From Committee to appoint rabbinic judges meets for first time in four years
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz opens the first meeting in four years of the government’s Rabbinic Judges Appointments Committee, charged with appointing the judges in the country’s Jewish religious courts.
The committee has been an arena for fighting between various communities and political parties, including the nationalist-religious Jewish Home, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas and the United Torah Judaism party, an alliance of various Ashkenazi Haredi sects. Each has jockeyed for position on the committee — and thus for the right to appoint Israel’s rabbinic judges — for years.
Under Israel’s Ottoman-inherited state religious court system, much of the country’s family and personal-status law is handled in state-run religious courts for each recognized religious denomination.
“I’m convening the Rabbinic Judges Appointments Committee after over four years in which no judges have been appointed — something that caused a dearth of dayanim [rabbinic judges], long delays and much suffering for petitioners,” Steinitz, the minister who serves as chairman of the committee for the government, says in a statement.
“Choosing dayanim is complex, but I intend to ask members of the committee to cooperate in choosing worthy and excellent judges, who understand the responsibility placed on their shoulders and who will rule with integrity and with an understanding of the unique character of the Israeli nation and Israeli society in which we live.”
Referring to the ongoing battles for control of the religious courts, he adds: “I intend to ask members of the committee not to automatically rule out judges from rabbinic traditions other their own.”
