Political Rabbis

The upcoming elections for the Chief  Rabbis of Israel is generating a lot of press. It started near the last Israeli (national) elections with the jockeying for which candidate for the Ashkenazi post would be supported by which party. Then it was the composition of the committee to elect the Rabbis and the number of women appointed.

In that regard, MK Elazar Stern (Hatunah) appealed to the committee that elects the chief rabbi

 demanding the disqualification of five of the 150 candidates for the committee, due to convene at the end of July. Stern said the rabbis of Rehovot, Rishon Letzion, Ashdod and Ashkelon do not recognize the state's institutions of conversion to Judaism and prevent residents of their cities who have converted though these institutions from registering for marriage.

He also wrote:

The damage to the converted testifies that these rabbis are unfit to serve as members in the election committee and influence the outcome of the election for chief rabbis, who are supposed to be attentive to the needs of society ... Their refusal to recognize national conversions to Judaism makes them practically unqualified to be involved in such a national process. The membership of these rabbis in the electoral committee should be canceled, thus preventing the ongoing debasement of the institution of the Israeli chief rabbinate. 

Recently, it shifted to the race for the Sephardi Chief Rabbi. Haaretz has been particularly active in "spilling ink" over this race.

In Sunday's paper [14.July.2013], it was reported that Ovadia Yosef has decided to back his youngest son, Yitzhak Yosef to be the next Sephardi Chief rabbi. The "preferred" candidate, Avraham the Chief Rabbi of Holon, is under police investigation for breech of trust. Avraham Yosef candidacy is also being challenged by woman's groups for his anti-women statements and positions.

As if one child of a former Chief Rabbi isn't enough, the son of Mordechai Eliyahu--Shmuel, the Chief rabbi of Safed--has also come under fire particularly for his racist anti-Arab comments, including urging Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs. While he wasn't reprimanded/suspended/removed from office, his candidacy for chief rabbi was challenged and referred to to the Attorney General. He has denied engaging in anti-Arab activities. 

• Among the statements attributed to Eliyahu was one in a 2002 interview to the right-wing Arutz Sheva media outlet, in which he reportedly said that all of the Arab students at the Safed Academic College should be thrown out. "Yes, I am saying this explicitly and am not afraid of anyone," he was quoted as saying, adding "only those who direct their loyalty to the state are entitled to study."
• In a 2004 interview to Israel Radio, Eliyahu said: "It is forbidden to sell an apartment to an Arab. Let them live in their own area. We [will live] in our area."
• In 2010, he was quoted in Haaretz as saying in reference to Arabs: "I don't expect them to feel that they belong. They are guests [here]."

For these (proported) statements, Haaretz in an editorial claiming he was unfit to be chief rabbi.

Yet,  in his response to the AG 'letter of inquiry' Shmuel Eliyahu wrote:

“I didn’t understand the problem with some of what you showed me and asked me about,” ...  “Do I as a rabbi have to explain why I object to marriages between Jews and non-Jews? Do I have to respond when asked why I object to same-sex marriages or why I support people becoming observant?”

In reference to his more controversial statements, he suggested that he was either misquoted or never even wrote it,

Some were never said by me, and some were said in contexts that were radicalized and presented out of the Torah context in which they were said 

there “is a very high probability” that responses to questions posted on the Kipa religious website had not actually been written by him, because the responses were posted in 2006 (and he claimed he stopped answering questions on the site in 2002).

His office, just before Tisha B'Av issued the following statement:

Weinstein "had chosen to conduct a field court martial trial for Rabbi Eliyahu and has turned himself into the prosecutor, judge and hangman," and in an "unprecedented step, without authority, without a hearing, and without verifying the allegations, created a new reality in which a candidate that is not favored by the legal elite will not receive a [legal] defense from the authorities"

Not sure it addresses the issue of his statements, but it does create a smoke screen.

Unfortunately, the AG cannot prevent Shmuel Eliyahu from standing for election as the Sephardi Chief Rabbi--it's not considered a government job, however, maybe it'll convince the electors to consider another candidate.

That the two leading candidates for Sephardi rabbis are terrible, I can't agree with Eric Yoffie that the Chief Rabbinate needs to be disbanded. Yes, the chief rabbinate has fallen into disrepute and, yes, as Carlos Strenger wrote "Extremist rabbis don't represent Judaism" his own biases cause me to reject his message.

While I might be able to agree with (taking out "anachronistic"),

The current waves around the election of Chief Rabbis in Israel prove how totally anachronistic this very institution is. Anyone who has followed the recent hustling and the power-struggles in this election campaign cannot but agree. Every political party meddles in these elections, and the results are in part mind-boggling ...

I have a lot of trouble with:

Even though Bennet seems worldly, educated and sophisticated, he shows dangerous signs of totalitarian thinking in his politics, if he actually believes that Israel needs a central authority that defines “Jewish values and the love of the land of Israel.” Judaism has never had the type of polit-bureau that defines ideological doctrine, and there is absolutely no reason for anything of the sort to start now.
But it should be made clear that neither Bennett’s party nor the likes of Rabbis Eliyhahu and Rabbi Ronsky represent Judaism as a whole. In fact they represent a rather narrow group: less than 15 percent of Jews worldwide define themselves as orthodox – and a large proportion of modern orthodoxy would find their views unacceptable. And the large majority of Jews worldwide are vehemently opposed to the ethnocentric and often-racist views these Rabbis endorse. The opposite is true: Jews in the Diaspora, primarily in the US have been at the forefront of human right causes including the civil rights movement.
While the proportion of Israelis holding such universalist values may be smaller than in the Jewish Diaspora, Rabbis Eliyahu and Ronsky do not represent the Israeli mainstream either. Israel’s legislation has been progressive in many ways. It has for example been very gay-friendly for decades, and a large proportion of Israelis are open to the world, curious and liberal rather than tribal, ethnocentric and reactionary. The problem is that Jewish moderates make a lot less noise than the extremists – with dire consequences.
Israel will have to choose at some point to which part of the world it wants to belong: to the West that has implemented separation of religion and state, or to the Islamic World that still has a long way to go until it realizes that politics and religion need to be separate.
The Western world has gone through a long and painful process that started with the ending of the dreadful Thirty Year War that left large parts of Europe destroyed in 1648. It began to realize that religion and politics must be separated. The process of getting there took centuries, but it is essential to modernity.

He's thrown the baby out with the bath water.

That said, the office is indeed in trouble. Adding to the mess is that the current Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is under police investigation. But, that's another story.