Supporters of Inclusive Conversion Policy Sweep Elections to Chief Rabbinate Council

Supporters of Inclusive Conversion Policy Sweep Elections to Chief Rabbinate Council.

(Jerusalem, Sept. 23) In elections to the Chief Rabbinate Council, supporters of more inclusive conversion policies won a resounding majority of the seats at stake.

At stake were the ten seats on the Chief Rabbinate’s governing council that are filled by election. The electoral body is a group of 130 rabbis and elected officials from Israel’s largest towns and regional authorities, plus another 20 “public figures” appointed by the government and the two Chief Rabbis. The total composition of the Council is 16; Israel’s two Chief Rabbis (one Ashkenazi, one Sephardi) and one chief rabbi from each of Israel’s four largest cities (each also has two rabbis, who alternate in office) are members ex officio. The Council is the Rabbinate’s chief administrative and policymaking institution.

Of the ten elected members, eight represented a coalition formed by Religious Zionists and the Shas party. The Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Amar, associated with Shas, is an advocate of more inclusive conversion policies who has been frustrated in his attempts to impose his desired policy on Israel’s rabbinical courts. Sharing his frustration has been Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leading Religious Zionist rabbi whom Rabbi Amar appointed to head a new conversion authority.

In an unprecedented and highly controversial decision this year, a rabbinical court declared invalid thousands of conversions performed under more inclusive procedures in recent years, thrusting thousands of new converts into limbo. The decision was taken by judges (dayanim) of the Ashkenazi Haredi extraction, who disapprove of the policy of encouraging the conversion of immigrants to Israel who are not Jewish according to Halacha. The decision was controversial in Rabbinic circles and generated widespread public outrage.

The results of the election to the Chief Rabbinate Council are a sign of backlash against the rabbinic factions who oppose inclusive conversion policies. The Chief Rabbinate Council does not have the power to appoint or dismiss judges, but the formation of a coalition opposed to more restrictive policies shows that eventually a more liberal policy is likely to percolate into the rabbinical courts as well. The electoral body that elected the Council also appoints the Chief Rabbis; the Chief Rabbis and two Knesset members are members of the body that actually appoint rabbinical judges. If the coalition formed by the backlash persists, opponents of a more inclusive conversion policy may find themselves excluded from appointments to rabbinical courts and other crucial bodies where official policy on religious affairs is formed.