Avigdor Liberman
Avigdor LibermanYisrael Beyteinu spokesperson

The Yisrael Beyteinu party will put forward tomorrow a bill for the integration of women, rabbis from religious Zionism and the heads of Diaspora Jewish organizations in the body which elects the chief rabbinate.

According to the proposal, the incumbent rabbis in Judea and Samaria, heads of local authorities from Judea and Samaria, heads of the large Hesder yeshivas, women who head seminaries for girls, and more, will be added to the electoral body, in order to abolish longstanding haredi control in the electoral assembly.

The current Chief Rabbis of Israel will end their tenure in a little over two and a half years, and about six months later elections will also be held for the Chief Rabbinate Council.

Yisrael Beyteinu explained, "In recent years we have witnessed a trend of worsening of the disconnection in the representation of the Israeli public in the Chief Rabbinate. The Chief Rabbinate often chooses to appoint rabbis out of political considerations and not out of a Zionist worldview or out of broad public responsibility."

"The absurd situation in the law that exists today is that the electoral assembly is elected by itself and consists of anti-Zionist rabbis and of course does not have female representation or representatives of religious Zionism," they noted.

Yisrael Beyteinu also claimed that "moreover, while the Shas party boasts of a mutual respect treaty, it forgets to point out that these days it promotes laws that exclude influential government positions in religious institutions in Israel from the Equal Rights for Women Law."

According to party chairman MK Avigdor Liberman, "The bill we will raise tomorrow can put an end to this phenomenon while preserving the Jewish character, by electing representatives in the Chief Rabbinate who represent the voice of the entire people and not just the political considerations of Shas and United Torah Judaism."