When Rabbi David Stav launched his official campaign last month to wrest control of Israel‘s top religious institution from its longtime hardline leadership, it was a long shot.
But just two weeks later, Israelis went to the polls and surprisingly shifted the country toward the center of the political spectrum — creating a rare window of opportunity for the modern Orthodox rabbi to capture the title of chief rabbi and fulfill his pledge to revolutionize the contentious role that religion plays in the Jewish state.
Stav, a 53-year-old father of nine, heads a private network of modern Orthodox rabbis that is virtually an alternative organization to Israel‘s state-sanctioned rabbinical bureaucracy. It seeks to put a friendly face on Jewish traditions for secular Israeli Jews alienated by the ultra-Orthodox functionaries that regulate religious services. The organization, called Tzohar, has gained popularity among secular Israelis with its program that sends rabbis free of charge to officiate at weddings.
Now Stav is waging a highly visible public campaign to change Israel‘s rabbinate from the inside. He is being featured frequently in media interviews, is running a Facebook campaign, and appears in large color newspaper ads placed by a group of secular Israelis.
“It’s not about public relations and niceness,” Stav said in an interview. “There is a critical problem — it’s not cosmetic — in the rabbinic system. It needs dramatic changes.”
Stav cautiously acknowledges that the stars now seem to be aligned for his hoped-for coup.
Every 10 years, two rabbis — one representing Ashkenazi, or European-descended Jews, the other of Sephardic, or Middle Eastern lineage — are appointed to co-lead the Chief Rabbinate.
It’s the country’s supreme body overseeing civil services for Jews from cradle to grave — circumcision, marriage, divorce and burial. The current ultra-Orthodox Sephardic chief rabbi will likely be allowed to stay on, but the current Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, is vacating his post in the coming months.
For the last two decades, ultra-Orthodox Jewish political parties have wielded outsized influence in governing coalitions, and in turn held sway over the panel of 150 rabbis and politicians that appoints the new chief rabbis.
That balance of power, however, may soon tip in Rabbi Stav‘s favor.