Watchdog group calls for removal of chief rabbi for politicizing judicial role
Yitzhak Yosef’s statement that Haredim will ‘all move abroad’ if government drafts yeshiva students constitutes misuse of authority, says Movement for Quality Government in Israel
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"
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel filed a complaint against Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef with the ombudsman of the judiciary on Monday, asserting that the alleged politicization of his judicial role warranted his removal from the Great Rabbinical Court of Appeals.
In a letter to the ombudsman, former Supreme Court justice Uri Shoham, the watchdog group asserted that the rabbi’s recent comments encouraging draft evasion constituted “a flagrant violation of the rules of ethics for judges.”
Speaking on Saturday evening, Yosef had declared that those who learn Torah must not be drafted into the army “under any circumstances, no matter what” and that if yeshiva students are forcibly enlisted, the Haredim would “go abroad.”
“Without the Torah, without the kollels, without the yeshivas, the army will have no success,” he declared.
Yosef’s comments drew harsh condemnations from secular and national religious politicians, including Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who described them as “a disgrace and an insult to the IDF soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the defense of the country.”
Speaking at his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting on Monday, Lapid said that while nobody wants the Haredim to go abroad, “it’s no longer a theoretical debate.”
If they don’t enlist, they won’t get money,” he added. “Saying they need to enlist isn’t [an attack] against him or the world of Torah. Soldiers are dying every day and we don’t have enough of them.”
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yosef says if yeshiva students are drafted the Haredim will buy plane tickets and leave the country https://t.co/Z0pn1f4Nmt
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) March 9, 2024
In its letter, the Movement for Quality Government asserted that Yosef had “misused his authority and position as a judge to intervene in a controversial political matter, with the aim of influencing the evasion of ultra-Orthodox conscription during wartime” and declared that his behavior stood “in blatant violation of the rules of ethics for judges that prohibit political activity and interference in matters of public controversy.”
In addition, because his words came as the High Court of Justice is debating the legality of a government resolution passed in June 2023 instructing the IDF not to draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, they constitute an “intervention in a pending legal proceeding,” the group added.
“Rabbi Yosef is causing a weakening of trust in the decisions of the rabbinic courts and in their ability to conduct an impartial court of justice. The movement asks the ombudsman of the Israeli judiciary to investigate the complaint urgently. If he finds it justified, it urges him to act to end Rabbi Yosef’s tenure as a judge in the Great Rabbinical Court.”
Haredi men of military age have been able to avoid the draft for decades by enrolling for study in yeshivas and obtaining repeated one-year service deferrals until they reach the age of military exemption.
Many of the defenders of this exemption have explicitly equated Torah study with serving in the armed forces, insisting that those studying Torah must not be drafted because they provide critical spiritual protection, and declaring that every page of Talmud learned “is a missile.”
However, the continuing war in Gaza and the government’s efforts to extend soldiers’ terms of service while yeshiva students remain at home have sparked renewed pushback against the status quo, with lawmakers across the political spectrum calling to pass legislation bringing them into the army.
The IDF’s Personnel Directorate told a Knesset committee last month that some 66,000 young men from the Haredi community received an exemption from military service over the past year, reportedly an all-time record. Some 540 of them decided to enlist since the war started, the IDF said.
This is not the first time that Yosef has come under the ombudsman’s scrutiny.
In November 2021, Shoham recommended the potential removal of Yosef from the Great Rabbinical Court after he organized a Rabbinate conference against government reforms intended to break up the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on kashrut certification and conversions to Judaism.
Shoham said the conference, which included rabbis from the state-run Rabbinate as well as municipal rabbis and rabbinical judges, was in contravention of ethical guidelines that prohibit public servants from intervening in sensitive partisan issues.
In October 2020, Shoham asked the Selection Committee for Rabbinical Judges to consider removing Yosef over controversial comments he made about women, Reform Judaism and the High Court of Justice.
Yosef, the son of the late rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former spiritual leader of the Shas political party, has a history of provocative comments.
He has called Reform synagogues a form of “idolatry” and said the movement “falsified the Torah”; suggested secular women behave like animals due to their immodest dress; and questioned the High Court’s authority on rulings pertaining to religion, while vowing to ignore its decisions.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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