Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Sunday approached both chief rabbis asking them to rescind a proposed set of new regulations regarding the appointment of judges to the high rabbinic court, which aim to trip specific candidates without consultation with the appointments committee, thus subverting the democratic process.
According to Walla, the president of the high rabbinic court, Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, has been collaborating with ultra-Orthodox elements inside the chief rabbinate council to change the way high rabbinic court judges are appointed. The move has already raised an objection from Harel Goldberg, the legal advisor to the chief rabbinate. Should the proposed changes be adopted, the Sephardi chief rabbi would become the sole decider, for all intents and purposes, of high rabbinic court appointments, significantly curbing the powers of the appointments committee and the democratic process.
The appointment of permanent high rabbinic court judges entails a complicated process which, because of the sharp split between National Religious and ultra-Orthodox members of the committee, has not been working for some time. The process requires a majority of eight out of the eleven committee members, five of whom are ultra-Orthodox and the rest National Religious. Which is why in recent years all high court appointments have been temporary, in a legal, executive subversion of the will of the legislator.
Last September, Religious Services Minister David “Reform Judaism is a disaster” Azulai (Shas) approved the temporary, one year appointments of three new judges to the high rabbinic court bench, who had not been picked by the appointments committee. Their selection was made instead by Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. However, recently Israel’s Supreme Court decided high rabbinic court judges must be appointed permanently and not temporarily, and Justice Elyakim Rubinstein even described the current situation as degrading to the state, which is why the Chief Rabbi decided to speed up the process of picking permanent judges who would at the same time be ultra-Orthodox, despite the 6 to 5 majority of the non-Haredi committee members.
He did it through a special committee he established six months ago, to recommend new conditions for the acceptance of permanent high rabbinic court judges’ applications. Needless to say, the committee was purely ultra-Orthodox, and its recommendations were to require of applicants longer terms — ten years — as judge in a regional rabbinic court; a stint as chief rabbinic rabbi in a regional court; and approval from the president of the High Rabbinic Court, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.
This was the battlefield as of Sunday night: will the Chief Rabbinate Council approve the above three requirement, which, considering the fact that there are seven open permanent positions on the court right now, would turn the high rabbinic court ultra-Orthodox for the foreseeable future.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told JNi.media in a statement on Monday, “Changing the regulations constitutes bypassing the rabbinic judges law which is within the purview of the committee to elect rabbinic judges and would render it superfluous as an independent selections committee.”
She insisted that the Justice Minister, the chairman of the committee to select rabbinic judges and the majority of committee members would not support this severe undermining of the committee’s freedom to select professional rabbinic judges for the high rabbinic court.
As of Monday morning, JNi.media has learned that the attempt to change the rules of selecting permanent rabbinic judges has been rescinded, due mostly to the stern response of the Justice Minister.