The Chief Rabbinate Elections, 2013 (Unpublished – 2013)

With God’s help

The Rabbinate Elections: Living in a Movie

The ultra-Orthodox public had the good sense to unite in the face of the threat of losing the Chief Rabbinate… By contrast, the religious-Zionist public, which displayed division and quarreling, was left empty-handed.

(Magazine headline, Makor Rishon, 26.7.2013)

Our sages long ago said that no joy equals rejoicing at another’s downfall. These words of mine are written with great joy at another’s misfortune, and out of complete estrangement from the despicable institution called “the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.” I have already written more than once that it is unnecessary, corrupting, and harmful, and that it should be shut down immediately (regardless of the question of what the results of its elections might be). In what follows I will present another part of the explanation for that.

It seems to me that the quotation cited above beneath the title of these remarks represents, quite faithfully and sharply, the discourse after the rabbinate elections. In my eyes it represents no less the “movie” in which that discourse lives. Despite everything all the self-appointed commentators say, the loss in the rabbinate elections did not stem from the split among the religious-Zionist candidates, and this can easily be proven (see below). Moreover, religious Zionism was not the side that lost, simply because it was not a side in this discussion. This ridiculous discourse, which for some reason appears to be a consensus among all the speakers from all camps, testifies, at best, to total disconnection from reality, and at worst to self-interest.

I write these things in the total and deliberate absence of inside information, and therefore there is no avoiding a bit of logical analysis of the public information (forgive me for focusing specifically on the Ashkenazi side. There the situation is much clearer). It was reported in the media that the Jewish Home members of Knesset and Rabbi Stav’s representatives approached Rabbi Yaakov Shapira with the request that he not (!) withdraw his candidacy. Indeed, I am not mistaken. You read that correctly: they asked him not to withdraw it. Their assumption, which was apparently well founded, was that he was taking more votes from Rabbi David Lau than from Rabbi Stav. If I accept their reasonable assumption that they had information that I do not have (though it is rather self-evident), does that not itself call for explanation? Does it not mean that the quotation above is nonsense?

This means that the issue is not religious Zionism versus ultra-Orthodoxy. Allow me to continue my information-poor analysis for a moment: if we look at two of the Ashkenazi candidates, Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, to the best of my knowledge there is no difference between them on the two planes important to the discussion (I am not dealing with stature in Torah scholarship, since that is not a relevant parameter for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel): a. Both are Zionists to the same degree. Both of them (and, as far as is known to me, Rabbi Lau’s father as well) recite Hallel on Independence Day and care about the state and its proper functioning, identify with it, and will do everything in their power for its success and the success of all its inhabitants, and certainly for bringing them closer to Judaism. b. As for the policy they would adopt in office, both of them would preserve the standards practiced today. Both are committed to the ultra-Orthodox rabbinic leadership, Lithuanian and Sephardi (with respect to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whom I very much doubt can be defined as ultra-Orthodox), and certainly will not go against it, as they declared openly and publicly. Both oppose a more liberal policy in matters of Jewish law.

To sum up this brief factual basis, even without knowing these two candidates it is clear that no relevant difference between them can be detected even with a microscope. It is no wonder, then, that those in the know believed that Rabbi Shapira’s voters were nibbling specifically at Rabbi David Lau’s votes and not at Rabbi Stav’s. Now I will merely hint at the logical puzzle that arises for me: how did they assume that Rabbi Shapira would specifically want to help Rabbi Stav, if they too understand that he is Rabbi David Lau’s identical twin? The answer is very simple: they relied on the fact that Rabbi Shapira is flesh of the flesh of religious Zionism, so he would surely want to help Rabbi Stav. They simply forgot what I wrote in the previous section, namely that this is not what the argument is about. Living in a movie, did I not already say so?

Why, then, does Rabbi Shapira draw less from Rabbi Stav’s voters? Is not Rabbi Stav also a Zionist, like Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Shapira? Simply because the watershed apparently runs precisely between them. The simple and obvious fact is that the opposing sides here do not divide ultra-Orthodoxy from religious Zionism (for all the candidates are religious Zionists), but rather an ultra-Orthodox understanding of Jewish law from modernity. True, all the candidates speak about zero deviation from Jewish law, but the more important question is what exactly that “Jewish law” from which there may be no deviation actually says. Are accepted procedures and standards part of it? Must one who breaches them be bitten by a snake? Is reliance on lenient positions and arguments a deviation from Jewish law? Is taking account of norms accepted today on matters such as modesty or the status of women a deviation from Jewish law? Are women who wear ritual fringes, people who go to the movies or read a book (see the quotations circulated online from Rabbi Stav’s book about leisure), wicked people who deviate from Jewish law? Can a woman speak before the public according to “Jewish law”? That is the real argument being conducted here.

Let us now consider who stands on the two sides of this argument. Is it Rabbi Shapira versus Rabbi David Lau? From what was said above it emerges clearly that both stand entirely on the conservative-ultra-Orthodox (and Zionist) side of the barricade. On the other side stands Rabbi Stav (who in my opinion is too conservative, but everything is relative). After all, Rabbi Stav’s greatest and fiercest opponents were not ultra-Orthodox. They were an integral part of religious Zionism (speaking generally, the various ultra-conservative nationalist religious groups, in all their shades and varieties, who in fact succeeded in uniting quite nicely on this issue).

So if everything is so clear and does not depend on inside information or excessively developed analytical abilities, how are we to explain the foolish analysis that keeps recurring all around us? How can one understand the wall-to-wall consensus around the two idiotic claims: that religious Zionism lost, and that this loss was because of a split? What really happened, after all, is that modernity lost. On the modern side there was no split at all. That side had one candidate throughout. It was precisely the Zionist ultra-Orthodox camp that split between Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Shapira, and despite the split it won the election. Why? Simply because it truly has a clear majority in our rabbinic and political establishment, and that establishment (and those close to it and dependent upon it) is what chooses the chief rabbis.

It seems to me that the foolish discourse I described stems from the fact that most of our society has been living in this movie for quite a long time. Instead of talking about the important problems that accompany us today, we are stuck in anachronistic arguments from a hundred years ago between Zionism and ultra-Orthodoxy. We are in effect still standing in the town square arguing whether it would be right to establish a state, or whether Zionism is the work of the devil. Is this the beginning of redemption or the Messiah’s footsteps? Are Israel Defense Forces uniforms the vestments of the High Priest, or merely an annoying military symbol, though perhaps a necessary one? No one seems troubled by the fact that no one waited for us. Almost seventy years ago this state was already established, and we were already born into it and live within it.

It may be that our rabbinic and political leadership has an interest in perpetuating this irrelevant and futile argument and preserving it as the watershed line of contemporary religious politics, even though it is not at all clear to me why this is important to anyone. To my mind, this argument is like founding political parties on the basis of the question whether the Talmudic doctrine that a person could have made a stronger claim is effective against a legal presumption or not. The time has come for our none-too-intelligent public to wake up from this movie already, and quickly. “Hello, they’ve turned on the lights here long ago; it’s time to finish the tub of popcorn already!” (Incidentally, whoever understood that sentence belongs to Rabbi Stav’s camp, though not necessarily to religious Zionism.)

What remains for us, then, is only to point to which of the groups I have described is guilty of all this. Is it religious Zionism? Or perhaps modern religiosity? Or maybe ultra-Orthodoxy? You may be surprised: not one of the three. There is another side actor, marginal and minor, that has not appeared at all until now, and it is actually the main culprit: the general public (the secular public, speaking broadly). Those who form the majority in the state and allow a conservative and fossilized rabbinic establishment to control part of their lives, and the lives of those unfortunates who need its services through no fault of their own, are the ones to blame.

The conservative rabbinic leadership is doing what it believes is right. There is no betrayal here of the religious-Zionist idea, since that is not what the argument is about. There is here a struggle against liberalism and modernity within Jewish law, but they genuinely do not believe in those things. So why would anyone expect them not to act this way? Is modern religiosity to blame? I have shown that it is a minority, and therefore there is not much it can do. So who has betrayed its own ideas? The secular public, which gives this small conservative stream control and a monopoly in state institutions and in the public sphere.

Why do they do this? For two main reasons. First, there are interests of political loyalty here (see Benjamin Netanyahu). But more important is the status of the rabbinate. No one needs a relevant rabbinate here, and certainly not a strong rabbinate. And not because the rabbinate is conservative, but simply because it is religious. For the secular and general public (and of course this is a generalization), it is enough that the chief rabbis recite Hallel on Independence Day, appear at state ceremonies with all the requisite robes, and above all say nothing of significance in any direction. If the chief rabbis were to speak out against injustices perpetrated in the name of Jewish law, if, heaven forbid, they were to change the sorry face of the rabbinate and the rabbinical courts, they might—heaven forfend—also say something meaningful about phenomena beyond the synagogue walls. A situation might arise in which those chief rabbis said something meaningful, and the public would suddenly begin to see them as a spiritual and moral authority—and that, of course, would be very, very dangerous.

So let the women whose husbands refuse them a religious divorce, the women going through divorce, the abandoned wives unable to remarry, those who sign prenuptial agreements, the Women of the Wall, the women lecturers at conferences, the women singers in the army, the women supervisors of kosher certification, those who need kosher certification, members of the religious councils, organ donors and those who need organs, and many, many others, pay the price. There is no choice, because otherwise we might actually have a relevant rabbinate, and that would be the most dangerous thing of all. Never fear: we will all be Zionists and recite Hallel on Independence Day, and over our heads, as our crowning ornament, the Chief Rabbis of Israel. With the robe, of course.

And after all that, if all this were not enough, in the absurd situation created here the conservative rabbis impose their fossilized norms and distorted standards on the general public by virtue of the power that it itself gives them. That does not prevent it from coming to me and my friends in the religious public with complaints about religious coercion and lack of consideration. So, my secular friends, as I keep telling you every time you direct such complaints to me: do not come to me with complaints about religious coercion and about insensitivity in matters of Jewish law. You got exactly what you cooked up. Now eat it. Bon appétit.