Israel is holding elections on Sunday for both of the Jewish state’s chief rabbis, after the posts have been vacant for about three months.
One hundred fifty rabbis and public representatives are eligible to cast their ballots at the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem for eight candidates competing for the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Chief Rabbis of Israel posts.
The polling stations will open from 2 to 7 p.m., and the winners will be announced around 7:30 p.m.
Rabbi David Yosef, 67, the chief rabbi of the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem and a member of the Shas Party, is projected to win the Sephardic position, while the race for the Ashkenazi role is expected to be tight. Yosef’s late father was Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadia Yosef.
The stalemate over the elections—ostensibly over the appointment of women to the Chief Rabbi Election Assembly but which coincided with internal ultra-Orthodox power struggles—stemmed from a High Court of Justice ruling in January that women with sufficient knowledge of the Torah and Jewish law (halachah) may be considered rabbis for the purpose of membership in the 150-member Election Assembly.
In August, the court ordered the Chief Rabbinate to set an election for chief rabbis by October.
The Chief Rabbinate, which is run by the ultra-Orthodox, views such a move as anathema and refuses to appoint women to slots allocated for rabbis, and thereby delayed the vote, leaving the posts vacant for the first time since the state’s establishment.
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau left their posts on June 30, although their terms were meant to end a year earlier.
The 150-member voting body was previously composed of 80 Orthodox rabbis—10 of whom are appointed by the Chief Rabbinate—and 70 others, including mayors, lawmakers, members of local religious councils and other public officials.
The election’s outcome may affect kosher certification and several other areas of life in Israel unless those issues are addressed soon, according to both critics and advocates of the Rabbinate.
Beyond its practical implications, the temporary breakdown within the Chief Rabbinate underlines growing tensions between an interventionist judiciary that critics say is excessively left-wing, and state-employed clerics who opponents say are too rigid and inattentive to the needs of the public.
Last week, the Israeli government submitted a bill that would extend the mandate of the Chief Rabbinate’s Council, the Rabbinate’s governing body, until Dec. 31.
The council lost its legal mandate because of the Rabbinate’s refusal to hold elections under the terms ordered by the High Court. Ruling on a petition by a feminist group, the court cited equality grounds in ordering the Rabbinate to increase women’s representation on the Chief Rabbi Election Assembly.
