Rabbi of world’s largest Orthodox synagogue accuses Israel's Rabbinate of blasphemy
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haaretz.com
The
spiritual leader of the world’s largest Orthodox congregation launched a
scathing attack on Israel’s Chief Rabbinate on Monday, accusing it of
blasphemy (“chilul Hashem”) by blacklisting rabbis like himself.
Appearing
at a special Knesset session, Rabbi Adam Scheier said: “The
irresponsible blacklisting of my name, together with that of my
colleagues, diminished my reputation and the reputation of my
congregation. The Rabbinate has impeded my ability to serve the Jewish
people.”
Scheier’s name appeared on a list of 160 rabbis, made public last July,
whose letters certifying the Jewishness of congregants seeking to marry
in Israel had been rejected by the Rabbinate. Individuals registering
to marry in Israel must provide proof that they are Jewish if their
parents were not married under the auspices of the Rabbinate. Typically,
such certification is provided by their congregational rabbis abroad.
Scheier
is senior rabbi at Montreal’s Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, which is
Canada’s oldest synagogue and had the late singer-songwriter Leonard
Cohen as a congregant. According to Scheier – who is known to enjoy
close ties with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – some 1,400
families belong to his congregation.
Scheier made a special one-day trip to Israel in
order to address the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and
Diaspora Affairs, which held a special hearing on the rabbinical
blacklist.
More
than two years ago, the Rabbinate promised to publish a full list of
criteria for recognizing rabbis overseas. To date, no such criteria have
been published. The committee established to draft the criteria has
only convened once in the past year, it was recently disclosed.
Scheier told the panel that a letter he had
written certifying that a woman who attended his congregation was Jewish
and single had been rejected without any questions asked of him.
When he asked the Rabbinate why it had been
rejected, he was told the letter was suspected of being forged. “But
they never even called me,” he said. “Then later, they suggested it was
another issue. But again they didn’t contact me – and I am the easiest
person in the world to find.”
Scheier
said he recently learned that other rabbis in Montreal had been
advising members of the local community not to ask him to officiate at
weddings because of his blackballed status.
“The
Rabbinate has eroded my own community’s trust in my reliability,” he
said. “This must end. The bureaucracy and exclusionary practices do not
meet the basic standards of decency and professionalism.
“This is not a matter of religious standards,” he
added. “It’s a matter of basic humanity. Diaspora rabbis deserve
better, our communities deserve better and Israel deserves better.”
Among
other names on the Rabbinate’s blacklist were Rabbi Avi Weiss, an Open
Orthodox rabbi and the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York;
and Rabbi Daniel Kraus, the director of community education at Kehilath
Jeshurun in Manhattan. The rabbi of this congregation, Haskel Lookstein,
converted Ivanka Trump before she married Jared Kushner.
The special Knesset session
was called by MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), who said he harbored little
hope the Rabbinate would change its ways. “They could care less about
what the Knesset decides,” he said. “Our purpose here today is to let
Jewish communities in the Diaspora know that the majority of us here are
with you, and we will try to serve as your voice here.”
Rabbinate
Director General Moshe Dagan told participants it was “demagoguery” to
refer to a blacklist. “There is no blacklist of rabbis,” he insisted.
“What was published was a list of rabbis whose letters were not
accepted.”
He
used the opportunity to apologize to Scheier for any harm caused to his
reputation, insisting the reason the Canadian rabbi’s letter had been
rejected was that the individual he certified was a divorcee, and it was
unclear if she had undergone a proper religious divorce.
Dagan
said the Rabbinate was in the “final stages” of preparing criteria for
recognizing rabbis from abroad, and that initial drafts had been sent to
representatives of Orthodox rabbinical organizations overseas for
comment. The criteria would be voted on at an upcoming meeting of the
Rabbinical Council, which Dagan said had yet to be scheduled.
Shlomo
Riskin, the American-born rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat,
suggested that the Rabbinate recognize automatically all Orthodox
congregational rabbis. “I want the Rabbinate to be respectful,” said
Riskin, a prominent figure in Modern Orthodoxy, “and it does everything
possible not to be.”
Rabbi
Seth Farber, the founder and executive director of ITIM, an
organization that assists individuals in navigating Israel’s religious
bureaucracy, provided updated figures showing that the Rabbinate
continues to reject many rabbis from abroad.
“Over
the past year, 627 individuals who applied to marry in Israel had their
rabbinical letters of certification rejected,” he said. “That’s one in
every four.”
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