Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yonah Yechiel Metzger sent a letter to a member of the committee responsible for appointing dayanim, attorney Mordechai Eisenberg, warning of the dire situation in which permanent dayanim have not been appointed for over five years due to an injunction issued by the High Court of Justice. Rabbi Metzger explains that as a result of the current reality, which prohibits the appointment committee from meeting, the rabbinical courts are collapsing under the backlog of cases due to the critical shortage of dayanim.

He explains the mandate of dayanim appointed temporarily is about to expire and then the situation will be even more severe. The temporary appointees are also functioning as av beis din in Beersheva and Tel Aviv and if their appointments lapse, there will be increasingly difficult in those cities in particular.

Rabbi Metzger explains the dayanim are unable of continuing with the present workload and dual responsibilities and new permanent dayanim must be appointed to resolve the problem. The backlog he explains is delaying judgments, causing people much anguish. The chief rabbi explains there is no parallel situation in the secular judicial system in which a judge serves on a panel in two levels of the court system, but in the rabbinical system, it has already occurred that a dayan had to hear an appeal as a member of the Rabbinical Supreme Court pertaining to his ruling in a lower court, as he served on both towards alleviating the case overload.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)