for the delay is that the election committee includes representatives from the 35 local authorities – and the upcoming election to local authorities on October 31 means that the people voting will soon not be in power. The delay to 2024 would enable the local officials elected in October to have a voice in who will serve as chief rabbi and on the Chief Rabbinate Council.
Despite Shas’s explanations, Knesset members from the opposition and from Otzma Yehudit have accused the party of having a different motive for the delay: Shas chairman MK Arye Deri wants more time to ensure that his brother, Chief Rabbi of Beersheba Yehuda Deri, and his ally, Rabbi David Yosef, will occupy the positions of Sephardi chief rabbi and chief rabbi of Jerusalem.
The bill to delay the election of the chief rabbis and the council is being prepared in the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee for its second and third reading on the Knesset floor, and could pass into law already next week.
The second bill, also being promoted by Shas, would weaken the power of local authorities in appointing local rabbis, would give the religious affairs minister significant power over the selection of municipal and neighborhood rabbis, and would subjugate the entire array of local rabbis and religious councils to the Chief Rabbinate.
Different cities have differing religious character – from the ultra-Orthodox Bnei Brak to the largely secular Tel Aviv – and accordingly, existing law gives local authorities a majority in the committee that is responsible to elect their authority’s chief rabbi. While local chief rabbis, meaning chief rabbis of cities, towns, regional councils, etc., are officially subordinate to the Chief Rabbinate, the reality on the ground is that each local chief rabbi has broad independence to adapt religious services to the character and needs of each authority, according to Tani Frank, director of the Center for Judaism and State Policy at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
The new law will alter this, both by stating in law that the Chief Rabbinate Council will be the “highest religious and halachic authority,” and by altering the makeup of the committees that elect the local rabbis so that the religious affairs minister and Chief Rabbinate – and not the local authority leaders themselves – have a majority, and can therefore, for example, appoint an ultra-Orthodox rabbi as the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.The bill also says that Israel’s four “big cities” – Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba – will have two chief rabbis instead of the current one, with the first chief rabbi being Ashkenazi and the second Sephardi.According to Frank, “The law proposal wishes to worsen the current situation – weakening the power of communities to elect their own rabbis by weakening the power of local elected representatives in electing and appointing local rabbis, and by subjugating all rabbis to the Chief Rabbinate Council in a way that will strengthen the chief rabbinate’s monopoly on Judaism and will not leave room for independent halachic rulings, as well as flood the local authorities with rabbis who were appointed on behalf of someone, and not by their own communities – in cities, towns, and neighborhoods.”The bill passed in the ministerial committee on legislation on Sunday. However, uncharacteristically, Ben-Gvir filed an appeal to Cabinet-Secretary Yossi Fuchs, and the entire cabinet reconvened on Monday to reject the appeal.Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party opposes both bills on ideological grounds, a source in the party said. The source gave two main arguments: First, the bill takes away the voice of citizens, via their elected representatives serving in their local authority, in choosing who their chief rabbi will be; second, the bill will make the rabbinical appointments a political “job market” and open the door for increasing the mix between religion and politics, which make religion look bad, the source said.However, the party may oppose the bill for another reason. Israel Hayom reported on Tuesday that Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of Otzma Yehudit was conditioning the party’s support of the bill on the election of his father, Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu, as the next chief rabbi of Jerusalem.The heritage minister denied the report, but the claim by Israel Hayom was repeated by Frank, who said that this has been known for weeks.Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak responded to the report by filing a police complaint. Beliak charged that Amichai Eliyahu’s actions amounted to an illegal breach of trust.Dozens of local authority leaders also wrote a letter last week to Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli (Shas) voicing their opposition to the bill, and writing that they “had no intention of cooperating with the bill, which will damage the citizens and the fabric of community life in cities.“We will not agree to enter an external voting official, as important and respected as he is. A city rabbi must be part of the community and the place, and must be accepted by it. We strongly oppose the bill proposal and will act against it with all of the tools that stand at our disposal,” the local authority leaders wrote.