The electoral body for the country’s next chief rabbis must hold an election before September 30, the High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday.
This comes after it failed to meet the legal requirement to hold an election by July 1 and the previous rabbis’ tenure ended without replacement.
The ruling was an unusually direct order from the court and serves as a turning point in the months-long political and legal saga that resulted in Israel (and the pre-state Yishuv) not having chief rabbis for the first time in over 100 years.
The state has two chief rabbis, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi. The previous rabbis were Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau. Yosef and Lau were elected in July 2013 for a 10-year tenure. The coalition decided to lengthen their tenure and delay the new election from the summer of 2023 to after the municipal elections, which were scheduled for late October and were promptly delayed due to the war. Their tenure finally expired on July 1, but no replacements were elected due to disagreements over the makeup of the statutory 150-member electoral body and political interests.
Alongside the two chief rabbis, the 150-member body is also responsible for electing a 15-member Chief Rabbinical Council.
Legally, the body’s makeup includes 80 rabbis and 70 elected officials, the latter of which includes mayors, religious council leaders, two government and five Knesset representatives, and 10 public figures chosen by the religious affairs minister. The 80 rabbis include municipal rabbis, neighborhood rabbis, representatives from the religious courts and from the Military Rabbinate, and 10 rabbis elected by the outgoing chief rabbis.
The High Court of Justice ruled in January on a petition by Bar-Ilan University’s Rackman Center – which promotes the status of women in matters of family law and seeks to end gender discrimination and inequality in Israel – that the 10 “rabbis” appointed by the outgoing chief rabbis could include women. The High Court ruled that the outgoing rabbis therefore had to consider appointing some women who were halachic experts.
Refused to consider appointing women
The two outgoing chief rabbis refused to consider appointing women and even initiated a ruling by the Chief Rabbinical Council in May that said appointing women to spots reserved for “rabbis” was not halachically permissible. The chief rabbis, and temporary replacements after they retired, refused to appoint their 10 choices, and an election committee consequently refused to convene the electoral body.
Further complicating the issue were the political interests of the two ultra-Orthodox parties (Shas and United Torah Judaism), and the Religious Zionist Party, all of whom had their own candidates to promote.
The Rackman Center once again petitioned the High Court over what appeared as the Chief Rabbinate ignoring the law. The case included two other petitions to force the Religious Affairs Ministry to hold the election immediately. These latter two petitions were filed by Adv. Prof. Aviad Hacohen, and by a nonprofit organization called ITIM: Resources and Advocacy for Jewish Life. A fourth petition was by Rabbi Eliezer Igra, a candidate for chief rabbi who was eligible to run at the original election date but reached the age limit of 70 on August 9. Igra petitioned the High Court to enable him to run. The ruling on Thursday addressed all four petitions.
The High Court’s ruling was that the election must be held by September 30. The electoral body according to law must be announced three weeks before, and the High Court added that the Chief Rabbinate therefore had until September 9 to appoint its 10 representatives. However, if it refrained from doing so, the elections could still be held among the remaining 140 members.
The court also ruled that Igra should be allowed to run, reasoning that the fact that the rabbinate had failed to hold an election on time was not a strong enough reason to remove Igra’s right to participate.
Ella Skaat, head of ITIM’s legal branch, said in response to the ruling, “After too much time politics and corruption surrounding the chief rabbis’ election, the High Court ruled in favor of the public. Trampling the Chief Rabbinate for wheeling-and-dealing and [personal] interests causes damage first and foremost to the State of Israel’s Jewish character.”