“Like FIFA, the Chief Rabbinate is engaged in a cause that will eventually backfire”

The haredi section of Israeli society has long abandoned the rulings and personages of the official Chief Rabbinate of Israel. It has successfully infiltrated that institution, which it regards in contempt and derision, and has gained control-granting itself power, patronage, jobs, money and an entrenched bureaucracy. This is a remarkable achievement since it loudly proclaims that it does not support the institution itself nor even deem it to be legitimate.

Because of the ineffectiveness of the Chief Rabbinate and its disattachment from Israeli society, it also has very little influence or presence in Israeli secular society. Except for official marriage and/or divorce proceedings, the secular Israeli has no connection whatsoever to the institution of the Chief Rabbinate.

The only remaining constituency that at least pays lip service and allegiance to the Chief Rabbinate has been the Religious Zionist section of Israeli society. …

The Chief Rabbinate should be busy repairing its public image, so tarnished by scandal and bureaucratic inefficiency. A public expulsion of one of the leading rabbinic figures in world Jewry can only further diminish any respect left for the institution of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

Like FIFA, the Chief Rabbinate is engaged in a cause that will eventually backfire. That this is not apparent to the Chief Rabbinate itself is testimony enough as to its disconnect from the reality of current day Israeli society and, in fact, from world Jewry at large. A rabbinate that is so disconnected from its society and has forfeited most of its constituency cannot exist and function for very long.

Eventually, this rabbinate will be called into question.

Rabbi Berel Wein, “FIFA and Rabbi Riskin”, Rabbi Wein’s Weekly Blog (June 2015) [http://www.rabbiwein.com/blog/post-1786.html]