Defying court, rabbinate fails to deliver list of ‘acceptable’ Diaspora rabbis

Although Israel is widely acclaimed as the Start-up Nation, the chief rabbinate’s office is evidently slow to embrace technology: In a Jerusalem district court hearing Sunday, the religious authority’s registrar office said it only began computerizing its files beginning in October 2015.

Two months earlier, at a January 7 hearing, Jerusalem District Court Judge Nava Ben-Or ordered the registrar office to make public the list of Diaspora rabbis it deems acceptable to attest to immigrants’ Jewish status. Without recognition from the rabbinate, Jews from abroad — especially converts or children of converts — are blocked from access to life cycle events, including marriage and burial in a Jewish cemetery.

The rabbinate was ordered to produce the list within a month and a half of the January hearing, which was held based on a petition brought by Itim, a group that helps immigrants navigate the rabbinate’s bureaucracy.

But, according to the rabbinate, “there is no list.” Files opened by immigrants are decided on a case-by-case basis without any set criteria.

Ahead of marriage, for example, since there currently isn’t any indication of which rabbis are considered acceptable, immigrant couples live in limbo while their fates are decided by the registrar’s sole employee, mid-level bureaucrat Rabbi Itamar Tubul.

At Sunday’s hearing, the lawyer representing the chief rabbinate, Rachel Wozner, said the body intends to draw up a list of rabbis. However the rabbinate will first draw up a list of criteria, and then a list of rabbis who have been de facto recognized.

But since the office was only computerized in October 2015, only for the past six months is there information readily available for this list of rabbis who have been accepted as arbiters of Jewishness.

Wozner said at Sunday’s hearing that the list will not be comprehensive, and even if a rabbi appears on the list, the rabbinate will not commit to continuing to recognize said rabbi for future cases.

‘We are talking about matters of life and death’

At Sunday’s hearing, Judge Ben-Or said, “In such a sensitive and difficult area the public has the right to know when such a list will be made… It is a hillul Hashem [a desecration of God’s name].”

“We are talking about matters of life and death… We are not just talking about improving public service — we’re talking about something fundamental, essential,” said Ben-Or.

She has not yet publicized her decision, however, which will rule on how far back the chief rabbinate has to go in producing a list of rabbis whose word it has accepted in cases that involved a question of Jewish identity.

For Rabbi Seth Farber, head of the Itim group, the list represents a steppingstone to drawing up more comprehensive criteria for those Diaspora rabbis acceptable by the chief rabbinate.

Farber told The Times of Israel that he believes only Orthodox rabbis will be on the list, “and even a certain type of Orthodox rabbis.”

While awaiting the judge’s decision, Farber is cautiously optimistic.

“I am pleased that the judge recognizes the severity of the situation and its implication for world Jewry,” said Farber. A list of acceptable rabbis will “hopefully create precedent that the rabbinate cannot continue as business as usual and they can’t continue to disenfranchise the majority of the Jewish people.”