Jerusalem – Rabbis Stav, Eliyahu Likely Chief Rabbi Candidates

Jerusalem – The Bayit Yehudi party is preparing to run Rabbi David Stav and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu as candidates for the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbi positions in light of the failure of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef to publicly back a deal with the national religious party.

Bayit Yehudi has been trying to arrange a political deal with Shas whereby Bayit Yehudi would support current Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar for a second term and Shas would support Rabbi Yaakov Ariel as Ashkenazi chief rabbi.

A Bayit Yehudi source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it does not now expect Yosef to publicly support the proposal, and that the party would likely propose Stav and Eliyahu as its candidates for both positions.

The party will hold its Knesset faction meeting on Monday where it is expected that Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett will make the announcement.

Deputy Minister of Religious Services Eli Ben-Dahan of the Bayit Yehudi party was scheduled to meet with senior national-religious leader Rabbi Dov Lior in the settlement of Kiryat Arba where Lior serves as municipal chief rabbi. They are expected to discuss, among other issues, the candidates for chief rabbi.

While Stav is a popular and liberalizing figure within the mainstream national-religious community, Eliyahu, the chief municipal rabbi of Tzfat, is a controversial choice since he has made several extremely controversial comments that have been the basis for police investigations into the rabbi for incitement to racial hatred.

Eliyahu is however favored by the conservative wing of the national-religious movement and leadership, including Rabbi Lior.

The significant legislative and political obstacles that have prevented Bayit Yehudi from nominating Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, favored by the conservative national-religious rabbinic leadership for Ashkenazi chief rabbi above Stav, created tensions within the party between Bennett loyalists and the more right-wing Tekuma party, which is a constituent of the Bayit Yehudi Knesset faction.

Eliyahu is affiliated with Tekuma and so his nomination will help placate the political and rabbinic leadership of the party which is distinctly under enamored with Rabbi Stav and his liberal agenda.

The Safed chief rabbi’s past comments regarding Israel’s Arab population will generate opposition to his nomination however.

In 2006, Eliyahu was indicted on grounds of racial incitement for comments he made to the media in 2002 and 2004, but the charges were dropped in return for which the rabbi apologized for his comments, retracted them, and pledged not make similar comments in the future.

Another investigation was opened into Eliyahu’s public comments in 2011 but it was closed without an indictment.

The purpose of the deal which Bayit Yehudi has been pursuing with Shas over the last month was to ensure the election of a national-religious chief rabbi by securing Shas support for its nominee, since Shas has significant influence on the 150-member electoral committee owing to the fact that many of the 70 rabbis on the panel are loyal to the haredi party.

Although Shas chairman Arye Deri has expressed support in a written letter to Bayit Yehudi for the deal, the national-religious party is dubious about the reliability of the party’s promises and therefore requested last week a public announcement from Shas spiritual leader Ovadiah Yosef as a guarantor for the deal within seven days.

Yosef has refused to make such a pronouncement and the slated deal now looks to have finally died.

Bayit Yehudi will also move ahead with legislation to increase the size of the electoral committee to 200 members, with a 40 guaranteed spots for women. Currently, there are no women on the panel whatsoever.