וְהִבְדַּלְתָּ֙ אֶת־הַלְוִיִּ֔ם מִתּ֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְהָ֥יוּ לִ֖י הַלְוִיִּֽם׃ (במדבר ח:יד)

“Thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine.” (Numbers 8:14)

 

Are rabbis in short supply?

Well, according to a February expose in The Atlantic, they are… in America. But, not necessarily in Israel. However, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party would have you think that they are. In case you missed it, the Shas Party pushed forth a bill known as the “Rabbis law,” which would increase Israel’s Orthodox parties’ control of the country’s religious establishment by giving the Religious Affairs Ministry, run by Shas, the power to appoint hundreds of rabbis to posts in municipal and neighborhood communities.

At the outset, this might seem trivial, but it appears that this bill which began its legislative journey before the war, and only re-entered center stage now, could have the potential to be a political game changer. Its potential could be to sever the decades-long seemingly unbreakable alliance between PM Netanyahu and his Haredi faithful coalition partners who have enabled him to remain in power (as Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister) in exchange for disproportional power and the ability to pass sectoral laws in service of their community and at the expense of the rest of the country.

A glance at the historical precedent, we are reminded that the issue of Haredi power sent Israel into the cycle of elections (5 in 4 years) in 2019, Yitzhak Rabin’s first government fell in 1977 ostensibly over his wife’s $5000 American bank account(!) and his transporting fighter jets along Israel’s highways on a Friday night. We might look even further back to the Talmud when (Brakhot 27b:15-28a) the leadership of the Sanhedrin and the powerful reign of Rabban Gamliel was overturned over a seemingly innocent question of whether the evening prayers were mandatory or optional.

The ‘Rabbis’ Law’ has nothing to do with religion and is certainly not a debate for the sake of heaven, rather, it is a blatant attempt to maintain the power of the ultra-Orthodox over religious affairs in the Jewish State and to that their cronies have jobs.[1]

While it’s nothing new to say that in Israel, religion and politics are inseparably enmeshed, one might think that during such a serious crisis one might refrain from advancing one’s own petty politics.  With 8 months of war in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of citizens still displaced from their homes, and the North of the country (literally) on fire and seemingly on the brink of war with Hezbollah, the ultra-Orthodox parties – specifically Shas, which represents about 9% of the Israeli population- and MK Simcha Rothman (chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee) tried their best to push forward this bill.

They ran into a problem when two Likud backbenchers, MKs Moshe Saada and Tally Gotliv, declared they would oppose the bill, causing it to fall short of a parliamentary majority. This caused PM Netanyahu to make a middle-of-the-night call to rescind the bill from the plenary and to order his whip to remove the two lawmakers from their committee posts.

The problem with the bill is that it intends to grant lucrative jobs to political allies and if passed, will reassign the power to appoint local rabbis, who know the cities and neighborhoods and are more suitable to their character and social fabric, away from mayors and local authority leaders, giving it to the national government to appoint their apparatchiks.

On Tuesday, MK Moshe Saada tweeted:

“Today in the Constitution Committee we saw mayors, including those representing the Likud party, crying out against the injustice that this law creates. I am proud to stand by them and by the majority of the public even at the cost of removal from the committee.”

One can understand Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri’s opportunism. Netanyahu is beholden to Shas to keep the scotch tape and chewing gum in place which holds his coalition together, and so Shas ostensibly has carte blanche to do whatever it likes in the government including unabashedly advancing its self-serving legislation in plain sight.

This legislative effort comes at a time when the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties are doing a full court press to begin the legislative process from where it left off in the previous Knesset and advance what’s colloquially referred to as the “draft-dodging bill”. This bill is understood by many as the first step toward making the demand for equality in conscription go away, which in turn would do terrible damage to the people’s army. It is a scary day when the saviors of Israel and the only sane voices among Netanyahu’s 64-member coalition are MKs Moshe Saada, Dan Illouz, Amichai Chikli, Eli Dallal, and Tally Gotliv – who have not been known for playing nicely in the sandbox, to put it moderately. This led to Netanyahu torpedoing the bill from the Knesset plenary in the middle of the night on Wednesday, but the rift is far from healed.

The issue boils down to the fact that the Haredi parties are using their power in the coalition to promote less democracy, stifle pluralistic Judaism, and decrease what is known of as ‘sharing of the burden,’ particularly when it comes to military service and defense of the country.

All this while small businesses are failing, tourism is at a low, and the country’s image abroad is getting worse.

As Diaspora Jews, we have an obligation to speak about this ultra-Orthodox corruption and blatant self-interest that comes at the expense of Israel’s image and economic stability. We are fighting a similar battle on our own front – as we look to advance our values of pluralism, democracy, and equality in the 2025 World Zionist Congress elections – through which we can push against ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Nationalist forces that are threatened by those of us who champion women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and seek equality and equity for all.

While Netanyahu (and his political survival) may have dodged a bullet for now, we can rest assured that this struggle between the ultra-Orthodox Haredi Parties and the vast majority of Israelis is not going away. This just could be the vulnerable moment that brings Bibi down. Stay tuned…