Israeli rabbinate

Rabbinate accused of defying court as Israeli women left waiting for exams

Rabbi Seth Farber, the founder and head of ITIM, said the women had been left waiting for hours and that the organization was trying to get them food for lunch.

Three women who arrived in the morning to sit the Rabbinate exams finally do so at a four-hour delay, April 27, 2026
SUPREME COURT Justice Noam Sohlberg attends a ceremony for fallen Israeli soldiers whose burial place is unknown at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem on March 6.

Rabbinate seeks retrial on ruling allowing women to take exams, blames 'halachic noncompliance'

 Ten Israeli couples with a member serving in the IDF taking part in a mass wedding ceremony part of Chabad of Savyon’s “Marrying the Warriors”, in Tel Aviv Port, March 5, 2024.

Israelis want civil marriage, to break rabbinic monopoly in new Tu B'Av poll

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef speaks during the funeral of Yehuda Deri, the chief rabbi of Beersheba, in Jerusalem, July 9, 2024

New interim chief rabbi appointed, previous resigned over inclusion of female rabbis


Local rabbinates overcharged NIS 5m. a year for mikve use

Court rules in favor of class-action suit; fines offenders NIS 230,000.

jewish ritual bath (mikve)

Ministry to appoint woman to be deputy director of rabbinical courts

MAVOI SATUM director Batya Kahana-Dror (above) sees the appointment of a women as deputy director of the rabbinical courts as merely the first step.

Batya Kahana-Dror

JPost Editorial: Agunot in Zion

While we applaud the High Court’s decision, the “Aguna of Safed” case raises a number of questions regarding the place of Jewish law in a state that purports to be both Jewish and democratic.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the High Court on the gas deal

A threat to the foundations of Jewish peoplehood

Leaving issues of religion and state to an ultra-Orthodox monopoly is leading to estrangement between Israel and the Diaspora. New arrangements must be reached.

A man wears a kippa embroidered with US and Israeli flags

Making kashrut kosher

A Kashrut certificate hangs at the entrance to a bakery in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market

The danger of the Chief Rabbinate’s databases

The direction that Israel’s religious establishment is taking is worrisome, if not dangerous.

The rabbis of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate

Ask The Rabbi: Does Halacha permit demolition of terrorists’ homes?

Accordingly, it is hard to say that Jewish law gives a definitive answer to this dilemma.

Children descend the stairs of the home that belonged to convicted terrorist Muhammad al- Haroub, in Deir Samt, south of Hebron, after it was partially demolished by the IDF in February 2016

Grapevine: Retraining rabbis

A round-up of news from around Israel.

ZEEV ROTSTEIN

Rabbinical court statistics on ‘agunot’ being disputed

Women’s rights groups insist rabbis are manipulating data to claim that there are more wives refusing to accept a religious divorce than there are husbands refusing to grant one.

A still from the film 'Gett,’ which examines Jewish divorce laws

‘Imprisoned in marriage against her will’

The first is the “aguna from Safed,” a case which is unquestionably an anomaly in that a get (a Jewish writ of divorce) was awarded to a woman whose husband was incapacitated by a car accident.

MARRIAGE SHOULD not be a prison