Many of the 15 judges appointed to rabbinic courts yesterday are relatives of politicians, public figures or veteran rabbinic court judges, and only one has a background in law.

Women's rights organizations said yesterday was a black day in the struggle for women's rights in the rabbinic courts. Many view the rabbinic courts as favoring men in divorce cases and as failing to do enough to minimize the problem of women whose husbands refuse to divorce them.

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The judges were appointed by a committee headed by Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann, but their identity was determined before the committee met, in a deal between the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Shas party and the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, committee members told Haaretz. Twelve of the 15 judges are considered ultra-Orthodox.

Those who support the appointment of non-ultra-Orthodox judges criticized Friedmann yesterday for convening the committee despite having been warned of the deal.

For the past four years, the eight-member selection committee was split equally among representatives of the ultra-Orthodox camp and representatives of the religious Zionist camp and the Israel Bar Association. But when the current government took office, MK Yitzhak Vaknin of Shas was appointed to the committee, giving the ultra-Orthodox a majority.

Committee member MK Nissan Slomiansky (National Religious Party-National Union) suggested that the rabbinic court judges should be evenly split among Shas, the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox and the religious Zionists, with each group getting five judges. However, ultra-Orthodox representatives said they had already decided to split 12 of the positions between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi ultra-Orthodox, leaving the religious Zionists only three. Slomiansky and two bar association representatives left the meeting in protest.

"The ultra-Orthodox simply made a joke of [Friedmann]," Slomiansky said.

Slomiansky said the meeting should have been delayed, but Friedmann said in a statement that he decided against doing so because of the shortage of rabbinic court judges. He also said that the judges selected reflect a range of opinion on religious law.

Friedmann's associates accused the NRP of shedding crocodile tears over the appointments, saying that when it had control of the judicial appointments committee, nothing was done to assist women whose husbands refused to grant them a divorce.