Bill swelling ranks of municipal rabbis is frozen amid growing coalition tensions

The relaunch of a contentious bill potentially creating hundreds of new publicly funded rabbinical posts is frozen amid tensions within the coalition.

This is “a time for unity, not controversial legislation,” Coalition Whip Ofir Katz says in a statement, according to Hebrew-language media reports.

Katz says he spoke with the heads of coalition parties, including Shas leader Aryeh Deri.

The decision comes after National Unity leader Benny Gantz and New Hope head Gideon Sa’ar were expected to boycott the legislation, which means that pushing it forward would violate a clause in the emergency wartime coalition agreement that states all legislation must be pre-approved by all coalition parties.

A number of lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party also called for the bill to be yanked from the agenda.

The law would give the religious services minister the authority to appoint a salaried rabbi to any neighborhood of at least 50,000 residents, potentially creating hundreds of new positions, of which there are only 70 currently.

In addition, the bill proposes giving the Chief Rabbinate considerable say in the appointment of those rabbis by giving it more seats on the nomination panels, in place of the seats currently held by representatives of the municipalities.

The new bill also seeks to remove restrictions on appointing municipal rabbis 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 minimum number of women on the rabbinical appointment boards from 40 percent to one-third.

The legislation additionally 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 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 was recently re-floated.