The Chief Rabbinate is charged with verifying the Jewish status of immigrants to Israel. This has led to tension between the rabbinate and certain botei din. An immigrant seeking to register for marriage at a local religious council must either present documentation of his Jewishness from a rov where he resides or provide a conversion document backed by a rov the rabbinate recognizes. The documentation is then passed to the Chief Rabbinate for processing.
Stricter religious councils first pass the documentation to a local beis din, which then passes its findings to the Chief Rabbinate. The beis din then authorizes the person’s Judaism when the rabbinate’s reply comes back. Due to the long time this can take, the director of the botei din, Shimon Yaakovi, instructed dayonim to conduct their own investigations and verify people’s Jewishness themselves if the rabbinate takes longer than fourteen days to do so, Kikar Shabbos reported.
Chief Rabbinate Director Moshe Dagan said that if the botei din try to bypass the rabbinate, he will instruct religious councils to omit them from the process. Both sides of the argument described the situation as a professional disagreement which will hopefully be resolved by dialogue.
{Matzav.com Israel News}
