A Rabbinate for a Jewish and Democratic Israel

In the spirit of Groucho Marx (" I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member,") I have been giving a lot of thought to the institution of which I will be a defacto member when I complete my Rabbinical studies in a few years.  The Israeli Rabbinate is not really an institution with which I identify.


Rabbi Riskin, in a op-ed early this week in the Jerusalem Post, talked about some of the practical failings of the Rabbinate.  Rather than seeking halachic solutions to the real problems people bring before it, the Rabbinate has consistently made life harder for the supplicants who come before it, be they those wanting to marry, those wanting to divorce, those wishing to convert or even those wishing to give their loved ones a Jewish burial.  The behaviour of the Israeli Rabbinate has made them a target of hatred and disgust by large parts of the Jewish world, both in Israel and abroad, among both religious and secular.  Should not our Rabbis be sources of inspiration, not disgust?


While many attribute this to the "Haredization" of the Rabbinate in recent years, it is not clear to me that this is the real cause.  One cannot always assume that attitudes towards women and towards converts are always more positive just because the Dayan (Rabbinical Judge) has a knitted kipa rather than a black one.  The problem runs much deeper.


By giving the Rabbinate a monopoly on Jewish religious life in Israel, the State has created an institution with no checks on its power, which is always a dangerous situation in a democracy.  The Rabbinate has the power to impose matters of faith in key areas of life in ways that are inconsistent with democratic rights.  It can decide who can marry, and who cannot.  It can decide what converts to accept, and which to reject.    How can it be, in a democracy, that a man and a woman who love each other, and are not bound in previous marriages to others, cannot marry without leaving the country to do so?  Most of the Western world is debating whether single sex couples should be allowed to marry, while we in Israel are preventing even marriages between men and women in many cases.


I am a halachically committed Jew, but I cannot accept that my own religious views should be imposed on all of society.    I cannot ask the whole country to live by my rules.


I believe, therefore, that the best solution would be to separate the Rabbinate from the State.  As in most Western countries, any clergy person or secular judge could perform marriages, which would then need to be registered with the Interior Ministry.  Divorces would be a secular affair, with those wishing to, for their own religious beliefs, going to a religious court for a get.  Laws would have to be passed requiring men whose wives asked them for a get, after receiving a secular divorce, to grant one or face secular penalties.   It would need to be structured so that the get could not be used as leverage by the man in the divorce proceedings.   


In such a system, competing Rabbinical organizations would emerge, and they would need to be responsive to the public's needs in order to survive and remain relevant.    I am sure Rabbinical courts would emerge that would institute a practice of nullifying marriages in cases where a get is being withheld unreasonably, as has been proposed by Rabbi Riskin in the past, but not implemented.  There would certainly be rejectionist groups who would not accept divorces from these groups, and therefore consider many children mamzerim, and refuse to have them marry in.  This is unfortunate, but I do not think we can therefore let these groups hold the rest of us hostage to their ideas.  For that matter, it is my understanding that already these groups would not easily allow their children to marry Jews from the general population, so the cost has already been borne - just not publicly.


The objection I often hear is that this would weaken the Jewish character of the State of Israel.  I believe that if the Jewish character of the State needs to be enforced on the people, then we have already lost.  The Jewish character of the State is embodied in the culture, calendar, language and literature of the majority.  By imposing strict Jewish law on the general population, we only alienate more and more people from that heritage.  We need to strengthen the Jewish character of the State through love of Torah, and an appreciation for its many faces, not by shoving our interpretation of it down people's throats.


The problems described in Rabbi Riskin's article are, in my opinion, the last throes of a dying system.    As more and more people are disenfranchised from the Rabbinate's policies on marriage, divorce and conversion, they will vote with their feet.  This is already happening.  The Knesset will have no choice but to address the matter.  Even if initially this may be by clamping down harder, eventually a coalition will form that will have no choice but to disband the official Rabbinate, and allow true freedom of choice.


The sooner the better.