Chief Rabbi suspends monthly meetings of Chief Rabbinate

Chief Rabbi David Lau has taken a highly unusual step of suspending all meetings of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate due to what he has termed the unacceptable behavior of the Chief Rabbinate’s legal advisor.

Lau claims that the legal advisor has overstepped his authority and has prevented the Council of the Chief Rabbinate, a 15-member decision-making body, from deliberating on some issues and overruling some of its decisions.

In a letter to the Attorney General, Lau said he would not convene another meeting of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate as long as the rabbinate’s legal adviser “does not change its ways, and recognizes its place and authority.”

Explaining his position in his letter of January 7, Lau said, “Unfortunately, the legal adviser permits himself to act as a superior authority to the Council, and unfortunately to make it and its decisions superfluous.”

Lau said the legal adviser does not explain his reservations regarding Council decisions with legal reasoning, but says instead that there were procedural problems in the way decisions were made.

In particular, he gave one example in which a special committee for the recognition of Diaspora rabbis for various Jewish status issues had sent its decision to the Council, which was eventually approved after several internal discussions.

Lau went on to say that "without any legal justification, the legal adviser to the Rabbinate decided to cancel the council's decision and that “instead of pointing out what is illegal in the council's decisions and / or how it can be implemented within the framework of the law, he chooses, in a heated manner, to cancel the decisions.”

However, The Jerusalem Post understands that there have been substantive issues of disagreement and serious concerns about the procedural nature of some decisions in the Council of the Chief Rabbinate, leading to the current impasse between the legal department of the Chief Rabbinate and the chief rabbi.