Global, Israel, Religion

The Chief Rabbinate Is Over

This essay by Rabbi Yehuda Gilad one of the ramim or teachers at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa might actually be a significant development in the slow motion and excruciating implosion of the Israeli Rabbinate. Here’s the punch line:

As important as issues such as kashrut, Shabbat and religious services are, there is currently no Jewish communal matter that comes close to approaching the significance of this challenge upon which our future here as a Jewish state rests. We must admit and say honestly, the current Chief Rabbinate (with all due respect to the many fine individuals who make up its ranks), as an institution, has neither the desire nor the ability to cope with this challenge. Unfortunately, it buries its head in the sand, and even kowtows to the Chareidi community, which is ambivalent at best, and antagonistic at worst to the very state the Rabbinate is meant to serve.
Despite the pain and difficulty involved in breaking with this institution that we had great dreams for, I hereby call upon the lay people and the Rabbis of the religious-Zionist community to say openly what many of us have already felt in our hearts for some time. The Chief Rabbinate has run its course.

The whole story is here.
Hebrew here.

4 thoughts on “The Chief Rabbinate Is Over

  1. It is hard to adhere to the Rav’s teaching quoted below the comments box when confronting the consistent narishkeit of one frequent poster in the otherwise respectful and intelligent dialogue on Jewschool.
    So ignoring the previous response, my thanks to Aryeh Cohen for posting Rabbi Gilad’s thoughtful essay.

  2. what I want to know, Dave, is what do you gain/hope to gain from spending so much time on this website and making the comments that you make?

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