Will the extreme right control the official rabbinate of Israel?

Rabbi "Meir Kahane", who founded the "Kach" movement and planted the seeds of the Jewish extreme right decades ago and throughout his career (Getty Images)

Although the founding of Israel in 1948 was at the hands of a group considered generally secular and non-religious, David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, was keen at that time to recognize the chief Jewish rabbinic that had existed since the Ottoman era, as a religious reference for Western (Ashkenazi) and eastern Jews (Sephardim).

Ben-Gurion considered that the existence of an official rabbinic for the state is an important issue to prove the religious identity of the state, although he was known to be secular and non-religious, and thus recognized the status quo of the chief rabbinic, and established the official form of the chief rabbinic to consist of two rabbis: one representing the western Ashkenazi trend, and the second representing the current The Sephardic Sephardi, so that the chief rabbi is elected once every 10 years, the most recent of which was in 2013, when Rabbi David Lau was elected for the Ashkenazi section, and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef for the Sephardi section.

Although the majority of the Israeli people in general do not identify themselves as religious, the influence of the Chief Rabbinate is evident in the social and daily life of the country, as the Chief Rabbinate decides on religious provisions related to food certificates, working days and religious holidays that the Israeli government is committed to, and the admission of converts. Judaism and other provisions.

Perhaps the most important feature that distinguishes the role of the Chief Rabbinate of the occupying Power with regard to the city of Jerusalem and the holy places therein is its adherence to the traditional rule of eastern and western religious references throughout history by issuing a fatwa prohibiting the entry of Jews into the walls of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, due to the religious consideration related to the absence of purity according to the religious vision of the rabbinical references In the world.

Since the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the state’s chief rabbinate ruled that Jews should not enter the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which had a major role in returning the keys to Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Islamic endowments, with the exception of the Mughrabi Gate, (this is in addition to the fear of the global and Islamic reaction to any change in Al-Aqsa Mosque, of course ). At that time, a dispute arose over the issue of entering the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque between the traditional religious current, which was represented by the chief official rabbinic of the state, and the religious Zionist current, which represented the extreme right, and which was formed at that time from a limited number of extremists headed by Gershon Salmon, Rabbi Meir Kahane and others. .

At that time, the secular Israeli government remained neutral in this dispute, primarily for political considerations and for fear of being considered one of the two camps, even if it was closer to the official rabbinical institution. Therefore, the Israeli Minister of Defense at the time, Moshe Dayan, a non-religious secularist, worked to control the keys to the Mughrabi Gate and open it for whomever of the Jews wanted to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque under the pretext of a tourist visit, not prayer, and at the same time installing panels by order of the official chief rabbinic outside the Mughrabi Gate. And the Chain Gate says clearly in both languages: Hebrew and English, that entering this area is prohibited by order of the Chief Rabbinate of the country.

Based on this reality, the extreme right groups were formed, or the religious Zionist movement that was previously represented by Gershon Salmon and Kahane, and announced their departure from the fatwas of the Chief Rabbinate regarding the issue of entering the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

With the subsequent years, this trend became more and more confined to the settlers of the West Bank, and this current reached its peak of separation from the traditional official rabbinic in the nineties of the last century, when a number of rabbis from the West Bank settlements met and formed a higher religious council that they called the “New Sanhedrin Council,” that is, the Council of the New Sanhedrin. The Council of the New Chief Rabbinate, to consider itself the religious authority for the religious Zionist movement, and to start dealing with the issue of holy places with fatwas that are completely different from the vision of the traditional official rabbinic of the state.

Rather, it came to their members, last year, to remove the fatwa plaque banning entry to Al-Aqsa from the Mughrabi Gate area, and the area remained empty of the plaque until the Chief Rabbinate issued her order to re-install a new plaque in the place. At that time, it was noted that the Israeli police, of which a good number of its members and leaders became followers of the religious Zionist movement, re-installed the sign, but placed it after the last checkpoint before entering the door, meaning that its presence is no longer a deterrent to settlers who want to enter the mosque. maximum.

This hidden conflict between the two religious references, the traditional official rabbinic reference and the settler and religious Zionist movement, has finally moved to a new level. As the end of 2023 witnesses the elections of the Chief Rabbinate of Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the Chief Rabbinate of the country, who will be elected at the end of the Hebrew year that falls before mid-September.

For the first time, we may witness the rise of personalities who tend in some of their ideas to adopt a lenient approach with some of the ideas of the religious Zionist movement to the race of the Chief Rabbinate. On this level, the name of Rabbi Yehuda Hayek stands out as a candidate on the scene for the position of Chief Rabbi, and he is a resident of the Katzrin settlement in the occupied Golan Heights.

This rabbi recently received media support for his candidacy for this position by the extremist journalist Arnon Segal, a member of the board of directors of the Union of Temple Organizations, despite his principled departure from the current opinion of the Chief Rabbinate of prohibiting Jews from entering the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque area. This support from Segal is due to Rabbi Hayek's call to discuss allowing animal sacrifices to be slaughtered inside Al-Aqsa Mosque and how to do so, which is considered by the extremist temple groups as the peak of rituals that they try to implement annually inside Al-Aqsa Mosque and have failed to do so until the moment.

Also, Rabbi Hayek, in a book he recently published, takes a neutral position on the fatwa banning Jews from entering Al-Aqsa, as he declares that he cannot say that it is completely forbidden or completely permitted. He calls them the Ismailis) in Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the fear of disturbances within this holy place may lead to the "force" of the occupation police to enter the most sacred area in his view, which is the Holy Rock Square, which is prohibited by the texts of Jewish law, according to what Rabbi Hayek says.

What the views of Rabbi Hayek are based on and the support of the extremist temple groups for him, which form the spearhead of the religious Zionist movement in Jerusalem, is a matter that portends the existence of transformations that may affect the head of the Chief Religious Rabbinate of Israel. After the extremist religious Zionist movement was able to control the most important joints of the Israeli government, with this nomination and support it began to aspire to control the religious institution of the state, and the assumption of a rabbi who was open to discussing the well-established fatwas of rabbis over the centuries regarding the issue of Al-Aqsa Mosque indicates the possibility of opening the way for the Rabbinate. The biggest challenge for the occupying state is to change its fatwa prohibiting Jews from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in the future, and later it may adopt the fatwas of the rabbis of the settlements.

This matter, if it happens, necessarily means that the moral strength of these extremist religious groups will multiply on the ground. Despite all the current attempts of the religious Zionist movement, the official fatwa of the country’s chief traditional rabbinic is still considered a major obstacle in front of him, preventing him from increasing his strength and mobilizing more supporters and sympathizers with his vision in what relating to sacred places. However, the bias of an official institution the size of the Chief Rabbinate to this trend necessarily means a radical change in the perception of about half of Israeli society about the nature of the conflict in Jerusalem and its religious dimensions.

Observing the modus operandi of this extreme right-wing movement in recent years indicates that it has matured to a large extent in its tools and mechanisms for implementing its vision and its quest to tighten control over all decision-making tools and institutions in Israel.

After this movement took control of central ministries in the Israeli government, it recently established a grouping (lobby) within the Israeli Knesset under the name of the "Jewish Freedom Lobby on the Temple Mount" to convert its vision into laws, and now it is extending its eye to the institution that is more established in the religious currents in Israel than Her different orientations, and she is the chief rabbinic, which is still to this day an extension of the traditional views of Jewish religious references throughout the ages.

It should not be surprising that these groups seek to control this major institution and change their views and orientations. The traditional rabbinical institution has already changed its vision regarding the establishment of Israel, starting since the beginning of the last century, after it had prohibited the establishment of a state for the Jews for hundreds of years, and nothing, in fact, can It is forbidden to change its vision once again with regard to the issue of the size and seriousness of controlling Al-Aqsa Mosque according to the vision of the extreme right in Israel. The combination of all these facts is that the Israeli extreme right is no longer just dreamy individuals, but has become an institution that aspires to implement a major project of a religious nature and has a specific vision that it wants. It should be applied regardless of the obstacles, and this reminds us of the pioneers of the Zionist movement, for whom Israel had only an idea, and Al-Saeed learned from history.