Reform Chief Rabbinate, AJC Urges Israel
The American Jewish Committee called on the Israeli government to reform the institution of the Chief Rabbinate.
AJC in a resolution adopted by its Board of Governors urged the Israeli government “to undertake promptly all needed actions” to remove the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over issues of personal status, including marriage, divorce, burial and conversion to Judaism. The Jewish advocacy organization also said Israel should ensure that its government bodies recognize all American Jewish denominations and accord them equal rights and privileges.
The call, which appeared in a statement Wednesday, comes in the wake of a government decision to recognize non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel as community rabbis and to pay them the same salary as Orthodox rabbis. The Chief Rabbinate has responded to the move with invective.
“In the 21st century, a coercive Chief Rabbinate has become, at best, an anachronism, and, at worst, a force dividing the Jewish people,” the AJC said in its resolution. “The role of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate requires significant modifications so as to bring Israel into greater harmony with contemporary democratic norms, particularly as practiced and understood by Diaspora Jewish communities.”
A “religious status quo” agreement between Israeli religious and secular authorities in 1948 established the Chief Rabbinate as the supreme religious and spiritual authority for the Jewish people in Israel. In recent years, however, the Chief Rabbinate’s actions and pronouncements on personal status issues and the legitimacy of non-Orthodox movements have raised rancor in the American Jewish community, as well as in Israel, AJC said in a statement.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
