There is a big election coming up on Wednesday, one many American Jews might not be aware of. In response to January’s parliamentary elections, Israel will elect new Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis. While the election for Sephardi Chief Rabbi has important implications for the future power of Rav Ovadya Yosef, the highly influential and controversial former Chief Rabbi who has several sons running for the position, I am far more interested in the outcome of the election for the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi: I find myself in the unusual position of hoping that the “liberal” candidate, Rabbi David Stav, loses to his more right-wing rivals. Rabbi Stav hails from the National-Religious movement and is therefore “Modern Orthodox” by Israeli standards (he does, after all, wear a knitted kippah). He has been denounced as “wicked” by the Sephardic religious party Shas for trying to help people establish their Jewish identity and therefore get married. And he promises “real revolution” if elected. All this should sound good to a liberal Jew like myself, right?
The problem with a Stav election, however, is that it likely will mean the continued vitality of the Chief Rabbinate (or Rabbanut in Hebrew). The Rabbanut itself is a $5.6 million institution, created by the British in 1921, that has become a calcified, corrupt, politicized, and reactionary body. It prevents women from getting divorces from abusive husbands, prevents consenting adults from getting married, and vehemently opposes Jewish pluralism within Israel. As this op-ed in the Jerusalem Post recently put it:
What has been going on is nothing short of a disgrace. If there ever was a public institution which has become totally discredited in the eyes of the people it is meant to serve, it is surely the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Many are rightly asking: if this the depth to which this institution has sunk, is it perhaps time to seek an alternative mechanism by which religion can be organized in the State of Israel?
Nor is Rabbi Stav himself committed to radically reforming the Rabbanut from within. His “revolution” consists primarily of making the Chief Rabbinate a more user-friendly service organization. Were Stav to lose, however, many insiders feel that a real revolution would occur, with non-religious and National Religious alike coming up with alternate, “privatized” rabbinic and religious functions in areas ranging from conversion and marriage to kashrut certification. Such changes are already underway through efforts such as the Beit Hillel Movement, which includes both men and women in its rabbinic organization. As this article in Ha’aretz suggests, a Stav loss makes it likely that “such trends will intensify and accelerate – and a de facto alternative to the Chief Rabbinate will arise. Not only the nonreligious, but also the national religious will reach the conclusion they have no place within the Rabbinate.”
For secular Israelis, and for religious Israelis who support pluralism and a sense of klal Yisrael, this would be a wonderful turn of events.
Ashkenazi
Pronounced: AHSH-ken-AH-zee, Origin: Hebrew, Jews of Central and Eastern European origin.
kashrut
Pronounced: kahsh-ROOT, Origin: Hebrew, the Jewish dietary laws.
Sephardic
Pronounced: seh-FAR-dik, Origin: Hebrew, describing Jews descending from the Jews of Spain.
