Controversial 'Rabbis Law' returns to Knesset plenum

Tension erupted between the leaders of the two haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties on Monday over Shas’s intention to advance the controversial “Rabbis Bill.”

The bill would give the government the power to fund new positions in municipal religious councils for rabbis or other religious officials.

Proponents of the bill, led by its author, Shas MK Erez Malul, have argued that its goal is to improve religious services to municipalities or authorities in which they are lacking.

The bill’s detractors – from the opposition and civil organizations – have argued that its real purpose is to enable Shas to award lucrative jobs to dozens of party members.

Ben Gvir removes opposition 

The bill was scratched from the Knesset plenum in July after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir refused to support it unless he received a place in the war cabinet. Ben-Gvir announced on Sunday that he had removed his opposition to the bill since he had de facto become a permanent member in small security consultations regarding the war.

 However, leaders of the other haredi party, United Torah Judaism, threatened to oppose the bill on Monday, over the fact that a controversial bill of their own, known as the “Haredi Daycare Bill,” was removed from the Knesset agenda last week.

UTJ No. 2 MK Moshe Gafni said that if the coalition supported a controversial bill important to Shas, there was no reason why it could not support the controversial bill important to UTJ.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly ordered Gafni and Religious Affairs Minister Michael Malkieli to meet privately to solve the impasse. Gafni announced on Monday evening that the two had come to an agreement whereby his party would support the bill in its first reading, but that it would not advance further without his consent. The bill was thus slated to pass its first reading late Monday night, as the plenum session ran past press time due to an opposition filibuster.

The government last year first attempted to pass a different “Rabbis Bill” with the same purpose. This former bill would have altered the makeup of the body responsible for electing municipal rabbis in a way that increased Shas’s power in the election process.

But this would have come at the expense of the municipalities themselves, which would have lost the power to appoint their own rabbis but still would have had to pay their salaries. Therefore, several mayors, including from the Likud, fiercely objected.

The bill that was set to reach the plenum on Monday solves this problem, as it gives Shas power to appoint allies to religious positions in municipalities, but would force the government to fund these positions, and thus the burden would not fall to the mayors.

The Attorney-General’s Office opposed the bill, arguing in preliminary debates in the Knesset Constitution Committee that the law would grant the government a limitless amount of appointments and thus the budgetary repercussions were unclear.

The “Haredi Daycare Bill,” of which UTJ demands its passage, removes a significant financial sanction against haredi yeshiva students who are legally required to enlist in the IDF but refrain from doing so.

Since the legal basis for the haredi exemption expired this year, the students are no longer eligible to receive subsidized daycare if they refrain from enlisting. The daycare bill removes this sanction by enabling these yeshiva students to continue receiving the subsidies regardless of their draft evasion.

Democrats MK Gilad Kariv said in response to the return of the “Rabbi’s Bill,” “The ‘small’ and vague Rabbi’s [Bill] is more of the same: a corrupt celebration of jobs amid a war, without any criteria, while passing over the local authorities and complete ignoring of the public’s real needs.

“The bill will enable a slow increase in the number of neighborhood rabbis and religious council workers, and, contrary to what has been claimed, at some point these workers will also become part of the local authorities’ budget. We will oppose this law, which is the direct continuation of the show of disconnection and hypocrisy that the haredi parties are exemplifying.”