Chief Rabbi Metzger: Another Term? Not Relevant… Yet

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rabbi-yonah-metzgerIsrael’s Chief Rabbi, Rav Yona Metzger, is reaching the end of his term in office in the upcoming months, and according to him the possibility of going for a second term is out of the question, or is it?

As the government is poised to vote in favor of what some are calling the Amar Law, which allows head rabbis to contend for a second term, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi promise he will sit out the race for the rabbinate. However, Thursday he did seem to hint at the possibility he would in fact consider a second term.

When asked at the end of the traditional Birkas Kohanim, held Thursday at the Kosel, if this would be his last, Rav Metzger answered: “Are you deciding for me? I don’t know myself.”

When explicitly asked whether he would vie for a second term, he said: ‘For the meantime it’s not relevant.”

Chief Rabbi Rav Shlomo Amar, who also partook in the Birkas Kohanim for the last time of his current term, answered the same inquiry saying: “We hope Am Yisrael will feel well and be joyous – I will be chief rabbi and after me there will be another chief rabbi. This is idle chatter, they make no difference.”

The ratification of the Amar Law, promised to the Habayit Hayehudi in their coalition agreement, was formulated to allow Rav Amar to serve a second term, and thus allowing Shas to support Naftali Bennett’s candidate for the Ashkenazi chief rabbi.

However, if Rav Metzger decides to run for a second term it might shift the balance of power in the rabbinate’s voting body, marring the chances of an election of a Zionist rabbi, as Bennett had originally wanted.

Read more at YNET NEWS.

{Matzav.com}


4 COMMENTS

  1. “Zionist Rabbi” ??? Aren’t all Chief Rabbi’s “zionist”. What could be more Zionist then working as the Chief Rabbi for the STATE of Israel!?!?

  2. Dear Guest! We are very confused indeed! Zionism and its meaning is being misused at all levels.

    If we refer to our eternal longing and desire to be redeemed from the exile and built a Torah society in OUR Eretz Yisroel them we will fall in to that category. But Zionism in its real meaning is a secular movement that out of embarrassed shame could not abolish the Ottoman and English accepted Chief rabbinate. The chief Rabbi of Israel has a voice but does not rule since all decisions concerning Judaism and the state of Israel is decided by the Israeli Supreme court that is secular. The real Religious power In Eretz Yisroel is not in the hands of the chief Rabbi either . So in reality the position of chief Rabbi in a political one not a religious one. To be a Zionist and a chief Rabbi in a contradiction in terms.

  3. Dear R. Goldstein!

    I believe you are also confused! As you needed to research NK. Guess what R. Moshe Feinstein, R. Aharon Kotler, R. Shach, R. Ovadia Yosef, The Belzer Rebbes, The Gerrer Rebbes and others all worked with the Chief Rabbis (despite the problems of the State)

  4. Dear Cheredi, when it came to the question of who is a Jew who made the decision? when it came to women in the Army…when it came to support for missionaries….buses on shabbes…Conversions…Russian emigrants…draft for the army..etc etc etc who made those decisions? The real religious power in Eretz yisroel is on those Rabbis you mention and heeded only by those who want to listen much the same like here in New York! There is NO Jewish state in the land of Israel!

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