An intra-religious and political war of words broke out on Wednesday in reaction
to the attorney-general’s decision to pay the wages of non-Orthodox rabbis
elected to lead regional councils and kibbutzim.
Non-Orthodox and
left-leaning politicians and religious leaders said that the announcement is
just the beginning of their campaign, and that progressive Jewish groups would
be lobbying for further steps towards full equality and recognition of their
communities and leaders.
At the same time, MKs from both haredi and
national-religious parties were quick to denounce the decision, with some
promising to fight it through political and legislative
channels.
Sentiment from the different sectors of the Orthodox religious
establishment was strikingly similar, with Orthodox politicians questioning the
authority of the state to decide who may be termed a rabbi, while also
condemning the new reality as an attack on the Jewish values of the
state.
Chairman of the national-religious Habayit Hayehudi party MK
Daniel Herschkowitz said that he would be meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu “to explain the severity of the matter.”
“It is not possible
that decisions concerning the Jewish identity of the state should be given over
to legal advisers and bureaucratic clerks,” Herschkowitz, the science and
technology minister said. “Just like these people aren’t able to decide who can
and cannot get an academic degree, so too they are not able to decide who is
fitting to bear a rabbinic qualification either.”
MK Moshe Gafni (United
Torah Judaism) took aim at the legal system as well as non- Orthodox Jewry in
general, wondering how there is money available for the “Reform and Conservative
clowns, for whom Judaism is a laughingstock.”
“This legal system, having
already tried to harm those who study Torah, is now trying to injure the Jewish
infrastructure of the state as well,” Gafni added in comments made to haredi
newspaper Yated Ne’eman on Wednesday.
UTJ chairman Yisrael Eichler echoed
this sentiment, accusing the “legal regime” of starting a cultural war with this
decision and the High Court’s ruling earlier this year against the ability of
full-time yeshiva students to indefinitely defer military
service.
Speaking to haredi website Kikar Hashabbat, Eichler said that
traditional Judaism would prevail over progressive Judaism through “the numbers
of children studying Torah,” adding that “Reform Jews have decreed upon
themselves assimilation and destruction.
“Their offspring marry gentiles,
their sanctuaries are empty and their homes are deserted,” raged
Eichler.
Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday night
that the High Court and the attorney-general do not have the authority to
designate as rabbis “people who falsify the Torah.”
“This is the
beginning of the destruction of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel,” he
said.
Ze’ev added that he is considering introducing legislation to the
Knesset to legally define the term “rabbi” along Orthodox lines, labeling the
activities of non-Orthodox groups “cultural and social.”
But
representatives of the political left and non-Orthodox movements roundly
condemned the criticism leveled at the state’s new recognition of Reform and
Conservative rabbis, saying that the decision has been long
overdue.
Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz, chairman of the Knesset Lobby for
Pluralism, called the decision “a step of great importance in the struggle for
pluralism and freedom of religion.”
“Judaism in Israel has been kidnapped
for many years by extremist groups who use it as a political instrument and as a
source of endless patronage. The time has come to recognize all streams
of Judaism and to free the religion from ultra- Orthodox politicos.”
Maya
Leibovich, rabbi of the Kehilat Mevasseret Zion Reform congregation, continued
in this vein, saying that the ideal situation would be “a complete separation of
religion and state,” a position Horowitz also advocates.
“The state
shouldn’t support any rabbis, regardless of which stream they’re from, and then
everyone could choose their own rabbis, their own synagogues and schools, as
happens in the US and the rest of the Diaspora,” Leibovich told the
Post.
“But until this happens, it is not reasonable or democratic that
only Orthodox rabbis are funded out of the state purse.”
In the meantime,
Leibovich said that non-Orthodox Jewish streams would turn their focus to
campaigning for their rabbis to be able to be selected as neighborhood rabbis,
who are currently appointed through the Ministry of Religious
Services.
The Israel Religious Action Center, the legal advocacy arm of
the Reform Movement in Israel, submitted a petition to the High Court along
these lines back in January. IRAC was one of the principle petitioners to the
High Court for state funding for non-Orthodox rabbis, a petition which led to
Tuesday’s decision.
In reference to comments made by Ze’ev, Herschkowitz
and others that the decision would harm the Jewish identity of the state,
Leibovich claimed that the exact opposite is true.
Progressive Jewish
movements are saving thousands of Israelis from completely disconnecting from
religion and Judaism altogether, she argued, and said that the greatest danger
to the Jewish character of the state was religious coercion.
“Many people
don’t want to go to synagogue or be involved in Jewish life because they have
been distanced by the Orthodox establishment,” Leibovich continued. “But
secular people do want a spiritual home and they see the possibility for that in
progressive Judaism.”
She emphasized that liberal Jewish movements do not
seek to “attract members of the Orthodox community” but insisted that “there
must be room for all expressions of Judaism” in Israel.
“Both schools of
thought are the words of the living God,” she said, quoting a passage from the
Talmud relating to a halachic dispute between the House of Hillel and the House
of Shamai.
Rabbi Gerald Skolnik, president of the Rabbinical Assembly,
the international association of Conservative rabbis based in New York, warmly
praised the attorney-general’s decision, calling it a “dramatic step forward in
the struggle for religious pluralism in Israel.”
“The historic inequities
in the funding of local community rabbis in Israel has long hampered efforts to
bring a greater variety of spiritual options to Israelis. Hopefully, this
decision will open the door to new and exciting Jewish spiritual opportunities
that will strengthen Israel, and bring Israelis to a new appreciation of Jewish
tradition,” Skolnik said.
The national-religious lobbying group Ne’emanei
Torah Va’Avodah called on Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, through whom
funds to non- Orthodox rabbis will be funneled, to expand the remit of the
decision to Orthodox and secular communities as well.
The organization
complained in a letter to the minister that in the current situation, Orthodox
rabbis serving particular locales and jurisdictions are appointed according to
their family and political connections to haredi political factions. The
organization argued that all communities should be able to freely elect their
own leaders, like non- Orthodox communities are now able to do following
Tuesday’s decision.