Rabbi Stav slams Yamina for ignoring religion and state while in office
Head of the Tzohar rabbinical association accuses Yamina leaders of using concern over rabbinical judges committee as a political tool, says ‘public won’t buy’
By JEREMY SHARONLe Rav David Stav(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Rabbi David Stav, head of the religious-Zionist Tzohar rabbinical association, has lambasted the Yamina Party and its senior leadership for ignoring religion and state issues during their time in government and accused the party of using such concerns now for political purposes.His comments come following a fierce attack by Yamina MKs Ayelet Shaked and Bezalel Smotrich on the Likud Party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for transferring the chairmanship of the Selection Committee for Rabbinical Judges to Shas.Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Stav said that the Yamina MKs did not really care about such issues, and were using the selection committee as a political tool.“You can't just deal with sovereignty [over the settlements] and the High Court of Justice, and forget everything about religion and state,” said Stav, adding that if Shaked and Smotrich were so interested in these concerns they would have emphasized them during their election campaigns and coalition negotiations.“They fled from these issues like they were fire in the election campaigns… if it was important to them, why did they not demand these roles in their coalition negotiations? Now they are remembering they should deal with these issues?” questioned the rabbi.“The time has come for the religious-Zionist movement and its political leaders to understand that the issue of rabbinical judges is part of the agenda of religious-Zionists, and if it doesn’t become a movement that takes care of religious-secular relation [and] takes care of religion and state issues in a way that connects the poles of Israeli society, it won't get very far, and this is one of the reasons for the political collapse of the religious-Zionist community,” Stav explained.“But all the issues of religion and state have not interested the religious-Zionist movement in recent years. When it doesn’t interest you and you don’t deal with it, you can’t then just try to deal with it for political reasons. It doesn’t work like that. The public doesn’t buy it, the people don’t buy it.”Regarding the issue of the appointment of rabbinical judges during the course of the last government, Stav was less critical.He acknowledged that the standout religious-Zionist candidates associated with Tzohar, a mainstream and widely respected organization in the sector, had not been appointed to the rabbinical courts after Shaked, who was a member of the selection committee, was not able, or willing, to force them through the objections of the ultra-Orthodox parties.He said, however, that there are now Tzohar rabbis present on the benches of the rabbinical courts, and that progress has been made in this regard.
But Stav also said that the transfer of the chairmanship of the selection committee to Shas was “an outrage,” and accused Netanyahu of “totally surrendering to the ultra-Orthodox” on this issue.Still, the rabbi said that he was in fact more concerned about the possibility of radical, conservative religious-Zionist rabbis being appointed to the rabbinical courts than he was over ultra-Orthodox rabbinical judges being appointed by Shas.Stav noted that Bayit Yehudi leader Rafi Peretz, who split from Yamina and joined the government, is strongly associated with the radical, hard-line wing of the religious-Zionist movement and is a student of Rabbi Tzvi Tau, the wing's most radical and senior leader.Tau is a fierce conservative on all matters of religion and state, and Stav alleged that Peretz would take instructions from Tau when it came to influence on the rabbinical judge selection committee for appointing religious-Zionist rabbis.“I don’t care if the rabbinical judges are ultra-Orthodox. There are some very good ultra-Orthodox judges. What I do care about is whether they are sensitive, understand the distress of those before them and are willing to be daring and brave in their decisions,” Stav explained.“Such rabbinical judges won't come from the study of hall of Rabbi Tau. I would sign-off on all the rabbinical judges who were the students of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who would be much more sensitive than rabbinical judges from the right-wing, conservative wing of the religious-Zionist movement.”Speaking to the Post, Shaked rejected Stav’s accusations, and said that she fought strongly to appoint religious-Zionist judges to the rabbinical courts during her time on the committee.She said that she had not given up on one of the outstanding religious-Zionist candidates for the Supreme Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Yair Ben-Menachem, who she said was still young and could eventually be appointed to that bench.Shaked insisted that she had succeeded in getting good religious-Zionists judges on the courts, and said political realities also had to be taken into consideration.She also argued that Bayit Yehudi had sought strongly to be given the Religious Services Ministry in 2015, but was denied by Netanyahu, and that given the relative strength of Shas over Yamina after these elections, it was “clear to us” that they could not demand that ministry.Shaked said that Yamina would now demand the spot on the rabbinical judge selection committee assigned to an opposition MK.
