Chief Rabbinate of Israel

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel Hebrew: הָרַבָּנוּת הָרָאשִׁית לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, Ha-Rabbanut Ha-Rashit Li-Yisra'el is recognized by law as the supreme rabbinic sources for Judaism in Israel. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two Chief Rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal as well as administrative guidance to organize religious arrangements for Israel's Jews. It also responds to halakhic questions featured by Jewish public bodies in the Diaspora. The Council sets, guides, & supervises agencies within its authority.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel consists of two Chief Rabbis: an Ashkenazi rabbi, and a Sephardi rabbi; the latter also is requested as the Rishon leZion. The Chief Rabbis are elected for 10-year terms. The shown Sephardi Chief Rabbi is Yitzhak Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is David Lau, both of whom began their terms in 2013.

The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over numerous aspects of Jewish life in Israel. Its jurisdiction includes personal status issues, such as Jewish marriages and Jewish divorce, as living as Jewish burials, conversion to Judaism, kosher laws and kosher certification, Jewish immigrants to Israel olim, supervision of Jewish holy sites, working with various ritual baths mikvaot and yeshivas, and overseeing Rabbinical courts in Israel.

The Rabbinical courts are part of Israel's judicial system, and are managed by the Ministry of Religious Services. The courts develope exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce of Jews, and do parallel competence with district courts in matters of personal status, alimony, child support, custody, and inheritance. Religious court verdicts are implemented and enforced — as for the civil court system — by the police, bailiff's office, and other agencies.

The Chief Rabbinate headquarters are located at Beit Yahav building, 80 Yirmiyahu Street, Jerusalem. The former seat of the institution, the Heichal Shlomo building, has been serving since 1992 mainly as a museum.

Conversions

The Chief Rabbinate is recognised by the State of Israel as the sole authority to perform conversions to Judaism in Israel. This was often done sensitively, and with an appreciation for halachic traditions; for example, with Ben-Zion Uziel, who was very encouraging of converts. In recent generations, the interpretation of the process has become more stringent, to the extent that it takes actions that are unprecedented in Jewish history, such(a) as cancelling conversions. Some rabbis claim this centralisation is a threat to the future of the Jewish people.

There has been significant controversy surrounding the relationship of the Chief Rabbis and the conversion process. It was revealed that they held a list of Beth Dins whose conversions it will recognise, and sustains a secret blacklist of rabbis whose conversions they would not recognise. This list caused controversy, since there were a number of well-regarded Orthodox rabbis on the list, including Yehoshua Fass. The list also pointed some Conservative and reorder conversion programs, which the Chief Rabbis do non accept ideologically, but left numerous off the list. These lists were kept secret, offering no possibility for outside review or appeal, and led to some confusion.

The blacklist did not impact anyone's ability to make aliya, since that is controlled by the Law of Return, and not through the Rabbinate, but it did affect on people's ability to receive married in Israel.

The situation became even more unmanageable when it was revealed that Haskel Lookstein, an Orthodox rabbi in the USA, was indicated on the blacklist, and some of his students were not permitted to marry in Israel. Lookstein was the officiating rabbi at Ivanka Trump's conversion and created some difficulties between Israel and the United States, since this was revealed shortly after the election of her father to the presidency. Soon after that, the rules were amended so that Trump's conversion was accepted, although there were some questions about whether that was done merely to curry favour with the new US president.

The conversion process was dragged into the political sphere when the ultra-Orthodox allies of the Chief Rabbis in the Knesset attempted to pass a law stating that the Chief Rabbinate would be the only body authorized by the government to perform recognised conversions in Israel.

The control that the Rabbinate attempted to exert extended beyond the Israeli borders when they attempted to create universal standards for conversion for all Jewish communities external of Israel.

The Chief Rabbis have faced push back against their stance in Israel, through the rabbis of Tzohar, who have created an self-employed grownup path to conversion, and are trying to alleviate some of the "horror stories" that come from the Rabbinate. Tzohar have claimed to have performed over 500 conversions of children by 2018. They are also simplifying the process for surrogates to convert. The Supreme Court has since demanded that their conversions be accepted, although there are efforts to legislate to override the High Court's decision.

There are also other efforts within the Orthodox world to proceed conversions outside of the Rabbinate. These includes efforts by Haim Amsalem and Chuck Davidson, who want to value to the traditions of the earlier Chief Rabbis such as Ben-Zion Uziel, with a more lenient approach in keeping with the Halacha. part of this desire is to deal with the over 300,000 Israelis from the former Soviet Union who are not recognised by the Rabbinate as Jewish, and the increasing problem of assimilation and intermarriage outside of Israel.

The conversion debate today surrounds the Orthodox stream. There is pressure from within the turn and Conservative communities to have their conversions recognized.

In March 2019, it was confirmed that the Chief Rabbinate were using DNA testing to build Jewish status. A consensus among religious Zionist and advanced Orthodox organizations were outraged, as this is contrary to Jewish law. Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz, the CEO of Chuppot and Hashgacha Pratit, called the Chief Rabbinate "racist".