Ironically as Israel prepares for elections that may result in a government without any religious parties, that new government would be in a position to offer a great gift to committed Jews — abolishing the institution of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
During the modern period, chief rabbis have not generally been good for the Jews. While a handful of modern chief rabbis were respected community leaders — such as Rabbi Adler ([UK] 1803 –1890), Rabbi Kook ([Palestine] 1865–1935) and Rabbi Herzog ([Israel] 1889–1959) — these are the exceptions to the rule.
Most other chief rabbis have been of lesser stature and gained their office through political skills rather than scholarship or moral leadership.
The recent elections of the chief rabbi of France and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel would even make a Chicago Ward boss blush.
Luckily for the Jews, chief rabbis in the modern Diaspora have not had the power to do substantive harm. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the Israel, where the office of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (CRI) is an official arm of the state.
Sadly, with their presence and power as a state bureaucracy, the CRI has pushed Israeli Jews away from Judaism. More recent decisions are now threatening to alienate Jews in the Diaspora as well.
With the exception of a few chief rabbis, the CRI is an incredibly unpopular institution among both secular and religious Jews.
Most secular Israeli Jews view the CRI as an agency from outer space that enters their lives at key times, such as weddings, sometimes decides to make mischief and usually acts as an enforcement agent endowed with all the charm of any bureaucracy.
Mainstream Zionist religious Jews are also increasingly alienated by the CRI, since haredi Jews have come to dominate the institution and subsequently fired or marginalized religious Zionist rabbis and ignored their legal rulings.
To add insult to injury, the haredi rabbis who presently control the CRI bureaucracy do not even follow CRI rulings, deferring instead to their own particular sect’s rabbinic leadership.
Their involvement in the CRI is often simply a way to get work and a sure paycheck. No segment of Israeli Jewry now seriously considers approaching the CRI for moral or spiritual guidance.
Overturned conversions
In recent years, the CRI bureaucracy has attempted to become the worldwide decision-maker on conversion standards and proof of Jewish identity and thereby alienated Jews in the Diaspora as well.
Since the CRI has become dominated by Ashkenazi haredi rabbis, it has increasingly based its standards on the legal opinions of 19th and 20th century Ashkenazi rabbis, many of which have overturned 2,000 years of more lenient and compassionate views on the question of Jewish status.
As a result, converts who have moved to Israel are having their status questioned. In addition, the CRI is now preparing lists of those converted in its own courts that it no longer considers Jewish because the conversions were approved by judges they are purging.
Even more incredibly, this is being done over the objections of the Sephardic chief rabbi, who is technically the head of the CRI’s rabbinic courts.
Further, the CRI is now also questioning the Jewish status of non-Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora and demanding proofs of identity such as tomb-stone engravings, wedding contracts of parents and grand-parents and testimony of Jewish identity from an Orthodox rabbi.
For a group of rabbis to take such actions while ignoring the personal grief and anguish they are causing indicates how far out of touch they have become with the Jewish people.
With all of these actions, the CRI is guilty of exactly the same actions it has charged the Conservative and Reform Movement with doing — setting aside long-standing Jewish law in favor of the writings of certain late 19th and 20th century thinkers.
In place of the Chief Rabbinate, the Israeli government could set up a new, central religious status registrar where Israeli citizens and Jews from around the world could register their marriages, divorces and conversions under whatever rabbinical auspices they were conducted, if they so chose.
While such a move might seem far-fetched given the power of the haredi parties, a new government composed of Kadima, Labor and other secular parties would be able to accomplish this, particularly early in its tenure.
The religious parties have already signaled their desire not to partner with Kadima and Labor by their willingness to let the current government fall.
So there is frankly not a lot for Kadima and Labor to lose by making the closing of the CRI part of their platforms. Such a position would probably even win some votes.
More importantly, dismantling the Chief Rabbinate would be the single most influential action Israel could take to improve religious dialogue within Israel and decrease tension in the Diaspora.
Perhaps some day, Jews will accumulate enough merits to agree on a chief rabbi. In the meantime, the government of Israel can help us all by dismantling the Rabbinate and moving on.
Scott A. Shay is the author of “Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry” (Devora, Second Edition 2008) and a financial executive living in New York City.
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