Why Israel's Chief Rabbinate controls marriage

What it is

Israel does not allow civil marriage, and a Jewish wedding performed inside Israel is valid only if Orthodox rabbis under the Chief Rabbinate sanction it. ¹⁰ The rule is a statute. Section 1 of the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, 5713-1953, reads: "Matters of marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel who are citizens or residents of the state shall be in the sole jurisdiction of rabbinical courts." ⁴

The reason a modern parliamentary democracy has that on its books is mostly inheritance. Under the Ottomans, non-Muslim communities governed their own personal law, running what amounted to independent courts applying Christian canon law or halakha, and setting and collecting their own taxes. ¹ Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish communities were the recognized millets by the 19th century, with the Jewish community receiving its constitution in 1865. ¹ The system was less tidy in practice than the name suggests, and its formal shape developed late rather than existing from the empire's beginnings. ¹

The British kept the architecture. The Mandate for Palestine, confirmed on July 24, 1922, required that respect for personal status and religious interests be "fully guaranteed." ² Article 47 of the Palestine Order in Council gave the civil courts jurisdiction in matters of personal status to be exercised "according to the personal law applicable," which for Jews meant Jewish law. ³ Israel's Knesset then wrote the same principle into Israeli statute in 1953, and the rabbinical courts have held sole jurisdiction over Jewish marriage and divorce ever since. ⁴

The Rabbinate's reach extends past the chuppah. It effectively controls conversion, recognizing only certain Orthodox conversions. ⁷ It holds a monopoly on certifying restaurants as kosher, and Israeli law reserves the word "kosher" and its derivatives for the Rabbinate, which is why the alternative certifier Tzohar issues documents saying instead that "All raw materials were checked and approved by the Tzohar rabbinic organization." ⁸ Two chief rabbis sit at the top, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi. In July 2013 the winners were David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef, sons of two previous chief rabbis. ¹¹

Why it still matters

The practical effect falls on the people the Rabbinate will not marry. Same-sex marriages are not legal in Israel, and those performed there are not recognized. ⁷ Interfaith couples have to marry outside the country and get the marriage recognized after the fact. ⁷ So does anyone whose conversion the Rabbinate does not accept, because the Rabbinate does not view that person as Jewish. ⁷

The escape hatch is a 63-year-old registration case. In Funk Schlesinger v. Minister of Interior, decided February 22, 1963, the Supreme Court held that the registration clerk is "merely that of a collector of statistics for the purposes of administering the Register of Inhabitants, and he holds no judicial authority." ⁵ Presented with prima facie evidence of a wedding abroad, the clerk registers the couple as married and does not get to litigate whether the marriage was valid. ⁵ In 2006 the court extended the same logic to five Israeli same-sex couples who had married in Canada, ruling 6 to 1 that the official "is obliged to register applicants as married, unless such registration would be manifestly incorrect." ⁶

The workaround is Cyprus. You fly an hour, marry under Cypriot law, come home and hand the certificate to the clerk. In 2014, 8,782 couples registered foreign marriages in Israel against 50,797 who married domestically. ⁹ One agency alone arranged 1,200 weddings in Cyprus and the Czech Republic in 2015. ⁹ Israeli couples living together without marrying rose from 65,000 to 88,000 between 2012 and 2014. ⁹

Registration and validity are separate questions. Rabbinical court jurisdiction still reaches Jewish Israeli residents who married civilly abroad, and the rabbinical court can dissolve those marriages, applying grounds based on irretrievable breakdown rather than traditional fault standards. ⁴ A ticket to Cyprus settles the wedding, but the divorce still goes through the rabbinical court in Israel. ⁴

The case for the current arrangement, stated at its strongest, is that one legal address for Jewish marriage keeps Israeli Jews marriageable to one another, and that a state with competing marriage registries eventually produces communities that will not marry across the line. The case against is that a citizen who pays taxes and serves in the army should not have to buy a plane ticket to get married, and that the numbers above are what it looks like when a large share of the public routes around its own government. Our view is that the second argument is the better one, and that the arrangement is a coalition artifact rather than a considered policy.

Israelis are not close to agreement. Haredim strongly oppose letting non-Orthodox rabbis conduct weddings in Israel, while a majority of secular Israeli Jews favor changing the law to permit Reform and Conservative rabbis to do it, and 90 percent of secular Jews oppose making religious law the law of the land for Jews in Israel. ¹⁰ In a 2020 survey, 11 percent of Jewish Israelis said they trusted the Chief Rabbinate. ⁸

The 2021 Bennett-Lapid coalition agreed to reduce Rabbinate control over conversion and kashrut, change how chief rabbis are chosen, expand the egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall, and move toward civil marriage. ⁷ Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana's kashrut plan would have turned the Rabbinate into a regulator supervising private certifiers instead of the sole provider, and he pitched it as introducing "competition to kosher certification for the first time ever." ⁸ It needed Knesset approval. ⁸ The change that did happen came without legislation. More than 200 Israeli restaurants had switched to Tzohar certification by 2021, and Tzohar employs 40 supervisors of whom about a third are women, where the Rabbinate employs none. ⁸

The words you'll hear

Millet. The Ottoman arrangement under which recognized non-Muslim communities ran their own courts and personal law, including marriage and divorce. ¹

Personal status. The legal category covering marriage, divorce, and family matters, which the Mandate and Article 47 of the Palestine Order in Council assigned to each person's religious law rather than to a single civil code. ^{2 3}

The 1953 law. The Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, which puts marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel in the sole jurisdiction of rabbinical courts. ⁴

Funk-Schlesinger. The 1963 Supreme Court ruling that a registration clerk records a marriage performed abroad on prima facie evidence and has no authority to rule on whether it was valid. ⁵

Kashrut certification. The Rabbinate's monopoly on certifying food as kosher, backed by a law reserving the word "kosher" itself. ⁸

Tzohar. The Orthodox rabbinic organization that issues an alternative supervision certificate, which cannot use the word "kosher" and instead states that its rabbis checked and approved the raw materials. ⁸