Rabbi Seth Farber, the founder and executive director of ITIM, an organization that assists individuals in navigating Israel’s religious bureaucracy, spoke to Arutz Sheva about his thoughts on the Rabbinate and Diaspora relations. "In the last decade the Chief Rabbinate has done a great job of distancing people from Jewish life in Israel. The proposed deal that would maintain the present members of the Chief Rabbinate council is a catastrophe.

"It basically justifies the fact that tens and hundreds of thousands of young Jewish couples are running away from the Rabbinate, running away from Israel to get married. It's simply unconscionable.

"Judaism in this country and Judaism around the world could look very differently if the Rabbinate had an open mind towards understanding the needs of the Jewish community, both in Israel and around the world.

"This is just another example of the fact that things are closed by making deals in the back room instead of trying to really listen closely to what the needs of modern Jewish society are," Farber said.

Click here for Chairman of the Rabbinic Circle of the Coalition for Jewish Values's op-ed countering the Itim agenda.