The rabbonim who serve on the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Council on Sunday, 7 Shevat, called for granting exclusive power to the Av Beis Din of the Chief Rabbinate Supreme Beis Din to appoint dayanim to that body. That means in this case, the power would rest with Rishon L’Tzion Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef Shlita as he is current serving as the av beis din. Later in his term, in two years, the post will rotate with Chief Rabbi David Lau Shlita.
Under the law today, any dayan serving on a beis din on the regional level is eligible to serve on the Supreme Beis Din after amassing three years of experience. According to a Walla News report, Rav Yosef is trying to raise the bar pertaining to eligibility for a dayan wishing to serve on the nation’s highest Beis Din.
Rabbi Yosef has established a vaad which includes Rabbi Yehuda Deri Shlita (brother of Shas leader Rabbi Aryeh Deri & a mechutin to Rav Yosef) and Rabbi Yitzchak Ralbag Shlita (father-in-law to Chief Rabbi David Lau) to recommend new criteria for one who wishes to be considered for serving on the Supreme Beis Din. According to a Walla report, the committee feels a regional dayan must have ten years of experience as well as having served as a regional av beis din.
Currently, the Av Beis Din of the Supreme Beis Din cannot select dayanim without approval of the Committee to Appoint Justices, which is also made up of representatives of political parties.
According to the Walla News report, legal counsel for the Chief Rabbinate, Harel Goldberg, is opposed to the recommendation to grant the Supreme Beis Din Av Beis Din unprecedented authority.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
6 Responses
Usual garbage and backroom dealing.
They get their buddies and families involved and appoint other buddies and family members to jobs that pay big salaries. It is no wonder that most non observant and probably many observant citizens here look at professional Judaism as another irrevalent part of government at best or as an enemy of their personal lives at worst.
And people claim that the appointments to the secular Supreme Court of Israel are inside jobs?
Two Chief Rabbis who were appointed because of family and political connections have created a committee to evaluate judges that consists entirely of politically connected relatives, and reserve the appointments to themselves.
Ironically, in the most recent Chief Rabbinate elections, there were two candidates whose judicial experience was so far beyond the rest of the candidates that they should have been elected by acclamation. I refer to Rabbi Boaron and Rabbi Igra. But since they had concentrated on being Dayanim rather than on being politicians they had no chance.
the lack of respect the above commenters show for a talmid hacham of the stature of r yitzchak yosef is appaling. i dont know much about Rav Lau, but R Yitzchok Yosef i have seen many times and is very much a tremendous tremendous talmid hacham and ish kadosh. are you familiar with the yalkut yosef, ein yitzkah, etc, etc? apparently not. ok, so they have great yichus but dont assume they dont have their own merits. how can you so brazenly attack the integrity of gedolei yisrael..
charliehall: Actually, it’s worse than you think. One of them actually wants to dispense with an existing 11 person committee and make the decisions by fiat.
The committee consists of only Frum people from both the Chareidi and Dati communities and requires 8 vote to appoint someone.
To baruchderrin:
Rav Yitzhak Yosef is indeed a major talmid chacham, but so are those who he kept off the Beit Din, in order to reserve those jobs for family members and others loyal to his family.
It happens that many of those he kept off the Beit Din are far more qualified that Rav Yosef is to be dayanim, including Rav Uriel Lavie, who was blocked for months by not only Rav Yosef, but the haredi factions.
Both Rav Lau and Rav Yosef got their jobs through inside-dealing, not because they were the most qualified. I am not saying that they aren’t qualified at all, but they are first and foremost, political hacks.
(The Laus, father and son, swore loyalty to the Ashkenazi haredi faction in order to get their jobs, giving them veto power over major issues important to haredim.)
Baruchderrin,
Anytime I see nepotism in a story, I loose integrity for the people involved. If these distinguished rabbis were honorable they would not play these disgusting games on the taxpayers’ backs