Disputes for Heaven’s Sake: the Bumbling Israeli Rabbinate

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar

  Can Israel Afford An Official Rabbinate Any Longer?

The ancient rabbis must have had a prophetic sensitivity. Their voices reach out over the centuries to share a message that could be applied to any number of recent headlines in the Jewish world.  Consider this particularly timeless teaching:

A controversy that is for Heaven’s Sake has lasting value, but if it is not for Heaven’s Sake it doesn’t.

What is an example of “A controversy that is for Heaven’s Sake?”  The debates of Hillel and Shammai.

What is an example of “A controversy that is NOT for Heaven’s Sake?”  The controversy of Korah and his compatriots.

This ancient wisdom is especially apt given that this week the Torah reading focuses on Korah, his compatriots, and their rebellions.  Korah and his chief lieutenants sought to inspire a populist revolt, using the language of religion in the service of demagoguery.  They quoted God’s own words that the entire People of Israel were a priesthood, and thereby challenged Moses and Aaron as the leaders of the official priesthood, and the larger people.  They sought to create anarchy by dissembling the political and religious structures of the community.  It is presumed that if victorious, they would have emerged as the new leaders of Israel.

The Torah records these efforts were disastrous, epic failures.

Let’s hold that thought and move ahead to this week. Two particular recent events about the role of religious authority in the contemporary State of Israel have caught the attention of world Jewry.  The first happened at the Western Wall.  Thursday morning, special services were conducted in honor of the New Month celebration by Women of the Wall.  Police were on hand to observe and video the service.  After services concluded Israeli police arrested a woman leaving the Western Wall plaza. They questioned her for four hours before releasing her.

What was the big threat she represented to Israel’s security?  Was she a suspected terrorist?  A fleeing fugitive wanted by Interpol? Had she violated a visa? No.  She was arrested, detained, and questioned for nearly four hours because she wore a tallit(prayer shawl) at the Wall.  The Wall Plaza has been taken over by the Israeli rabbinate, declared to be an official religious site of the State, and assigned an official State orthodox rabbi as its overseer who strictly imposes traditional orthodox standards on what goes on there.  Only in Israel is mainstream, non-orthodox Jewish practice is illegal. The arrest of the woman on Thursday underscores that Judaism in Israel is too important to be left in the hands of the Israeli rabbinate.

This lesson was furthered when the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar issued a letter on Israeli Government letterhead decrying the recent limited approval to pay non-orthodox rabbis to serve isolated communities.  These rabbis will work and be paid under the auspices Ministry of Culture and Sports.  They are not under the purview of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Even so, Amar has called for a rally at the office of the Chief Rabbi next Tuesday to protest those who would “commit terrorism and destroy the vineyards of the Lord.”

The language of the letter is incendiary; it potentially encourages physical violence against those perceived to be “uprooting…all of the fundamental principles of the Torah.”  The dire call to protect the Torah from this type of supposed assault potentially knows no limits.  Just this week women in Bet Shemesh were stoned for immodest dress.   The assassination of Prime Minster Rabin came from similar corners zealous to advance a particular orthodox ideology on the State and its people.   The promulgation of Amar’s missive on government letterhead makes the affront even more intolerable. 

Bad news from the official Israeli rabbinate and other rabbinical authorities has created a mirror-image effect to the scandal caused by Korah & Co. In the Torah, the rebels wanted to create anarchy by dissembling the religious and political structures of the community.  In contemporary, modern, Jewish, democratic, and (ostensibly) secular Israel, the rabbinate seeks to stifle society by using the apparatus of the state to control the lives of all Israelis by controlling the religious and political structures of the State.  

Jerry Silverman, the President and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America released a statement asserting “We know that the Chief Rabbi’s comments and language are completely rejected by the millions of Jewish people whom we represent from all streams, including our Orthodox brethren. Statements such as those made by Rabbi Amar only serve to alienate our fellow Jews from our religion, our people and the Jewish state.”

This alienation is one that the State of Israel simply cannot afford.  It is the American Jewish community at the tip of the spear in a meaningful defense of Israel against a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that is growing larger on American campuses and in America’s churches.  The updated disaster response capacity throughout Israel is a direct reflection of the dollars donated to the State through the Federation system.   At the end of the day it is still the political influence of the American Jewish community that ensures that the special strategic importance of the Israeli-American relationship is never taken for granted in Washington.  In turn that means that 80% of North American Jewry—the non-orthodox whose rabbis in Israel have been called terrorists by Rabbi Amar—should similarly not be taken for granted by the Israeli government…including its rabbis.

The controversies stirred in Israel and beyond her borders by the increasingly strident and stringent Israeli rabbinate and other rabbinical voices in Israel cannot be ignored or overlooked any longer. The very presence of an official orthodoxy and its rabbinate in Israel threatens the unity of world Jewry in its love and support of Israel.  It creates a stumbling block against those who want to support Israel in her trials and tribulations with the Palestinians, the Iranians, rising Islamist rhetoric and increasing isolation on the world stage.  The institution of the State Rabbinate seems incapable of arguments that are for Heaven’s Sake. Its focus is purely on extending its own temporal power.  It is long past time for the State of Israel to recognize that its official rabbinate resembles Korah’s rebellion:  it is a disastrous, epic failure.  There are no lasting values to the controversies that it has incited. Let it be disbanded for the good of the State, Judaism, and the Jewish people world-wide before it too becomes an existential threat to the welfare of the Jewish State.