19 judges - mostly ultra-Orthodox - appointed to rabbinical courts

Nineteen new rabbinical judges were appointed yesterday, ending a four-year political and judicial campaign.

Women's organizations and the Reform movement have blasted the new appointments, which are expected to bolster the rabbinical courts' utlra-Orthodox, conservative approach especially in divorce cases.

Fifteen of the rabbinical judges, who had been disqualified in May for administrative reasons, were reelected yesterday by a committee headed by Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann.

The appointments were a compromise between the representatives of the minority - from the National Religious Party and Bar Association - and the utlra-Orthodox majority in the committee.

Although five knitted-skullcap-wearing judges were appointed, women's organizations and the Reform movement said this would not bring good tidings for women whose husbands either refuse to grant them a divorce or cannot be located.

Shas' leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv had agreed on the list of rabbinical judges more than six months ago. The rabbis had chosen 14 of the candidates and approved of the remaining 5, who are identified with religious Zionism. In March, the committee chose 15 candidates who Shas and UTJ had agreed on in advance.

But the women's organizations, Tzohar Rabbis and Reform movement petitioned the High Court of Justice against the appointments, arguing that the committee had ignored the rules to appoint rabbinical judges to represent all the religious streams.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz found that 14 of 15 rabbis lacked a valid ordination certificate to be rabbinical judges and instructed Friedmann to start the appointment process again.

The women's organizations said the appointments were "lip service" which would bring no real change to the rabbinical courts' rulings. The rulings are commonly stringent with women and generally refrain from imposing sanctions on divorce objectors.

The Members of ICAR, the International Coalition for Agunah Rights, said "thousands of women could remain captives of their husbands because unworthy candidates have been chosen."

Attorney Batya Cahana Dror, of Mavoi Satum, an organization that assists women who are refused a divorce or whose husbands cannot be located, said the appointments "set the rabbinical courts' format for the next 40 years as a patriarchal institution ruled by the ultra-Orthodox community. It perpetuates the discrimination between women and men and reflects radical, conservative, monolithic halakhic views that are opposed to the halakha's spirit."