Feminist groups decry law setting quota for women in assembly that elects chief rabbis
Billed as an effort to increase female representation, measure actually serves to disenfranchise female Torah scholars, say critics
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Despite being hailed by its backers as a means of giving women a greater say in the selection of Israel’s top religious officials, an amendment to the Chief Rabbinate Bill passed last week in the Knesset actually constitutes “clear discrimination against women,” Orthodox feminist groups and liberal rabbinic organizations warned this week.
The bill, which mandates that at least 30 women be appointed to the 150 member Chief Rabbi Election Assembly, passed its third and final reading in the Knesset by a vote to 32-7 last Wednesday — following nearly a year of legal and political wrangling over the extent to which women should be allowed to participate in the traditionally male-dominated process of choosing Israel’s two chief rabbis.
Speaking with The Times of Israel, multiple organizations advocating for the rights of women complained that the law, which purports to increase female representation in the assembly, actually serves to disenfranchise female Torah scholars, circumventing a High Court decision from earlier this year in the process.
The assembly is composed of two categories of representatives: “rabbis,” who are all men because the term has been treated as pertaining to the Orthodox definition that precludes women, and “public representatives,” who account for all females in the Assembly.
However, this longstanding status-quo was upended in January when the High Court of Justice ruled that for the purposes of the election of the chief rabbis, the term “rabbi” would apply to individuals, including women, with knowledge of the Torah and halacha, the Jewish legal code, comparable to that of the men.
This ruling sparked a heated backlash from religious conservatives, with Yehuda Avidan, the director general of the Religious Services Ministry, describing it as an attempt “to strong-arm the Rabbinate into appointing female rabbis against halacha.”
The fight over women’s representation led to a significant delay in this year’s chief rabbi elections and to an unprecedented situation in which the positions of Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbi were both left vacant for months.
The ongoing battle prompted coalition lawmakers to push for legislation mandating expanded representation for women in the assembly while at the same time defining rabbis solely as men as someone with ordination from the chief rabbinate or equivalent certification who is eligible to serve as a municipal rabbis — in other words, men.
The bill’s backers have argued that given how underrepresented women are in the assembly — according to some estimates as low as 10 percent — mandating a minimum of 30 spots is a step forward.
However, women’s advocates, both religious and secular, have a different perspective on the new law.
“The bill passed last week establishes discrimination against women,” Sharon Brick-Deshen, the CEO of Kolech, Israel’s premiere religious feminist organization, told The Times of Israel.
“It is an absurdity that knowledgeable female rabbis who have completed training programs are excluded and cannot take part in the selection of a public Torah figure,” she said — arguing that by rejecting women as teachers of halacha as leaders and rabbis, the rabbinate has proven itself “irrelevant to the majority of the public in Israel.”
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, co-founder of Chochmat Nashim, another organization advocating for Orthodox women’s rights, was equally critical, noting that the chief rabbinate will be involved in the selection of at least some of the women appointed to the assembly.
“It’s always good to diversify a pool of people choosing communal leaders [but] the issue here is they get to choose who they are so you can have women who are just told what to do,” she said.
Tal Hochman, executive director of the Israel Women’s Network, argued that the new law constitutes “clear discrimination against women, under the guise of promoting equality.”
The measure “will actually enshrine in the law an underrepresentation of women,” who “will constitute only 20% of the assembly,” she said, echoing Keren Horowitz, the CEO of Bar-Ilan University’s Rackman Center, one of the plaintiffs in January’s High Court case.
“The institution of the Chief Rabbinate is supposed to reflect a broad common denominator of the Jewish public. In order to fulfill this role faithfully, women must be allowed to influence and take a significant part in choosing who heads it. The new law reserves a place for only 30 women out of a total of 150 members of the Electoral Assembly,” Horowitz said.
The bill was also panned by rabbinical organizations on the more liberal side of modern orthodoxy.
Rabbi David Stav, who heads the Tzohar rabbinical group, told The Times of Israel that it was “absurd” that female politicians appointed by the government will be able to vote while female Torah scholars are excluded from the decision-making process.
A spokesman for Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, whose Constitution, Law and Justice Committee deliberated on the law, did not respond to a request for comment.
Expanding the power of the rabbinical courts
Meanwhile, women’s rights advocates are gearing up for their next fight as lawmakers in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee begin preparing another bill expanding the authority of Israel’s rabbinic court system for the first of three readings necessary for it to become law.
The legislation, sponsored by members of the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, would grant religious tribunals the power to arbitrate civil proceedings according to religious law if both parties consent.
While its backers say that the measure would allow for “legal pluralism,” critics believe that, if passed, it would significantly harm women.
“While we are all busy with the war and its consequences, the coalition is promoting dangerous legislation that will take us back to the Middle Ages – periods when men dominated women,” the Israel Women’s Network said in a statement.
“The law will allow the rabbinate, which rules according to a conservative interpretation of halacha [Jewish law] — in which women are not equal to men — to control women’s lifestyles in civil matters, including the employment market,” the group stated.
According to the TIM nonprofit, which helps Israelis navigate the country’s religious bureaucracy, the court system, whose judges are all men, “is fundamentally male-oriented, which naturally raises concerns about structural harm to women’s rights, even if not intentional.”
לקראת הדיון שייערך היום בועדת חוקה על הרחבת סמכויות בתי הדין הדתיים, פעילות של @BonotAlt מפגינות כעת מול בתי הדין הרבניים ברחבי הארץ: "זה חוק שיפגע בכל אזרחי ישראל, אבל בראש ובראשונה בנשים". pic.twitter.com/kEE1VDq2m1
— Hadar Gil-Ad | הדר גיל-עד ???? (@HadarGil) December 11, 2024
In addition, “religious courts are not bound by the protective laws that the state has enacted to protect workers’ rights,” the group said in a position paper.
“This means the state would provide legal legitimacy to a parallel judicial system that does not recognize basic principles enshrined in Israeli law, such as protection for pregnant women, service members, and others. This would create an unacceptable situation where an official body of the State of Israel issues rulings that ignore fundamental rights that the state itself has enshrined in legislation.”
Members of women’s rights advocacy group Bonot Alternativa gathered outside of rabbinical courts across the country in protest on Wednesday morning.
Canaan Lidor contributed to this report.
