The Chief rabbinate, under Rabbis Goren and Yosef, is generally deemed a failure. Time and energy were dissipated on internal disputes. After they left office, Rabbi Goren continued as the head of a Yeshiva, occasionally speaking his mind on one issue or another. He became very politically active before his death in 1994, in opposing he policies of Yitzchak Rabin. As one of the founders of Israel, a former chief rabbi, and terminally ill with cancer, he knew that he could say and do things that would have otherwise resulted in a prison term.Rabbi Ovadia Yosef essentially BEGAN his activities after retiring from the Chief Rabbinate. Unlike Rabbi Goren, who was a staunch Zionist, he was not, but believed in cooperating with the State for the sake of the Jewish people.The dismal situation of Sepharadic Jews in Israel, especially the North Africans, led him to found a Sepharadic political party, called Shas. It had, at its beginnings, the support of the main Lithuanian, ultra Orthodox leader in Israel, Rabbi Eliezer Mann Shach. At that time, Shas maintained an ultra Orthodox stand, in line with the Ashkenazi "gedolim" (rabbinic greats), while urging and helping to bring back to observance the great masses of Sepharadic Jews who were no longer observant, primarily due to the policies of David Ben Gurion (no work until you register your children at a secular school). Eventually breaking with Rav Shach, he took a much more vocal position on the superiority of Sepharadic tradition over Ashkenazi. In public statements, these ideas were worded diplomatically, but there were many private statements that were secretly recorded, and got into the media. When I went to see him in 1991 to inquire if it was possible for me and my family to become Sepharadic as I had come to many of the same conclusions as he had), he not only agreed, but spoke of it on television!, Politically, he managed to bring non-observant and minimally observant people to vote for his party on an ethnic basis.. At one point, his party was the third biggest voting block in the Knesset. The National Religious party lost ground to Shas. In another decade,it would lose its crown jewel; the Chief Rabbinate. He was close to the Rabin governemnt, approving, and helping to pass, the Oslo accords, which he later opposed.
In the meanwhile, two new Chief Rabbis were selected; Rabbis Shapiro and Eliahu. They were good men, as well as staunch Zionists. Since the rabbinate had suffered so much from infighting, they publicly declared a "Covenant of Love" between them, and were careful not to contradict each other. They also divided the responsibilities of the rabbinate between themselves, rather than having two men doing essentially the same job. Both supported and encouraged the nascent settler movement, which earned them the ire of the secular Left. They attempted to heal wounds in society by solving the problem of the Ethiopian Jews. Rabbi Yosef had declared many doubtful communities as being full-fledged Jews. The Ethiopians were an exception, as their connection to the Jewish people was lost in the mists of time. The new Chief Rabbis sought, and found, a solution. The Ethiopians had a fairly good claim to being Jewish. They would only be required to perform immersion, no questions asked, in order to remove any doubt. While this was a very liberal stance, it was attacked by the Left as racist. Why weren't white Jews being required to do this? Most Ethiopians did not accept the offer to immerse. In fact, Ethiopian women who had always immersed after menstruation, ceased doing so, lest it be perceived as conversion. The chief rabbis were also side swiped by Rabbi Yosef, who now reversed himself, declaring the Ethiopians Jewish without conversion. All this has led to many of the difficulties the Ethiopians are experiencing in being integrated into Israeli society. Although they publicly accepted the long standing policy of Orthodox conversions only, behind the scenes, they were also accepting Conservative conversions on a case by case basis. They sought to de-politicize the Chief Rabbinate, and largely ignored their beholdedness to the National Religious Party. When their term was up, they asked the National Religious Party to try and make legislation to extend their term. The response? What have you done for us? This was a grave error, as the chief Rabbinate was henceforth lost to that sector, and became Hareidi (ultra-Orthodox). The effects of this on not only Israel, but on world Jewry, will be the topic of my next post.