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.