According to Rabbi Chizkiyahu Samin, who heads the Rabbanut & Marriage Unit of the Ministry of Religious Services, marriage registration stations operating by Tzohar Rabbonim around the country are unauthorized and are operating outside of the law.
An internal letter sent by Rabbi Samin to Rishon L’Tzion Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef Shlita was leaked to the media, appearing on Kikar Shabbos News. In this letter Rabbi Samin claims that the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization is operating marriage registration stations nationwide that are illegal. Rabbi Samin explains that while the new marriage registration law permits one to register in any city one wishes, it refers to authorized registration and not Tzohar since the organization is operating outside of its legal mandate.
In his letter Rabbi Samin explains the organization is led by Rabbi David Stav, who is the Chief Rabbi of Shoham and he was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and authorized to function as the chief rabbi of his community but he has permitted extending his mandate to operate nationwide under the Tzohar name, albeit illegally.
Rabbi Samin adds that a city like Jerusalem for example cannot tolerate marriage registration from different cities operating in its municipal boundaries, drawing an analogy to cellular telephone companies competing by operating stores near one another. He explains that when it comes to marriage registration such a scenario is unacceptable.
On Sunday 14 Iyar, Tzohar founder Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein decried chareidi efforts to disqualify to the so-called Tzohar Law permitting nationwide marriage registration a “Chilul Hashem”. He calls on the chareidim to “restrain themselves” regarding what they feel the general public is required to do and regarding one’s Jewish identity.
Tzohar officials responded harshly, stating, “Despite the claims of clerk Chizkiyahu, Tzohar Rabbonim is operating and will continue to operate in the framework of the law and its operations are backed by the finest lawyers in the country. Unfortunately, Chizkiyahu Samin personally chose to lash out against the Tzohar organization and not against the badatz organizations that operate in the exact same fashion as Tzohar does.
“The war of the clerks like him is not a war against Tzohar, but against thousands of couple that choose to marry through the organization and to claim the Tzohar Law changed nothing at best is simply wrong, and at worst untrue. The fact is that breaking the marriage registration monopoly by the nation’s religious councils has improved registration while some registered a decline in marriage registrations”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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HaRav Kook
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat in Judea’s Gush Etzion, called on the Jewish Home party to emphasize two topics in negotiations – women being refused a get (Jewish writ of divorce), and converts seeking to become Jews.
“It is inconceivable that the reform that began among the rabbinic courts and the appointment of dayanim (religious judges – ed.) – through which for the first time there are women taking part in selecting the dayanim – be stopped,” said the rabbi.
Rabbi Riskin claimed that “among the veteran dayanim, there aren’t enough of them with an approach that sees the importance and treatment of the distress of women, and many women are trapped in marriages that they don’t want to be in. When a new dayan is appointed, the central issue that needs to be before the committee is the position of women as having equal rights.”
While the rabbi focused solely on women being refused a get and thereby remaining trapped in the legal marital status under Jewish law, it should be noted that the issue is not a one-way street. A study of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in 2007 found that in the prior two years 180 women were refused Jewish divorces by their husbands, but a full 185 men were refused a get from their wives.
Speaking about governmental moves on the docket that he hopes can be blocked, Rabbi Riskin warned, “transferring the committee to appoint dayanim from the Religious Affairs Ministry to the Justice Ministry is liable to harm in the most serious manner this very important issue.”
Turning his attention to the controversial conversion law, the rabbi said, “the reform in conversion is also an essential issue for Israeli society and the Jewish people, and it is important that we know to act so as to solve the problems before they break out.”
“We need to deal more with the various populations in the society not just when there are riots and streets are overturned,” he added. “The reform in conversion comes to provide a response for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the (former) Soviet Union, who are full and equal partners in Israeli society but today cannot complete the conversion process.”
“There were already important decisions in the previous government, and we can’t cancel these decisions that give hope to so many. We can’t cancel a large and important population, and think that if we ignore the topic it will solve itself. This is a social and halakhic (Jewish legal) problem that we need to take in hand, and bring the solution in time,” said the rabbi.
In conclusion, Rabbi Riskin called on “the prime minister and minister Naftali Bennett to pay attention to these issues, and not to retreat from the progress that began.
The hareidim have been ignoring the government’s assertion of a monopoly over “religious services” since 1948 (the British and Turks were content to say they would respect halacha and not try to appoint a bureaucracy to run it). There was never a halacha saying that the non-Jewish government could license “official” rabbis, and if the government tried to, we always ignored them. Whether the actions of a Beis Din are valid or not is dependent on our Torah, not the government’s whim.
R’ Ovadia warned us long ago about this clown that they call “stav” and the danger he is to Judaism.