Israelis seek alternatives to Chief Rabbinate as elections approach - opinion

For the past two months, for the first time since the Rabbinate’s establishment over 100 years ago, Israel has been without serving chief rabbis – with temporary stand-ins. With the recent expiration of the Chief Rabbinate Council’s term, the country has been left with only one acting chief rabbi – and no council.

At the end of this month, elections are slated to be held for the leadership of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, at a period when its reputation is at a historic low point. 

How did we reach a situation, in the Jewish state, in which the mechanism responsible for religious services has completely broken down? The elections for chief rabbis were supposed to take place over a year ago, but the conditions didn’t suit Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri, who preferred to postpone them to be able to take control over the job distribution.

The war, municipal elections, and the Ministry of Religious Services’s disregard for the legally established process have brought us to a situation where the Chief Rabbis’ tenure, despite being extended twice, has expired, along with the tenure of almost all of the rabbis sitting on the Chief Rabbinate Council. The veteran institution of the Rabbinate has failed to withstand the combination of excessive political interference and criminal neglect of proper administration.

The Chief Rabbinate in Israel has exclusive control over marriage and divorce, conversion, burial, and state-mandated kashrut, but despite its high impact on the daily lives of many among the Israeli public, they are indifferent to its collapse. We have grown accustomed to witnessing a failing system, sometimes corrupt, deeply affected by nepotism, and primarily one that doesn’t serve us.

Accordingly, in recent years, despite population growth, we have been witnessing a consistent decline in the number of couples choosing to marry through the Rabbinate. More and more couples are turning to other options – whether civil marriages abroad, alternative ceremonies in Israel, or Orthodox weddings outside the Rabbinate like those we conduct in the Chuppot Organization. The number of inquiries reaching us at Chuppot has almost doubled in the past year.

Remotely married

According to data published this week, Israel is a world leader in “exporting” marriages via Zoom: In the state of Utah, which allows marriage via Zoom even when both partners are foreign citizens and not on US soil, over 1,500 Israeli couples married through this channel in the first half of 2024. This constitutes conclusive evidence of the inability of the State of Israel to meet such a basic need of its citizens: to be married with dignity.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, taught us that Judaism gains influence when it relinquishes power. The current reality in the Rabbinate is one of authoritarianism and coercion – and accordingly, without real influence on the hearts of the people. We can only imagine what a rich Jewish world could exist here in Israel were the Rabbinate to give up its authoritarianism and politicization and support the freedom to choose how to marry.

It is time for decision-makers to internalize that the Rabbinate’s monopoly on marriage and divorce in Israel is crumbling. Without significant reform of the institution, this trend will only intensify. The Israeli public is looking for a religious system that will serve it, not the other way around. At Chuppot, we continue to offer an Orthodox alternative that respects tradition but also human and civil rights.

We call on decision-makers to listen to the public and use this opportunity for real reform; to choose rabbinic leadership that will work for all of the Israeli public, not just a narrow sector. 

The upcoming elections are a last chance to save the relevance of the Chief Rabbinate for the Israeli public. If there isn’t significant change, the public will continue to vote with its feet and seek alternatives outside the institutional framework.

The writer is the CEO of the Chuppot Organization, part of Hashgacha Pratit.