A petition was filed with the High Court of Justice on Wednesday challenging the upcoming elections for an ashkenazi and sephardi chief rabbi of Jerusalem, citing the election committee, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and the Jerusalem City Council as plaintiffs. The petitioners are seeking a court-order to prevent the election from taking place as planned.
The petitioners are seeking “transparency”, claiming the current process is the antitheses of fair democratic elections, and the process is simply unacceptable. The petitioners are seeking publicized reports pertaining to preparations for the elections and the process, rather than the back-room operation that exists as they put it, rejecting the lack of openness pertaining to critical components of the election process. Other complaints include the failure to adequately represent the population, residents of the capital, resulting in a reality that ignores certain population groups while favoring others.
The organization calling itself Ne’emanei Torah V’Avoda is representing the petitioners. It is a public organization and members include hundreds of residents of the capital. they remind the public that while Jerusalem is one-third chareidi, it is two-thirds non-chareidi, consisting of secularists, traditional and dati-leumi residents.
The petitioners explain they felt compelled to act following an article appearing in the weekly BaKehilla, which cited 14 shuls in the capital representing chareidi communities have delegates representing their interests in the election while only 10 shuls represent the remainder of the capital’s population.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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One Response
Quite frankly it has been done this way every election time.
To have two Yerushayalim chief rabbis one Sepharadic (Rav Yosef) and one Torah frum (maybe not charedei) seems like a proper choice for a city of diversified population.