Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana intends to create a time-limited period of service for municipal chief rabbis in an effort to make them more accountable and relevant to the residents of their cities.
The changes being advanced by Kahana would limit a term of service to between five and 10 years, and allow a rabbi to be reelected for as many terms as desired until the age of retirement at 70.
It is not yet clear if the changes, which will likely be enacted through administrative regulations and not legislation, will apply retroactively to rabbis who have already served more than 10 years.
Dozens of such rabbis hold such municipal chief rabbi positions in cities and local authorities up and down the country, and have significant authority over religious services in their jurisdictions, including critical issues such as marriage registration. In many cases, these rabbis enjoy generous salaries.
But once elected by a special electoral body, municipal chief rabbis have the position for life without any term limit or any need forreelection.
They can serve up to the age of 70, with an option to extend their service until the age of 75.
In addition, the Chief Rabbinate and the Religious Services Ministry have in the past been extremely reluctant to discipline municipal chief rabbis who act in an unsuitable manner or contravene state regulations or laws.
This has created a situation in which some municipal chief rabbis have become disconnected from the residents of their cities, act and speak inappropriately, and make decisions which are incommensurate with the religious character of the city.
One such figure is Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar, who received votes during the tight election for the position in 2014 from liberal and non-Orthodox representatives on the electoral body.
In 2016, however, he described homosexuals as “a cult of abomination” and asserted that they should get the death penalty according to Jewish law, while in 2017, Amar denounced non-Orthodox Jews as worse than Holocaust deniers. .
In another egregious example of what was actually unlawful behavior, the municipal chief rabbi of Petah Tikva Rabbi Binyamin Attias refused to recognize state conversions of Ethiopian-Israeli residents of his city, despite being required to do so by law.
Similarly, in 2013, the chief municipal rabbi of Rishon Lezion Rabbi Yehuda David Wolpe was accused of serially sending engaged couples to private firms to clarify their Jewish status, in contravention of regulations.
And Chief Rabbi of Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu has made numerous racist and political remarks which are forbidden by the terms of employment for public servants.
“This is the first step on the way to rehabilitate the status of municipal chief rabbi and local religious services in particular,” said Tani Frank, head of the religion and state department of the religious-Zionist Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah lobbying group which has advanced the cause of term limits for municipal chief rabbis.
“People don’t even know the name of their municipal rabbi, and certainly have not met them. It is very problematic that such rabbis have become irrelevant to their community.”
Frank argues that if municipal chief rabbis, such as Amar, would need to be reelected every ten years they would not feel so free to speak divisively and adopt extreme positions in Jewish law if it could alienate them from those who have the power to reelect them.