Likud MK Moshe Feiglin has proposed a bill in Knesset that would abolish the election of both an Ashkenazi and a Sephardi chief rabbi and create instead a single, non-ethnic chief rabbi position.
According to Feiglin, the majority of MKs he has spoken with on the issue responded enthusiastically to the proposal, with Yesh Atid MK and Rabbi Dov Lipman the first to sign on to the bill.
“The division between the different communities of the Jewish people is the result of thousands of years of exile, in which the nation preserved the Torah and its faith in an amazing way,” reads the bill, the text of which the MK published on his Facebook page.
“Now that the Jewish people has returned to its land, our goal is to act to unite the nation and to return the Torah to its glory so that there will not be “two Torahs.”
Feiglin explained in the introduction to the bill that the intention was not to erase the customs of the past but to form a foundation for unity for the future.
“Perpetuating the differences between the various ethnic groups in the framework of government positions for each different community of the testimony, is not commensurate with the evolving reality,” said Feiglin.
The new law would see just one chief rabbi elected who would head the Council of the Chief Rabbinate. The legislation would also see the election of a president for the supreme rabbinical court, a position currently shared by the Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis, who will head up the national rabbinical courts system.
“By amending this law, we would enable the rabbinical world to be partners in the revolution that the Jewish people is experiencing in which has returned from exile and an existence of being separate communities into one nation,” Feiglin declared.