2024 Israeli Chief Rabbi Elections

Israel maintains two concurrent chief rabbinical offices: one representing the Sephardi tradition, whose holder bears the title Rishon LeZion, and one representing the Ashkenazi tradition.[1][7] The positions carry ten-year terms.[7] The statutory Chief Rabbi Election Assembly has 150 members, consisting of 80 rabbis and 70 other delegates. Its members include mayors, lawmakers, government representatives, religious-council officials, rabbinical-court judges, and representatives of the Military Rabbinate.[2][3]

The assembly also elects the 15-member Chief Rabbinate Council.[2] Ten seats in the assembly's rabbinical category are normally filled by appointees of the outgoing chief rabbis. Those seats became a central issue in 2024 after the High Court ruled that qualified women could be considered for them and the outgoing chief rabbis declined to make the appointments.[2][6]

The elections were originally due in 2023. On July 4, 2023, the Knesset approved a law postponing them from August 2023 to April 2024, officially to avoid interference with municipal elections.[5] The municipal elections were subsequently postponed because of the Israel-Hamas war, and the chief-rabbi vote was delayed again amid legal and political disputes over the electoral assembly.[2]

Press reports cited by the U.S. State Department and the Jewish Virtual Library attributed the original postponement to Shas leader Aryeh Deri's desire to resolve internal disagreements over the Sephardi succession. This remained an attributed political allegation rather than an established legal finding.[5][8] Further delays left both chief-rabbi positions vacant after the incumbents' terms expired on July 1.[2] In August 2024, the Supreme Court ordered the election committee to set a date as soon as possible and no later than September 30. It also ruled that the election could proceed with 140 voters if the ten remaining appointments were not completed.[9]

A major legal controversy concerned whether women could be considered for the ten assembly seats appointed by the outgoing chief rabbis. The dispute arose from a 2022 Rackman Center petition concerning appointments to the electoral assembly and the Chief Rabbinate Council.[10][5] On July 5, 2023, the Supreme Court ordered the government and the serving chief rabbis to explain why women meeting the relevant educational requirements would not be considered.[5]

On January 14, 2024, the High Court of Justice issued a majority ruling in case 7583/22. Justices Yitzhak Amit and Daphne Barak-Erez held that the term "rabbis" in section 7(8) of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Law, 1980, could include people with appropriate Torah and halakhic education who lacked Chief Rabbinate ordination, including women.[10] Justice David Mintz dissented, reasoning that the term applied only to those holding Chief Rabbinate ordination.[10]

The court required the chief rabbis to consider qualified women but did not mandate that any woman be appointed.[6] The Chief Rabbinate declined to consider women for the ten seats, citing halachic objections.[2][6] The High Court subsequently permitted the election to proceed without those appointees, reducing the assembly from 150 to 140.[2][9] Women nevertheless participated through other categories of membership; the September assembly included 17 women.[3]

Voting took place in Jerusalem on September 29, 2024, from 14:00 to 19:00. Of the 140 eligible assembly members, 138 voted, a turnout of approximately 98 percent.[3] Eight candidates competed: three for the Sephardi position and five for the Ashkenazi position.[2]

The Sephardi candidates were David Yosef, Shmuel Eliyahu, and Michael Amos. Yosef received 72 votes, Eliyahu received 44, and Amos received 21.[3] Yosef had served as rabbi of Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood and had been a member of Shas's Council of Torah Sages since 2013.[11] His election made him the third member of his family to hold the office, after his father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and his brother, outgoing Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.[11]

The Ashkenazi candidates were Micha Halevi, Kalman Ber, Meir Kahana, Moshe Chaim Lau, and Eliezer Igra. Halevi and Ber each received 40 votes, Kahana received 31, Lau received 21, and Igra received 6; one envelope was blank.[3] The tie between Halevi, chief rabbi of Petah Tikva, and Ber, chief rabbi of Netanya, required a runoff.

After the first round, officials found a ballot bearing Micha Halevi's name in the Sephardi contest rather than the Ashkenazi contest, while an empty envelope had been counted in the Ashkenazi ballot box.[12] Halevi's supporters argued that the misplaced ballot should count as his 41st vote, placing him one vote ahead of Ber and eliminating the tie.[12]

The Election Committee rejected that argument on the basis of a legal opinion by Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky. She reasoned that treating the ballot as an innocent mistake would be speculative, that the voter's intent could not reliably be inferred, and that transferring a ballot between separate boxes could impair ballot secrecy.[12] The committee ruled that the ballot could not be validated or linked to the empty envelope and scheduled a runoff between the two candidates tied at 40 votes.[12]

The Ashkenazi runoff was held on October 31, 2024. Of the 140 assembly members, 136 voted, and one ballot was blank. Kalman Ber won with 77 votes to Micha Halevi's 58.[13][4]

Ber had grown up in Religious Zionist institutions and served as an IDF combat soldier before his rabbinical career. His supporters included the Haredi Degel HaTorah party as well as figures from the Religious Zionist community.[14][4] Halevi entered the runoff with the support of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Shas chairman Aryeh Deri.[13][4] Ber's victory therefore reflected support crossing established factional lines.

The elections were influenced by arrangements among Israel's religious parties. Religious Zionism and Shas reportedly agreed to support each other's preferred candidates: Shas backed David Yosef for the Sephardi office, while Religious Zionism sought Shas support for its Ashkenazi candidate.[2] Yosef won the Sephardi contest comfortably.[2]

The Ashkenazi race proved less predictable. Bezalel Smotrich initially supported Meir Kahana, the choice of a committee Smotrich had formed, but switched his endorsement to Micha Halevi shortly before the first round.[2] Kalman Ber, although educated in Religious Zionist institutions, was backed by Degel HaTorah and other Haredi supporters.[14][2] His runoff victory over a candidate endorsed by both Smotrich and Deri demonstrated the limits of the parties' effort to coordinate the assembly's vote.

Rabbi David Yosef became Sephardi Chief Rabbi and Rishon LeZion, succeeding his brother Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. He had previously served as rabbi of Har Nof and as a member of Shas's Council of Torah Sages.[11]

Rabbi Kalman Ber became Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, succeeding Rabbi David Lau.[7][14] Before his election, Ber served as Chief Rabbi of Netanya, where he established a multi-tiered kashrut certification system intended to accommodate different levels of religious observance.[14] Yosef and Ber were elected to ten-year terms.[7]

Accounts of the election process differed most sharply over the reasons for its repeated postponement. The official explanation for the 2023 delay cited the proximity of municipal elections, while press reports attributed it to internal Shas deliberations over the Sephardi succession.[5][8] A July 2024 commentary described efforts to shape the assembly's membership as "gerrymandering" and referred to concerns about nepotism, characterizations that represented the author's assessment rather than judicial findings.[1]

The women's eligibility case also produced competing legal interpretations. The High Court majority held that qualified women could fall within the statutory meaning of "rabbis" for the appointed seats, while the dissent maintained that the term was limited to holders of Chief Rabbinate ordination.[10] The court permitted consideration of women without requiring their appointment, while the Chief Rabbinate maintained that appointing women to seats reserved for rabbis was impermissible under halacha.[2][6]