The High Court justices who recommended state support for non-Orthodox rabbis
had conflicts of interest, Religious Services Minister Ya’acov Margi charged on
Tuesday morning.
Margi made his accusations during a tempestuous hearing
in the Knesset Finance Committee, which committee chairman Moshe Gafni (UTJ) had
called to address how the state would fund the salaries of Reform and
Conservative rabbis.
At the end of May, the Attorney-General’s Office
announced that in accordance with the recommendation from the High Court of
Justice, the state would allocate funds to pay the wages of non-Orthodox rabbis
serving in regional councils, kibbutzim and moshavim, as it does for Orthodox
rabbis.
Until now, the state has refused to recognize or fund any non-
Orthodox leaders, although it employs and pays many Orthodox
rabbis.
During the meeting, Margi said that the justices who ruled on the
case should have recused themselves due to “a conflict of interests and a lack
of good faith.”
One of the justices, the minister claimed, had received
an award from the Reform Movement; a second informed the court that he had
represented the Reform Movement in the past in a professional capacity; and
another justice told the court that he was a friend of one of the petitioners
and had studied with him in the past.
Margi also claimed that the
Attorney-General’s Office advocate who was dealing with the issue had gotten
married in a Reform ceremony.
The justices presiding over the case were
Elyakim Rubinstein, Hanan Melcer and Uzi Vogelman.
In considering a
petition from the Reform Movement from 2005, they informed the attorney-general
in May that unless the state revoked its policy of refusing funding to
non-Orthodox rabbis, they would issue a ruling in favor of the
petitioners.
The director of the Reform Movement in Israel, Rabbi Gilad
Kariv, who was invited to the hearing as a speaker, said that Margi’s
accusations were baseless and accused Gafni and the religious establishment of
trying to halt the implementation of the attorney-general’s
decision.
Kariv asked to respond to the claims during the hearing, but
Gafni refused the request, saying there would be an opportunity to do so in
coming meetings. Kariv then accused Gafni of running the committee “as if it
were the editorial board of the Yated Ne’eman haredi newspaper,” whereupon Gafni
had stewards remove him from the room.
Kariv said he would be submitting
an official complaint against Gafni for not allowing an invited guest to speak
during the hearing, as well as for the “web of lies” presented during the
meeting and “the attack on the High Court justices.”
MK Orit Zuaretz
(Kadima), who was present at the hearing, stated that in her opinion, the Chief
Rabbinate should be dismantled, and that “its behavior is causing people to go
to other streams of Judaism” for their spiritual needs.
She also demanded
that there be a timetable for implementing the attorney-general’s decision on
non-Orthodox rabbis.
Yizhar Hass, head of the Masorti Movement (the
branch of Conservative Judaism in Israel), accused Margi of mud-slinging under
the cover of parliamentary immunity.
“Margi and Gafni, who for many years
have allocated thousands of jobs to Orthodox rabbis, are behaving like Cossacks
who have been robbed,” he said.
“[These claims] are the height of
impudence.”
Gafni called the hearing to inquire about the level of
funding the state intended to provide non-Orthodox rabbis, and also demanded to
know how the Treasury would fund them and whether this would affect the
Religious Services Ministry’s budget.
Ariel Yutzar of the Treasury’s
Budgets Division did not go into specifics when addressing these questions, but
said that the Treasury was still examining the issue in conjunction with the
Culture and Sport Ministry, through which the funds will be
transferred.
The budgets will be constructed in accordance with these
deliberations, he said.
During the hearing, Gafni expressed displeasure
with the attorney-general’s decision to “fund from state coffers someone who is
not defined by law as a rabbi and who was not ordained by the Chief
Rabbinate.”
He said that in his eyes, the Reform and Conservative
movements “don’t exist,” and labeled them “clowns.”
“Who authorized the
attorney-general to make this kind of decision?” he asked. “The attorney-general
ruled in opposition to the stance of the Knesset, which recognizes the Chief
Rabbinate as the only body authorized to deal with rabbinical issues. If he
authorized himself to deal with rabbinical matters, will he be doing the same
regarding health and culture?”