Chief Rabbinate Finally Agrees To Accept Women’s Testimony On Marital Status

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said he had received permission from the late haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who passed away in July, to accept female testimony in these cases.

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger

Chief Rabbinate Finally Agrees To Accept Women’s Testimony On Marital Status
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

In Israel, all marriages are governed by the religious community the bride and groom belong to.

For Jews, by law this means the haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate – and its notorious bureaucracy – controls the process. Part of that process involves certifying that the couple, especially the bride, are not married to other people.

To do that, the Rabbinate requires the bride and the groom each bring two male witnesses who know them well to testify for them before Rabbinate officials that each is unmarried even though his is not required by halakha, Jewish law.

But women who lack male friends or neighbors who can testify them have been blocked from marriage by Rabbinate officials in some localities, even though they could have easily accepted the testimony of female friends in these cases, because while Jewish law courts usually do not accept the testimony of women, those cases deal with halakhic requirements – not with a bureaucratic add-on by today’s rabbis.

Instead, many Rabbinate marriage registrars have reportedly been refusing to register brides in this situation, leaving them with no other options but to wait indefinitely for a change in the Chief Rabbinate’s policy or travel to Cyprus or another foreign country and have a civil marriage.

The Jerusalem Post reported on this story, and in its aftermath Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger told an Army Radio interviewer that his office was in the process of issuing a directive to all of the local Rabbinates across the country ordering them to accept female testimony for issues of marital status.

Metzger said he had received permission from the late haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who passed away in July, to accept female testimony in these cases.

Elyashiv was in critical condition in a hospital for months before his death, much of that time unable to communicate. This means Metzger waited the better part of a year before announcing  that a directive would be issued.

How much additional time it will take his office to formulate this directive is unclear.

Comments

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

It's time to get women out of the kitchen, because how you can trust their testimony that everything is kosher?

[Nigritude Ultramarine]

How magnanimous of them.

[R. Wisler]

That's awful Christian of them!

[Shlomo1]

Why does the rabbinut have to get permission from rav Elayishiv for this enactment doesn't the Chief Rabbi have the ability to make his own psak why does he need to go elsewhere. It's not as if the Chareidim take notice of the Rabbinut. Perhaps I forgot who put him in power

[Eli, what me messiah?]

Generous
What next, the right to vote?

[mel thejew]

varium et mutabile semper femina.

[PulpitRabbi]

@Shlomo1, the time when the Ashkenazi chief rabbi was a highly respected halachic authority in his own right has faded a while ago, and it will probably take quite some time until that era returns. Like the president, who, in the Israeli government, hass essentially a ceremonial role, so, too with the Ashekanzi chief rabbi in the rabbinic world. (Luckily, the Sephardim didn't go for that development)

However, even in the best of times, it is customary for significant changes to only be enacted after establishing a minimal consensus with significant outsiders.

[S M L]

I'm repeatedly amazed by just how religiously unfree Israel is for non-Haredi Jews. Jewish homeland? For whom? Haredim and some of the more right-wing Orthodox? Makes me feel ever more grateful that I'm an American.

[CAIN B AKODESH]

Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned!

[David]

Why does it take a dead (or temporarily dead?) rabbi to approve a common-sense change to something that was not Halacha in the first place?

Also, if a woman was "religious" she could not possibly have any male friends or acquaintances as witnesses to the fact of her not being married as such socialization would be forbidden. How could that possibly work?

[David]

Claiming that a dead rabbi said it was OK to make a change is an excellent excuse for live rabbis to to change stupid rules made by other dead rabbis.

Let's hope we see more use of this Halachic innovation. Let's get back to Medieval times when the rabbis were still willing and able to think sensibly.

[Jayman]

Why even have a Rabbanut HaReshit at all? What good does it do? Wouldn't it make more sense to let each respective Jewish community follow its own leaders? What constituency does the Rabbanut have anyway? Since Metzger and Amar came to power, they've lost the Dat Leumi crowd, and the Haredim don't follow them anyway. So then who follows them? The tiny Chardal minority? Wouldn't it make more sense to just dissolve the Rabbanut?

[Runner1983]

If American Jews knew how much israeli religious and cultural values were different from western values, financial support would dry up.

[S M L]

If American Jews knew how much israeli religious and cultural values were different from western values, financial support would dry up.

You may be right. I expect that most of Israel's non-Governmental financial support comes from largely-assimilated American Jews. Either they figure they'll just support Israel because there's no alternative (and wait for it to sort out its own domestic mess) or else they're really not all that aware of the grip the Haredim have on what should be civil liberties of all Jewish Israelis.

[Sarek]

I think the above commentators are missing the point. If Rabbi Elyashiv gave his permission after his death to change the process, then he is in contention with Schneerson to be the resurrected mashiach.

[Abracadabra]

Eli - LOL!

[mimi]

You know, when I read nonsense like this I have this fantasy where misogynistic men and women go into the next life and find that the Master Designer is a woman.