Rabbi David Yosef chosen as Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi

A statutory election committee convened on Sunday to elect the next Sephardic and Ashkenazi chief rabbis. The elections marked the end of a drawn-out struggle between the Knesset’s religious parties and other religious groups over the positions.

The role of Sephardic chief rabbi was allocated to Rabbi David Yosef, brother of recent chief rabbi Yizhak Yosef and son of former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

The Ashkenazi candidates – Micha Halevy, the chief rabbi of Petah Tikva, and Rabbi Kalman Bar, the chief rabbi of Netanya – tied in a first round of votes on Sunday evening, with 40 votes given to each. A second round of votes will be scheduled at a later date.

Eight candidates ran for the positions, three for the Sephardic chief rabbi and five for the Ashkenazi chief rabbi.

The Sephardic candidates were Rabbi Yosef; Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and father of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit); and Rabbi Michael Amos, the temporary Sephardic chief rabbi and the leading judge in the country’s highest religious court.

Bezalel Smotrich endorsed Kahana

Yosef was supported by Shas, and Eliyahu was supported by Otzma Yehudit. Amos came from the religious-Zionist camp and served in the IDF. However, the Religious Zionist Party (RZP) supported Yosef as part of a deal with Shas, whereby members of the election committee from the RZP said that they would support him in exchange for Shas’ support for the RZP’s Ashkenazi candidate.

The five candidates running for the position of Ashkenazi chief rabbi included three RZP nominees and two haredi contenders. The three RZP candidates were rabbis Eliezer Igra, a judge in the country’s highest religious court; Meir Kahana (unrelated to the founder of the extremist Kach party); and Halevy.

RZP chairman Bezalel Smotrich initially supported Kahana, who was the choice of a committee formed by Smotrich himself. However, Smotrich announced on Thursday evening that he had switched his support to Halevy. Kahana is considered a more mainstream religious-Zionist candidate, while Halevy is associated with the national haredi wing.

The two haredi Ashkenazi candidates were Rabbis Moshe Chaim Lau, brother of recent chief rabbi David Lau and son of former chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau; and Bar.

Lau was supported by parts of the hassidic Agudat Yisrael party, including the Gur Hassidic dynasty, while Bar was supported by the Lithuanian Degel Hatorah party and other parts of Agudat Yisrael, such as the Vizhnitz Hassidic dynasty.

The election came after a series of delays due to the ongoing war and a High Court ruling that demanded that the Chief Rabbinate consider appointing women rabbis to the election committee.

The former chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau were elected in July 2013 for a ten-year tenure. The coalition decided to lengthen their tenure and delay the new election from the summer of 2023 to after the municipal elections, which were scheduled for late October. However, the Israel-Hamas War that broke out on October 7 led to another delay. Their tenure finally expired on July 1, but no replacements were elected due to disagreements over the makeup of the statutory 150-member electoral body and political interests.

Alongside the two chief rabbis, the 150-member body is also responsible for electing a 15-member Chief Rabbinate Council.

The body’s makeup, according to the law, includes 80 rabbis and 70 elected officials. The 70 elected officials include mayors, religious council leaders, two government and five Knesset representatives, and ten public figures chosen by the religious affairs minister. The 80 rabbis include municipal rabbis, neighborhood rabbis, representatives from the religious courts and from the Military Rabbinate, and ten rabbis elected by the outgoing chief rabbis.

The High Court of Justice ruled in January on a petition by Bar-Ilan University’s Rackman Center, which promotes the status of women in matters of family law and seeks to end gender discrimination and inequality in Israel, that the ten rabbis appointed by the outgoing chief rabbis could include women. The High Court ruled that the outgoing rabbis, therefore, had to “consider” appointing some women who were experts in Halacha.

The two outgoing chief rabbis refused to consider appointing women and even initiated a ruling by the Chief Rabbinate Council in May that said that appointing women to spots reserved for rabbis was not halachically permissible. The chief rabbis and temporary replacements, after they retired, refused to appoint their ten choices, and an election committee consequently refused to convene the electoral body.

The election body failed to meet its legal requirement to hold an election by July 1, and the previous rabbis’ tenure ended without their replacement. The High Court was thus forced to rule on August 12 that the election be held by September 30.