Despite Yamina’s promises, the Bennett-Lapid government continues to chip away at the religious status quo in Israel and this time a Yamina minister is implementing the changes, with Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana moving forward with a plan to minimize Chareidi influence on the appointment of dayanim by as early as next week, Yediot Acharanot reported on Tuesday.
Kahana’s goal is to increase the number of Dati Leumi Rabbanim appointed to official positions and he intends to accomplish that by ensuring that more secular and Dati Leumi people are appointed to the Judicial Appointments Committee, outnumbering the Chareidi members on the committee.
The committee is comprised of eleven members: two ministers, two MKs (one from the coalition and one from the opposition), two dayanim from the Rabbanut, two representatives of the Bar Association, one Beis Din adviser appointed by the Religious Affair Ministry and the two Chief Rabbis.
When UTJ and Shas were part of the coalition, there was a majority of Chareidim on the committee comprised of their representatives together with the Chief Rabbis and the dayanim of the Rabbanut, ensuring a veto of the appointment of dayanim considered too religiously liberal.
Now that the Chareidi parties no longer have representatives on the committee, Kahana also intends to change the composition of the committee by advancing a bill requiring at least half of the political representatives of the committee to be female, precluding any Chareidi MKs.
The two ministers appointed to the committee are Kahana and Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin (New Hope).
In the coming year, the Judicial Appointments Committee is set to appoint six dayanim to the Regional Beis Din and three dayanim to the Beis HaDin HaGadol, a significant number of new dayanim after a considerable waiting time for new appointments.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
What do you mean “Despite Yamina’s promises”? This is exactly what Yamina promised its voters that it would do and it has long been a goal of the D”L community, which is troubled by the charedi takeover of the Rabbanut.
Keep on davening by V’lamalshinim!!
Another dishonest article by YWN. And this time you can’t blame AP. In fact YWN shows itself to be in good company with AP.
The charedi dominance of the rabbinate is ITSELF a violation of the status quo ante. Of course it’s one that haredim never complain about, but the status quo ante was that the rabbanut was a DL domain. The haredi parties deliberately violated that status quo and took it over for themselves, and now the DL are trying to move things a little bit back.
What, they’re not allowed?! What is this supposed to be, a one-way ratchet?! Are they somehow less deserving than the haredim?! Less frum?! Less yir’ei shomayim?! Less talmidei chachomim?! Their past losses in this area were not based on frumkeit or yir’as shomayim, let alone on torah learning, but on pure politics. In fact Rabbi Metzger’s election was openly described among the haredim as a victory precisely because he was NOT a talmid chochom, and would therefore be nothing but a shick-yingel for those who sent him.
thank God, the hareidi minority’s hegemony will soon end. it brought us a chief rabbi, now a convicted felon, who as a part of a previous plea deal promised never to seek the CR position of any city. unfortunately, he sought not to be CR of a city but of all of Israel.
Neither of the late gedolim RZNG ztl or RNR ztl were given the respect due them in hareidi circles.