Tzohar

Tzohar describes itself as Israel's largest rabbinical organization, with more than 1,000 rabbis and educational professionals participating voluntarily. Hundreds serve in leadership roles as city, locality, and community rabbis or as teachers in yeshivas and other educational settings.[3]

Rabbi David Stav is the organization's founder and chairman.[4] Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, another founder, is a Zionist-Orthodox rabbi known for work in Jewish ethics and contemporary public life. He heads Yeshivat Hesder Petach Tikva, graduated from Yeshivat Har Etzion, and is a retired Israel Defense Forces major.[7] Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, also among the founders, became a senior figure in Tzohar's kashrut initiative and its disputes with the Chief Rabbinate.[8][9]

Stav ran in the 2013 Israeli chief-rabbi election, in which competing Religious Zionist candidates divided their vote and lost to Haredi candidates David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef. A contemporary commentary characterized Stav's campaign as electorally unsuccessful but credited it with encouraging discussion about whether the Chief Rabbinate could operate differently.[1] Membership was reported at approximately 800 rabbis in 2016, before Tzohar began reporting more than 1,000 rabbis and educators.[10][3] The organization has also published the journal Tsohar and operated a service through which users could submit halakhic questions and receive detailed answers by email.[11]

Tzohar was established in 1995 by a group of Religious Zionist rabbis. Rabbi David Stav, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, and Rabbi Micha Halevi were among its founders.[12][4] Its establishment followed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist and was intended to address the widening divide between religious and secular Israelis.[2]

The Jewish Review of Books describes Tzohar's creation as a response to the growing distance between the Chief Rabbinate and the Israeli public and glosses its name as "skylight."[1] My Jewish Learning similarly describes the organization as working to build "bridges between the religious and secular worlds."[7]

Tzohar presents its mission as fostering a vibrant Jewish identity and securing the Jewish future of the State of Israel through accessible religious services, public advocacy, and Religious Zionist leadership.[3][4] It organizes its work around Jewish programming and lifecycle events, public engagement on ethical and religion-and-state questions, and religious services for people who might otherwise avoid the formal rabbinical system.[3]

Tzohar's wedding program is its flagship initiative and the service most widely associated with the organization. Operating since 1996, it was designed to offer secular Israeli couples an Orthodox ceremony conducted according to halakhic requirements while allowing them to express their preferences and receive more personal guidance.[13][12] The Jewish Review of Books identifies the rabbis' practice of meeting and becoming acquainted with couples before their weddings, while refusing customary payments, as an early innovation.[1]

Tzohar rabbis receive no payment for officiating, conduct no more than one wedding per day, and meet couples in advance to plan the ceremony.[12] The organization also assists with Rabbinate registration, premarital guidance, and the wedding itself.[5] In 2007, its rabbis were marrying approximately 5,000 couples annually—about 17 percent of couples marrying in Israel at the time—and Tzohar estimated that roughly one-quarter of secular couples then marrying used its services.[13]

By 2016, more than 50,000 couples had reportedly married through Tzohar, with more than 5,000 couples using the program each year.[10] In 2023, it expected to conduct 365 weddings between Lag BaOmer and Shavuot, including 25 simultaneous weddings on Lag BaOmer, and was reported to be marrying approximately 4,000 couples annually.[14] Tzohar's activities page reports approximately 100,000 brides and grooms married through the organization.[5]

In 2017, Tzohar opened a marriage-registration branch in Tel Aviv in cooperation with the local rabbinate, its first such municipal partnership, while maintaining offices in Jerusalem, Lod, and Haifa. Tzohar forwarded couples' files to the Tel Aviv rabbinate and provided an officiating rabbi without charge.[15]

Complementary services include the "My Sister, Bride" initiative and parallel instruction for grooms and couples. By 2012, the program had 200 instructors across Israel and addressed mikveh, niddah, sexuality, intimacy, marital concerns, relationship crises, and divorce prevention.[12] In 2015, Tzohar introduced the Heskem Me'ahava, or "Agreement of Love," a prenuptial agreement intended to address get refusal. Nearly 2,000 couples had signed it by 2017.[16]

Tzohar's outreach extends beyond lifecycle ceremonies. In 2017, Tzohar and Yachad Ohr Torah Stone organized Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services expected to reach nearly 70,000 people. The network included 250 volunteer shofar blowers, 300 service leaders, and more than 350 Yom Kippur locations, supported by thousands of explanatory prayer books.[17]

Other programs include bar and bat mitzvah studies, Megillah readings, Tikkun Leil Shavuot events, rabbinic training, and position papers for Knesset and government decision-makers.[2] The "Kiddushishi—Israeli Kabbalat Shabbat" initiative, begun around 2021, organizes Friday-afternoon gatherings with songs, music, learning, and family activities in secular and mixed communities. In October 2024, 83 communities were due to hold events marking a year since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.[18]

Tzohar's "Through One Hundred Twenty" program connects people facing decisions about sick or dying relatives with specially trained teams of rabbis and social workers. Director Rabbi Yuval Cherlow said it developed after Tzohar received increasing numbers of questions about end-of-life ethics. Ten teams operated throughout Israel, generally around the clock six days a week and on Shabbat in emergencies, explaining which options fell within Jewish law rather than dictating medical decisions.[19]

The program reportedly consulted with approximately four families each week and advised hospital and home-care staff about the halakhic implications of care decisions. Four online public forums attracted close to 3,000 participants, while social workers helped families communicate with medical staff and facilitated difficult conversations.[19]

Tzohar's Shorashim project helps individuals establish Jewish identity through forensic investigation and genealogical research. A 2019 mission brochure describes offices in Israel, Moscow, Kyiv, and Dnipro and reports that the unit had authenticated the Jewish identities of more than 50,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union.[4] Investigators use archives, photographs, oral testimony, relatives, and genealogical methods to document Jewish roots. The brochure frames the work as restoring identities lost under the upheavals and regimes of twentieth-century Europe.[4]

In February 2018, Tzohar launched "Tzohar Food Supervision," a private company under its rabbinical organization, to provide food businesses with an alternative to the Chief Rabbinate's supervision system. It initially targeted restaurants and food establishments, with later expansion to factories and a goal of enrolling 1,200 businesses within three years.[8] Rabbi Dr. Oren Duvdevani led its halakhic-professional work, Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein was a senior manager, and Rabbi Dr. Moshe Be'eri served as Tzohar's CEO.[8][6]

The launch followed a 2017 Supreme Court ruling permitting businesses to describe the standards they observed and their method of supervision while reserving the word "kashrut" for determinations authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.[20] Tzohar consequently used certificates describing the checking and approval of raw materials rather than presenting them as formal state kashrut certification. It said its goal was to challenge the Rabbinate's monopolistic market and encourage improvements rather than replace the institution, while making rules and fees transparent and separating supervisors' employment from the businesses they inspected.[8]

A 2021 report said Tzohar employed 40 supervisors, one-third of them women, and five senior inspectors, two of them women. More than 200 restaurants had reportedly left the Rabbinate's certification system for Tzohar's service.[21] Tzohar describes halakhah, transparency, and reliability as the service's guiding principles.[6]

The program became a recurring flashpoint in disputes over religious authority. In 2023, the High Court ordered the Chief Rabbinate to review Tzohar's exclusion as a certifier for imported products. The Rabbinate alleged supervision failures, including retroactive certification of wine produced years earlier; Tzohar denied the allegations and described them as political.[9]

In August 2024, Ynet reported that kashrut-division general manager Yehuda Zaidman was dismissed and much of the management team departed, citing decisions made without sufficient regard for their professional views and objections to the stringency of halakhic authority Rabbi Eyal Moshe. Tzohar described the matter as a professional disagreement, said nearly all positions had been refilled, and reported that the service continued to supervise more than 350 businesses.[22]

Tzohar operates an Ethics Center that clarifies ethical questions, formulates positions inspired by Judaism, and seeks to translate ethical theory into practice. Its activities include position papers, articles, responses to contemporary questions, conferences, and roundtables. The center presents ethical conduct as integral to the Jewish identity of individuals and the State of Israel.[23] Tzohar also reports maintaining a council of 42 Zionist rabbis that develops halakhic decisions on matters of national importance.[24]

Tzohar's broader significance lies in its effort to pair Orthodox practice with accessible services and institutional reform. Its relationship with Israel's Chief Rabbinate has consequently been both collaborative and adversarial. The Jewish Review of Books characterizes its approach as "moderate, modern traditionalism" and describes Rabbi David Stav and his colleagues as continuing Rav Kook's teachings on tolerance and cooperation with secular Jews while remaining firmly Orthodox.[1]

As early as 2007, Tzohar objected to criteria restricting which rabbis could officiate at weddings. Marriage-project head Rabbi Benyahu Bruner argued that rabbis who passed the Rabbinate's examinations should qualify even without a formal rabbinic post. A Rabbinate representative said certified community rabbis had been added to the eligible categories and that individual Tzohar rabbis could be considered, but rejected blanket recognition of the organization.[13]

The conflict intensified in 2011. Tzohar registered couples through the Shoham rabbinate, where Stav was local rabbi, but said the Ministry of Religious Services allocated Shoham only 200 annual marriage certificates while approximately 2,000 Tzohar couples registered there. Tzohar announced the closure of its marriage initiative and alleged political and economic motives; Minister Yaakov Margi's office disputed that account and said Tzohar had rejected an offered solution.[25] By November, Margi had issued Tzohar 300 certificates, while the Chief Rabbinate Council formed a committee to review the arrangement.[26]

In 2022, Stav said the Chief Rabbis "are causing the nonreligious public … to loathe Judaism."[27] Tzohar nevertheless continued to seek reform from within the state system. One account noted that it condemned unauthorized weddings while its leaders participated in conversion panels outside the Rabbinate, reflecting a belief that the institution was necessary to Jewish communal integrity but was failing in that role.[28]

Tzohar also defended Rabbi Shlomo Riskin in 2015 during a dispute over renewal of his appointment as chief rabbi of Efrat, amid broader disagreements over conversion and women's roles.[29] On conversion policy, Tzohar supported opening state-recognized conversion to municipal rabbis. In 2022, Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana recommended Tzohar-affiliated Rabbi Benayahu Broner to head the proposed system, but the government postponed a Knesset vote on March 20 after failing to secure a majority.[27][30]

A 2013 measure commonly called the "Tzohar law" allowed Israeli Jews to register for marriage outside their city or town of residence and choose their rabbi or registrar. It passed the Knesset 56–13 and established a computerized system covering marriage registration and conversion applications across 60 offices. Tzohar praised the measure; supporters said competition would improve service, while Haredi opponents warned that it could weaken safeguards for determining eligibility to marry under Jewish law.[31]

The law also required people marrying in a halakhic ceremony to make efforts to register the marriage and created potential prison terms of up to two years for a couple or rabbi convicted of violating it.[28] A later exchange argued that associating this severe provision with Tzohar was imprecise because Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan inserted it late in the legislative process.[32]

A kashrut reform approved in 2021 would have permitted licensed private Orthodox organizations to award official certificates from January 1, 2023, while shifting the Chief Rabbinate toward a regulatory role. It did not authorize non-Orthodox certificates.[27] Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli halted the policy in December 2022. Tzohar petitioned the Supreme Court on September 19, 2023, arguing that he lacked the authority to do so; the petition remained pending at the end of that year.[33]

On July 1, 2026, the Chief Rabbinate's director-general granted Tzohar a license to operate as an official certifying body. Hours later, the Chief Rabbinate Council disputed the authorization, saying it had neither been informed nor approved the license, while the Religious Services Ministry's director-general argued that the required legal process had not been followed. Tzohar maintained that the issuing official had the necessary authority.[34]

On July 15, 2026, the Knesset voted 46–41 to repeal the 2021 reform, returning official certification authority to the Chief Rabbinate Council, authorized local rabbis, and the Military Rabbinate. The repeal came amid the continuing court dispute over Tzohar's license. A hearing was scheduled for November 2, 2026, and Tzohar said it expected its supervision work to continue without using the word "kosher."[35]

In December 2016, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef accused Tzohar of employing a female rabbi, allowing women to perform parts of wedding services, and being too lenient in Jewish law. Tzohar denied the claims, said it did not know whom he meant by the alleged female rabbi, and called his remarks baseless and slanderous. Yosef's office did not clarify the allegation.[10]

Tzohar leaders also participated in conversions outside the Chief Rabbinate's framework. Such conversions were described as lawful, but converts could not marry through Israel's state system if the Rabbinate declined to recognize them.[28]

Tzohar's own materials report different cumulative wedding figures: its activities page says approximately 100,000 brides and grooms, while another brochure reports 120,000 couples.[5][24] Annual estimates also vary by period, from approximately 5,000 weddings in 2007 to approximately 4,000 in 2023.[13][14]