Resolution Adopted by the CCAR
Disestablishment of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel
Adopted by the CCAR at the 92nd Annual Convention of
the Central Conference of American Rabbis
Jerusalem, Israel June 23-28, 1981
Be it resolved
that the Central Conference of American Rabbis calls for the disestablishment of
the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel so that the cause of religious Judaism
in Israel be enhanced. Stripped of arbitrary power, all rabbis would need to rely
on moral suasion and inspired teaching to reach Israel’s vast majority of unaffiliated Jews,
convincing instead of coercing, and necessarily more responsive to issues they have
thus far ignored: War and peace, the social gap, poverty, corruption, and, most particularly, the spiritual values of Judaism itself. Let rabbis be rabbis rather than politicians,
that Israel be more authentically Jewish than the narrow theocracy for which Israel’s
politicized religious establishment yearns.