The Chief Rabbinate of Israel () is recognized by Israeli law as the supreme rabbinic authority for Judaism in Israel."Chief Rabbinate of Israel Law, 5740 (1980)" It was established in 1921 under the British Mandate and operates on the basis of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Law, 5740-1980. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two Chief Rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal and administrative authority to organize religious arrangements for Israeli Jews. It also responds to halakhic questions submitted by Jewish public bodies in the Jewish diaspora. The Council sets, guides, and supervises agencies within its authority.
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel consists of two Chief Rabbis: an Ashkenazi rabbi and a Sephardi rabbi; the latter is known as the Rishon leZion. The Chief Rabbis are elected for 10-year terms. The present Sephardi Chief Rabbi is David Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is Kalman Ber, both of whom began their terms in 2024.
The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over many aspects of Jewish life in Israel. Its jurisdiction includes personal status issues, such as Jewish marriages and Jewish divorce, as well as Jewish burials, conversion to Judaism, Kashrut and kosher certification, aliyah (olim), supervision of Jewish holy sites, administration of various ritual baths (mikvaot) and yeshivot, and the rabbinical courts in Israel.
The rabbinical courts are part of Israel's judicial system and are managed by the Ministry of Religious Services. The courts have exclusive jurisdiction over the marriage and divorce of Jews and have parallel competence with district courts in matters of personal status, alimony, child support, custody, and inheritance. Religious court verdicts are implemented and enforced—as for the civil court system—by the police, bailiffs' office, and other agencies.Ministry of Religious Affairs
In 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that women are eligible to serve on the Chief Rabbinate Council and as rabbis on the Chief Rabbi Election Assembly.
The Chief Rabbinate headquarters are at the Beit Yahav building, 80 Yirmiyahu Street, Jerusalem. The former seat of the institution, the Heichal Shlomo building dedicated in 1958, has been mainly a museum since 1992.Rosenbaum, Alan. "Herzog College: Leading the renaissance at Hechal Shlomo", The Jerusalem Post, January 7, 2021. Accessed June 9, 2026. "On Thursday, May 8, 1958, hundreds of dignitaries gathered to dedicate Hechal Shlomo, a stately new structure in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, as the seat of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and its Supreme Rabbinical Court.... Finally, in 1992, with the election of Rabbi Israel Meir Lau as Chief Rabbi, the Chief Rabbinate fell under the control of haredi elements. Rabbi Lau moved the offices of the Chief Rabbinate from Hechal Shlomo to the city entrance, says Brandes, because the building had been primarily identified with the religious Zionist movement."
History All religious and personal status matters in Israel are determined by the religious authorities of the recognised confessional community to which a person belongs. There are Jewish, Muslim, and Druze communities and ten officially recognised Christian communities.A Free People in Our Land: Gender Equality in a Jewish State The confessional system is based on the Millet system employed by the Ottoman Empire.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the title Rishon LeZion was bestowed upon the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. In 1842, the position of "Hakham Bashi"—Chief Rabbi of Constantinople who represented the Turkish Jews before the Sultan—and the position of Rishon LeZion, which at that time already represented the Old Yishuv before the Sultan, were subsumed under the Rishon LeZion.
On February 24, 1921, a rabbinic group met in Jerusalem with the approval of the Mandatory Palestine government.Government of Palestine, Official Gazette No. 40, 1 April 1921, pp. 10–11. The group elected the so-called Rabbinical Council for Palestine, which consisted of Abraham Isaac Kook as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Jacob Meir as Sephardi Chief Rabbi, and other rabbinical and lay councillors. The government announced that the Council and any beit din sanctioned thereby would be recognised as authoritative on Jewish law. The authority of the Ottoman Hakham Bashi would no longer be recognised in Palestine. The legal status of the Rabbinical Council and its Chief Rabbis was further refined in December 1927.Government of Palestine, Official Gazette No. 202, 1 January 1928, pp. 10–19.
In 1947, David Ben-Gurion and the Orthodox religious parties reached an agreement, which included an understanding that matters of personal status in Israel would continue to be determined by the existing religious authorities. This arrangement has been termed the status quo and has been maintained despite numerous changes in government since then.
Under the arrangement, the Mandate-period confessional system would continue, with membership in the Jewish community based on membership in a body called "Knesset Israel", which was a voluntary organization open to Jews. There does not seem to have been any dispute at the time of who was a Jew. Jews could choose not to register with "Knesset Israel". Members of World Agudath Israel, for example, decided not to register.
In 1953, rabbinical courts were established, with jurisdiction over matters of marriage and divorces of all Jews in Israel, nationals and residents (section 1). It was also provided that marriages and divorces of Jews in Israel would be conducted according to the law of the Torah (section 2).
Since 1953, the rabbinate has only approved religious marriages in Israel that are conducted in accordance with the Orthodox interpretation of Halakha. The only exception to these arrangements was that marriages entered into abroad would be recognised in Israel as valid.
Conversions The State of Israel recognises the Chief Rabbinate as the sole authority to perform conversions to Judaism in Israel. In the past, conversion was often done sensitively and with an appreciation for halakhic traditions—for example, during the tenure of Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, who was very encouraging of converts. In recent generations, the authorities' criteria for undergoing the process have become more stringent—to the extent that the Rabbinate takes actions that are unprecedented in Jewish history (e.g., cancelling conversions). Some rabbis claim this centralisation is a threat to the future of the Jewish people.
Significant controversy has shrouded the relationship between the Chief Rabbis and the conversion process. In the summer of 2017, it was revealed that the Chief Rabbinate held a list of batei din whose conversions it would recognise and another, secreted list of rabbis and batei din whose conversions it would not recognise.
The list generated controversy due to the inclusion of several respected Orthodox rabbis, such as Avi Weiss and Yehoshua Fass, along with non-Orthodox rabbis and batei din. The list included Conservative and Reform conversion programs, which the Chief Rabbis do not accept on ideological grounds. However, many other programs were seemingly omitted from the list. The list was kept secret, providing no chance for external review or appeal, which resulted in discord.
The blacklist did not affect the ability to make aliyah—immigration is controlled by the Law of Return rather than the Rabbinate—but did impact individuals’ access to recognized marriage in Israel. The situation became more problematic when it was revealed that Haskel Lookstein, an Orthodox rabbi in the United States, was included on the blacklist, preventing some of his students from marrying in Israel. Lookstein officiated Ivanka Trump’s conversion, causing tension between Israel and the United States shortly after her father was elected president. Soon after that, the rules were amended so that Trump's conversion was accepted. Still, there were questions about whether the changes were made only to curry favour with the Trump administration.
The conversion process became a topic of political discussion when ultra-Orthodox allies of the Chief Rabbis in the Knesset sought to pass a law designating the Chief Rabbinate as the sole government-recognized authority for performing conversions in Israel.
The control the Rabbinate attempted to exert extended into the Diaspora when it sought to create universal standards for conversion for all Jewish communities outside of Israel in 2016.
The Chief Rabbis have faced pushback against their stance in Israel through the rabbis of Tzohar, who have created an independent path to conversion and are trying to alleviate some of the "horror stories" that come from the Rabbinate. Tzohar had claimed to have performed over 500 conversions of children by 2018, and were seeking to simplify the process for surrogates to convert. The Supreme Court of Israel has since demanded that their conversions be accepted, but there were efforts to legislate an override the High Court's decision in 2017.
Other efforts within the Orthodox world exist to conduct conversions outside the Rabbinate. These include efforts by Haim Amsalem and Chuck Davidson, who want to return to the traditions of the earlier Chief Rabbis such as Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel with a more lenient approach in keeping with the Halakha. Part of their desire is to address the over 300,000 Israelis from the former Soviet Union who the Rabbinate does not recognize as Jewish, as well as the growing issue of assimilation and intermarriage outside of Israel.
The conversion debate as of 2018 surrounds the Orthodox stream. There is pressure from within the Reform and Conservative communities to have their conversions recognized.
In March 2019, it was confirmed that the Chief Rabbinate was using genealogical DNA testing to determine Jewish status. A group of religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox organizations was outraged, as this was contrary to Jewish law. Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz, the CEO of Chuppot and Hashgacha Pratit, called the Chief Rabbinate "racist".
Marriages
While the State of Israel recognizes any marriage performed legally in another country, for marriages performed within Israel, only religious marriage is recognized as legal; as such, the Chief Rabbinate is granted control over all Jewish marriages. They also have the right to refuse someone the status of Jew, thus making it impossible for them to get legally married in Israel. The Rabbinate and their local religious councils are the only ones able to register rabbis to perform weddings, thus creating a monopoly for themselves.
The Rabbinate control also means that there are 400,000 immigrants from the former USSR who have moved to Israel, many of whom are Jewish, who are not permitted to marry in Israel and must travel overseas for a legally-recognized marriage.
Because of Israeli law, the rabbi that performs a marriage outside of the Rabbinate can be charged with a criminal offense and be jailed for up to two years. In spite of this, there are a number of people and organizations that perform marriages outside of the rabbinate framework. Chuck Davidson has openly challenged the state to jail him for his performing of marriages. He has personally performed hundreds of marriages outside of the rabbinate, while those in his network have performed many more. He works with Hashgacha Pratit, another organization which challenges the monopoly of the Rabbinate on kashrut and weddings.
Seth Farber has set up an organization, Itim. While Itim still works from within the Rabbinate, and, therefore, is beholden to their rules, it tries to find a gentler path for the many secular people who want to use their services. Another group involved in marriage within the Rabbinate is the Tzohar network.