Shlomo Amar

Amar was born in 1948 in Morocco and immigrated to Israel in 1962.[1] His birthplace was Casablanca, where he spent much of his childhood before moving to Israel.[8]

He became a close associate of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of Shas.[1] Their relationship extended to religious decision-making: a profile described Yosef as trusting Amar with halakhic questions and regarding him as a potential successor in spiritual and halakhic leadership.[9]

Before holding national office, Amar served as rabbi of Moshav Magadim, as rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces unit responsible for identifying fallen soldiers, and as head of the Petah Tikva Rabbinical Court.[10] In March 2002, he was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, becoming the city's first sole chief rabbi.[1] The position remained vacant after his departure for the national chief rabbinate in 2003; disagreement over whether his successor should be Sephardi or Ashkenazi, together with limited concern among many secular residents, contributed to the delay in filling it.[11]

Amar won the Sephardi position in the 2003 national chief-rabbi election with 124 votes.[12] His opponents received substantially fewer: Shmuel Eliyahu won 14 votes, Ratzon Arusi four, and Eliyahu Abergil three, in an election involving a 150-member electorate of rabbis, local-authority heads, and other public figures.[12] Amar subsequently served alongside Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger from 2003 to 2013.[2] The two national chief rabbis were elected for ten-year terms and occupied the country's highest halakhic and spiritual offices.[2]

The national chief rabbinate led a large system of state-run religious institutions, with authority concerning appointments, marriage, divorce, conversion, kosher certification, and recognition of Jewish status in Israel.[13] These responsibilities defined the institutional setting in which Amar worked, rather than indicating that he personally decided every matter within the system's jurisdiction.[13] His earlier rulings included permitting women to be released from agunot status on the basis of reports from the Israel Police forensic laboratory.[12] He also permitted genetic engineering in plants, reasoning that it did not constitute the prohibited creation of mixed species.[12]

Following the dismantling of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2004 and the nonpayment of rabbis' salaries, Amar proposed that rabbis join the General Federation of Labor to protect their employment rights.[14] The authors of a study of Israel's Board of Rabbis describe this proposal as the first of its kind.[14]

In 2005, Amar formally recognized the Bnei Menashe, a community in northeastern India claiming descent from the Israelite tribe of Manasseh, as “descendants of Israel.”[4] His decision followed a review of findings presented to him, and he agreed that the community should be brought closer to the Jewish people.[4] The recognition was accompanied by plans for rabbinical judges to travel to the region to carry out Orthodox conversions and begin resettlement procedures.[4] It thus combined recognition of an Israelite connection with a practical requirement for conversion, rather than dispensing with conversion altogether.[4]

The decision came after an interruption in the community's migration to Israel.[4] Approximately 800 people from Mizoram and Manipur had immigrated since 1994, but immigration visas had effectively been frozen after the last group of 71 departed in May 2003.[4] Later in 2005, about 200 Bnei Menashe underwent conversion in India before six rabbinical judges dispatched by Shavei Israel with Amar's approval.[15] The conversions put into practice his decision to send a beit din from Israel to northeastern India.[16]

Ethiopian immigration and the status of the Falash Mura also became recurring subjects of Amar's work.[1][5] At the request of then-interior minister Eli Yishai, he visited Ethiopia to meet the community and subsequently recommended that its members undergo conversion to return to Judaism.[1] The Falash Mura were described as descendants of Beta Israel whose ancestors had converted to Christianity, with some members returning to Jewish practice.[17] Amar's early rulings likewise held that members of the community should undergo conversion according to Jewish law and return to Judaism.[12]

In 2008, Amar told a Knesset committee that Falash Mura should be able to convert in Ethiopia and then immigrate under the Law of Return.[18] At the time, questions about their Jewish status affected their immigration eligibility, and they were entering Israel under the Law of Entry instead.[18] His proposal therefore addressed both where conversion would take place and the legal basis on which members of the community would enter Israel.[18]

In 2010, Jewish Agency official Eli Cohen said that a plan to assist 8,700 Ethiopians seeking aliyah had received approval from Amar and Ovadia Yosef, who had confirmed their Jewish credentials.[17] The proposed Jewish Agency budget was $4.7 million over three years.[17] During a Knesset committee discussion reported in 2008, Amar said Israel, including the Chief Rabbinate, had done Ethiopian Jews “a grievous wrong” by not bringing them to Israel with the rest of the Jewish people.[5] He called for practical solutions, faster conversion for those waiting in Ethiopia, and the dispatch of rabbis to carry out the process there.[5]

Amar also agreed to establish a committee to review and improve conversion procedures, and said he had worked with Petah Tikva officials on integrating Ethiopian students with their classmates.[5] A 2013 report described him as having concluded several years earlier that the Falash Mura were “beyond a doubt” Jewish.[19] Government immigration decisions nevertheless required Jewish matrilineal descent, and Falash Mura immigrants underwent Orthodox conversion after arriving in Israel.[19] His religious assessment, government eligibility requirements, and the conversion procedures applied to immigrants were therefore distinct elements of their path to settlement.[19]

Conversion administration became a major part of Amar's national responsibilities.[20] On February 6, 2008, a ministerial committee announced a new Conversion Authority headed by him, with responsibility for appointing and overseeing religious judges who evaluated prospective converts.[20] That year, an agreement between the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and the Rabbinical Council of America established a network of North American rabbinical courts whose conversions would be recognized in Israel.[21] Approximately 15 courts and 40 rabbis were authorized under the agreement.[21]

The arrangement provided that new courts would undergo RCA vetting and receive final approval from two Yeshiva University rabbis in consultation with a representative of the Chief Rabbinate.[21] The RCA's Gerus Policies and Standards program identified fifteen acceptable United States rabbinical courts following Amar's announcement that conversions performed under RCA auspices would no longer receive uniform acceptance in Israel.[22] The agreement established a defined institutional route to recognition after a dispute over conversions performed outside Israel.[21]

Amar also intervened in 2008 after a High Rabbinic Court decision called into question conversions performed by Haim Druckman, head of the Israeli State Conversion Authority.[23] He said those conversions would continue to be recognized, while his spokesman affirmed that he stood behind Druckman and regarded the conversions as legitimate.[23] The court decision had been published against Amar's express order.[23]

In December 2010, Amar and Metzger called on Israeli rabbis to oppose what they termed the “abortion epidemic in our country.”[24] Their proposed campaign asked local rabbis to encourage births, prevent unnecessary abortions, distribute pamphlets during marriage preparation, and consult a doctor.[24] The campaign drew on estimates attributed to a special Chief Rabbinate committee of approximately 50,000 abortions annually, including 30,000 described as illegal; those figures were committee estimates reported in the media, rather than independently confirmed counts.[24]

In July 2011, Amar met President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem over the controversy surrounding the book “King's Torah.”[25] The meeting followed police questioning of rabbis Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef concerning their endorsement of the book, which made claims about killing non-Jews in wartime.[25] Amar and Peres agreed to work together to settle the affair and “preserve the rule of the law and protect the honor of the Torah.”[25] The book's claims were not presented as Amar's own views.[25]

Amar's national tenure ended in 2013 after proposed legislation that would have enabled a sitting chief rabbi to seek a second term failed to advance.[26] Shas and United Torah Judaism prevented a vote on the proposal in June, effectively closing the route to another term for him.[26] The dispute involved the composition of the chief-rabbi electoral body and concern within Shas that a provision would improve David Stav's chances in the Ashkenazi contest.[26] Ovadia Yosef's opposition to Stav was a factor in Shas's decision.[26]

Amar subsequently backed Rabbi Zion Boaron in the Sephardi chief-rabbi contest, contrary to Ovadia Yosef's reported wish that his son Yitzhak receive the position.[27] Amar and Yitzhak Yosef did not speak for more than a year before reconciling in October 2014.[27] They were also related by marriage, as Yosef's son was married to Amar's daughter.[27] Their reconciliation came shortly before Shas announced its support for Amar's candidacy for Jerusalem's Sephardi chief rabbinate.[27]

In October 2014, Amar was elected Sephardi chief rabbi of Jerusalem, receiving 28 votes from the 48-member electoral assembly, compared with 18 for Shmuel Eliyahu.[3] Jerusalem had gone eleven years without chief rabbis following the deaths of its two previous officeholders in 2003.[3] Amar entered the position with Shas backing after his decade in the national chief rabbinate.[3]

Amar also worked on questions of Sephardi ancestry outside Israel.[6] He said he participated in contacts preceding Spain's citizenship legislation for descendants of Jews expelled from Spain, and proposed that rabbis be allowed to assess applicants' Jewish ancestry because of their professional experience investigating Jewish status.[6] He said that proposal was accepted and recounted meetings with King Juan Carlos and Spain's interior and justice ministers.[6] He characterized his participation as that of a religious leader rather than a representative of the Israeli government.[6] In 2016, his office said Spain had conferred honorary citizenship on him in recognition of this work and that he had not applied for Spanish citizenship.[8]

As Jerusalem's chief rabbi, Amar also addressed relations with Christian worshippers.[28] In June 2023, he issued an English-language letter condemning harassment of Christians in Jerusalem, declaring persecution through curses and blasphemies “strictly forbidden.”[28] The statement followed reported harassment and an unauthorized protest against Christian worshippers near the Western Wall.[28] Separately, in January 2023, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef criticized Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount in the name of the Chief Rabbinate and Amar; the account of this intervention did not include a direct quotation from Amar himself.[29]

Amar's recognition of the Bnei Menashe and advocacy for the Falash Mura connected his authority over Jewish status with practical efforts to bring communities closer to Jewish life and facilitate immigration to Israel.[4][5] His work in both cases included support for conversion procedures conducted outside Israel, including the dispatch or proposed dispatch of rabbinical judges to the communities concerned.[4][5] His dealings with Spain similarly applied rabbinical expertise in Jewish ancestry to a question affecting descendants of expelled Jews.[6]

His institutional career encompassed local religious leadership, rabbinical service with the IDF unit responsible for identifying fallen soldiers, leadership of a rabbinical court, and the chief rabbinates of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jerusalem.[1][3][10] In the national office, he combined responsibilities for conversion administration with rulings on such subjects as forensic evidence in agunot cases and genetic engineering in plants.[12][20]

A profile quoted journalist Anshil Peper describing Amar as having risen through the rabbinic world through his own efforts and as maintaining connections with less-observant Sephardi Jews as well as the religious public.[9] His close association with Ovadia Yosef placed him within a prominent network of Sephardi religious leadership, although the 2013 chief-rabbi contest and subsequent reconciliation with Yitzhak Yosef also revealed strains within that relationship's political and familial setting.[9][27]

Amar's approach to conversion recognition generated disputes over religious standards and the authority to determine Jewish status.[20][21] In a critical essay on conversion, Marc D. Angel dates the restriction on recognition of Diaspora Orthodox conversions to 2006 and argues that Amar and his colleagues sought stricter, standardized observance requirements through approved rabbis and courts.[30] Angel characterizes the RCA's response as requiring a “100% commitment” to observing the commandments and withholding certification from conversions outside its framework.[30] Critics of Amar's appointment to head the new Conversion Authority similarly regarded it as strengthening Orthodox control over Jewish identity.[20]

In May 2008, the High Rabbinical Court headed by Amar briefly annulled the conversion of a woman who had met the Conversion Authority's criteria, then reversed the decision following public outcry from other Orthodox converts.[20] The separate Druckman ruling accused him of serious misconduct and purported to invalidate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of conversions; these were allegations within the dispute, not independently established findings.[23] The Bnei Menashe's claimed descent from Manasseh also had little scholarly support, notwithstanding Amar's religious recognition and support for conversion.[16]

Amar opposed the Western Wall framework permitting egalitarian prayer and supported its freezing by the government.[31] In 2017, he compared Reform Jewish claims concerning gender separation to Holocaust denial and called petitioners “wicked”; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected attempts to delegitimize any part of the Jewish people.[32] Amar defended his comparison by saying that gender separation was fundamental to Jewish law.[32] In March and October 2019, he called for people to oppose Women of the Wall at their monthly services, describing their activities as an effort to “hurt the sanctity of the place.”[33]

His statements about LGBTQ people also drew sustained criticism.[34][35] In 2016, he called homosexuality an “abomination,” said Jewish law prescribed the death penalty for same-sex relationships, and said he had declined to attend a memorial for Shira Banki after her family would not read his letter in full; criticism and a police complaint alleging incitement followed.[34] In July 2019, he called on religious LGBTI people to discard their kippahs and stop observing Shabbat.[33] During Jerusalem's 2021 Pride Parade, he called it an “abomination parade,” compared participants unfavorably with wild animals, and criticized religious participants.[35] In May 2024, he declined to shake Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana's hand or sit beside him at Captain Israel Yudkin's funeral and left before Ohana spoke; the refusal was attributed to Ohana's sexual orientation.[36]

In September 2023, the High Court of Justice directed the government to explain its failure to discipline Amar over remarks concerning LGBTQ people, Reform Jews, and Women of the Wall, allowing 21 days for a response.[7] This was a temporary order seeking an explanation, not a final ruling on the merits.[7] Other disputes included his denunciation of a conference on attacks against Christians, distinct from his condemnation of harassment itself.[37] A 2020 Mosaic essay also reports his rejection of a proposed Zoom seder ruling and his description of one signatory as a “Reform rabbi.”[38]