Jerusalem – Rabbi David Lau was voted Ashkenazi chief rabbi and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was voted Sephardi chief rabbi on Wednesday after a heated campaign which saw the ultra-Orthodox victors challenged by Religious Zionist rivals.
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Both Lau and Yosef will be secong generation chief rabbis of Israel. Yitzhak Yosef is the son of Shas spiritual leader and former Sephardi chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, while Lau is the son of Yisrael Meir Lau, Cheif Rabbi of Tel Aviv and former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.
Lau won 68 of the 147 votes, while Rabbi David Stav came in second with 54 votes and Ya’acov Shapira came in third with 25 votes.
In the Sephardi chief rabbi race, Yosef won 68 votes, followed by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (49) and High Rabbinical Court Judge Zion Boaron (28).
The announcement of the results on Wednesday evening brought to an end one of the fiercest and most intense elections in Israel’s history.
Voting began Wednesday afternoon with Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat among the first to vote at the poll in the Leonardo Hotel. The polls closed at 6 p.m.
Out of 150 people eligible to vote, including 80 rabbis representing religious councils and 70 lay officials representing the government, the Knesset and local authorities, 147 cast their votes on Wednesday.
The vote was held over three hours in the afternoon, with Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan announcing the results at 8 p.m.
The Ashkenazi race set Shoham Chief Rabbi David Stav against Lau, Modi’in’s chief rabbi and Merkaz Harav yeshiva head Ya’acov Shapira.
Beersheba Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri and Jerusalem Rabbinical Court head Eliyahu Abergel quit the race for Sephardi chief rabbi on Tuesday, leaving four candidates: Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Yosef, the Hazon Ovadia yeshiva head, High Rabbinical Court Judge Zion Boaron and Kiryat Ono Chief Rabbi Ratzon Arusi.
Both races featured face-offs between the religious-Zionist and ultra-Orthodox camps. Religious Zionists supported Stav and Eliyahu, while haredim backed Lau and Yosef. Stav had the backing of Bayit Yehudi, Yisrael Beytenu and Hatnua, while Shas leaders campaigned intensively for Yosef and Lau.
The election of Yosef, the son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is considered key to the survival of the party. Prior to the announcement of the results, Shas faction chairman Ariel Attias said that based on conversations with nearly the entire electorate, he was positive Yosef would win. Attias dismissed the chances of Boaron, who has the backing of outgoing Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar.
A group of protesters demonstrated against Eliyahu’s candidacy outside of the polling station in Jerusalem on Wednesday due to past statements deemed racist..
Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On on Wednesday called the Chief Rabbinate a corrupt and nepotistic institution.
Gal-On said the Chief Rabbinate is an institution that “promotes homophobia and the exclusion of women and non of the candidates intend to change this.”
She added that the institution represented Orthodoxy and was “not interested to forward a more progressive and pluralistic Judaism.”
Gal-On called for the need to separate religion from state in Israel, abolish the official standing of the Chief Rabbinate and cease its funding.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refrained from endorsing a candidate, although he is considered close to Lau’s father, former Ashkenazi chief rabbi and current Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.
This election might be the last race for the Chief Rabbinate in which both an Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbi will be elected: Bayit Yehudi and Hatnua both support a proposal by Likud MK Moshe Feiglin to elect only one chief rabbi when the term of the rabbis named on Wednesday ends in 10 years. Bennett and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of Hatnua sent a letter to the chief rabbi candidates on Tuesday stating their intention to merge the two chief rabbi positions.
According to the Bennett-Livni proposal, one rabbi will hold the chief rabbi position, while another will serve as the president of the High Rabbinical Court.
Livni and Bennett intend to implement their initiative in the term of the rabbis elected on Wednesday, their letter said.
Content provided as courtesy of The Jerusalem Post
big surprise ….nepotism wins again
What’s the purpose of this rabby’s? What’s there job discription? Did they sitting in בית הוראה ansewring שאלות?
same old, same old.
Satisfactory choices as far as I’m concerned.
to #2
The most important issues that the Chief Rabbis of Israel deal with has to do with the most sensitive issues in Judaism
marriage, divorce, all of diney aginus, giyurim (conversions) etc.
not to mention all official Kashrus issues, Smicha for Mohalim
On the Sephardi side, the Sephardim take it seriously and elected a giant in Torah. On the Ashkenazi side is was mainly to block reform-wannabe “Rabbi” Stav.
Mazel Tov to all!
Both promised no heter mechira Shemitah.
B”H, it’s over with. Maybe people can regain a little seiche and start the healing from this process that got very ugly. You would think they were Democrats not Rabbi’s.
What a shock!!! The sons of previous Rabbis being elected to their fathers’ positions!! I can’t believe this could happen in Israel!!
I am no lefty. But Rav Stav was commited to fighting the inherent corrption in the rabbanut. Now we have stus quo. So if you have money or connections and you need something taken care of, you’ll be fine. If not , it will be back to business as usual witht he Rabbanut..and that stinks .It also is a source for great Chillul Hashem.
R Yitzchak Yosef is a tremendous Talmid Chacham, the author of an enormous set of Halacha books Yalkut Yosef.
Baruch HaShem. It seems that the status quo has been kept.
Talmiday Chachomim marbim Shalom baolam. Let’s hope that will be the case here. B’Hatzlacha!
At least if one speaks about Buchenwald, the crematoria and the burning of Yidden he will know he will able to answer and respond coherently because as a little boy he survived Buchenwald. Cheshsherim, learning all went out the window when faced with death . May he have brocha v’hatzlocha
Close the door now. The flies are getting in. We do not need a chief rabbi. We need a productive society.
Nothing has changed for the Jews in 2500 years. Just like the office of the Cohen Gadol was sold to the highest bidder during the time of the Beis Hamikdash, so too is the Chief Rabbi available for sale. What a Chillul Hashem! Why anyone would choose to live in Israel is beyond me. Thank God for the good old USA.
They are only meikhil when it comes to lining their own pockets with cash! Shas is the most corrupt of them all!! The Rav couldn’t even run the son that he wanted to because that son is under “house arrest”! Give me a break. it will just be a matter of time before…
Let’s all be honest here:
1) this is nepotism at its finest
2) Nevertheless, R’ Y. Yosef is a big talmid chochom R’ Lau – regular guy. Thousands like him in EY. But who needs lomdus to be. a chief Rabbi?
3) main point: is there any relevance to the chief Rabbinate? Other than being a figurehead for a visiting pope etc. What impact does the chief Rabbi have?
One of the above commentors wrote about the important issues of giyur etc. But it isn’t the Chief rabbinate that makes those decisions it is the bais din rabboni etc. They only give input. Etc.
So all in all its a political position and we’re all sick of politics.
Rav eliyahu zt”l was not respected because of his title, he was revered because he was a true godol.
Rav Ovadiah isn’t respected any more than he is (and by many not at all) because he was a chief Rabbi
Personally, nobody I know could care less