Bill swelling ranks of city rabbis resurfaces, testing wartime coalition
National Unity and New Hope object to bid to advance legislation boosting Chief Rabbinate and creating hundreds of new taxpayer funded posts, saying it violates power-sharing deal
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
The planned relaunch of a bill potentially creating hundreds of new publicly funded rabbinical posts is ratcheting up tensions in the already-fraught wartime coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The bill, whose cost to taxpayers is estimated at tens of millions of shekels annually, was put on ice following the outbreak of war with Hamas on October 7. But lawmakers are set to thaw the measure out on Tuesday, bringing it to the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, where it could face a preliminary vote before moving to the plenum.
In a missive to Coalition Whip Ofir Katz Monday, MK Ze’ev Elkin said both the New Hope and National Unity parties oppose the measure, meaning pushing it forward would violate a clause in the coalition agreement that states all legislation must be pre-approved by all coalition parties, the Makor Rishon newspaper reported.
Elkin is part of New Hope, which joined the coalition as part of National Unity shortly after war broke out. Though New Hope broke off from National Unity late last week, Elkin’s objection was filed in the name of both parties, Channel 12 reported.
Reports in the media did not say whether Elkin had explicitly threatened that the parties could pull out of the coalition over the bill.
The Jewish Religious Services Bill was introduced by Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman and Shas’s Erez Malul in June. It would give the Religious Services minister the authority to appoint a municipally salaried rabbi to any neighborhood of at least 50,000 residents, potentially creating hundreds of new neighborhood rabbi positions, of which there are only 70 currently.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a coalition lawmaker said he supported going ahead with advancing the bill, accusing National Unity of not keeping to the terms of the pact. “National Unity already violated the deal when they voted against the budget, when [party leader Benny] Gantz went to the United States without permission and votes in which they didn’t cooperate with the coalition. An agreement works both ways.”
Netanyahu’s coalition would still have a 64-seat majority should National Unity/New Hope pull out. Even without the two parties, lawmakers from Netanyahu’s pre-war coalition occupy eight of the 15 seats in the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee.
In addition to creating hundreds of new jobs for Orthodox rabbis, the bill proposes giving the Chief Rabbinate of Israel considerable say in the appointment of new municipal rabbis by having the ultra-Orthodox-controlled body replace municipal appointees on a board that nominates city rabbis.
The move would reverse changes instituted in 2022 by former Religious Services minister Matan Kahana, a National Unity lawmaker.
The new bill seeks to remove restrictions on holding a vote for a municipal rabbi in the immediate leadup to municipal or parliamentary elections – a stipulation meant to ensure that rabbinical appointments do not become currency in political trading.
It also lowers the number of females who must sit on the rabbinical appointment boards from 40 percent to one-third.
The legislation does away with a requirement for cities to extend municipal rabbis’ terms every 10 years or giving them the option of convening election assemblies to appoint a new rabbi. Instead, city rabbis would essentially hold their jobs until they turn 75, after which they would need to have the city that employs them extend their terms.
“The 10-year term limit was already very far-reaching in that it allowed rabbis to stay for a very long time without a mandate from the public,” said Tani Frank, the director of the Judaism and State Policy Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute, . “Now this bill seeks to remove even that limited degree of oversight.”
In wartime, “the last thing that Israeli residents need are many new neighborhood rabbis,” he told The Times of Israel.
Israel has about 470 municipal rabbis in total. Their monthly salaries range from NIS 9,000 ($2,400) to NIS 43,000 ($11,200).
The bill is widely thought to benefit Shas, which has considerable influence on the Chief Rabbinate and a highly devoted and robust network of party apparatchiks. The current Sephardic chief rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, is the son of late Shas founder Ovadiah Yosef.
Some have charged that the bill is the result of a pact with Rothman’s Religious Zionism, meant to pave the way for hundreds of Shas loyalists to be given plum positions. When the bill was first introduced, it drew wide protests, including from rabbis closely linked to Religious Zionism’s base.
It would also afford those rabbis considerable influence on large and diverse populations.
In an analysis of the bill over the summer, the Israel Democracy Institute found that it would allow for the hiring of 1,070 new rabbis, though there were only plans for 514 new clerics, at a cost of NIS 120 million ($33 million).
Some 30 cities without a rabbi would be forced to hire one, and Tel Aviv and Haifa, which do not currently have any rabbis, would need to hire a minimum of two.
The bill drew considerable scrutiny in the media in the summer, at the height of a nationwide wave of protests over the government’s judicial reform, with even some coalition members coming out against it.
National Unity, led by former general Benny Gantz, joined the coalition following the October 7 Hamas massacre to have a hand in steering the war launched by Israel to topple the terror group in Gaza. On matters outside the war, the faction has consistently been at odds with Netanyahu’s coalition, which is made up of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.
