After eight years without a municipal rabbi, Tel Aviv elected one on Sunday: Shas candidate Rabbi Zevadia Cohen, whose distance from Israel’s secular capital is roughly the distance from Tel Aviv to Tehran.

The jobs machine run by Shas and United Torah Judaism did not begin in Tel Aviv, and it will not stop there. After years of stagnation in appointing local rabbis, Shas has engineered the appointment of a string of rabbis in its own image: ultra-Orthodox and draft-dodging. These appointments extend to a number of other liberal cities as well. But the reality of recent decades shows that there is no demand for these rabbis or their services.

It is time to abolish this redundant office and allow councils that still want a rabbi to fund one from municipal coffers.

Israel has about 170 official positions for city and local council rabbis. Roughly a third of the city-rabbi posts are unfilled, some for many years. The same is true for local authorities. Beyond these, there are another 300 or so rabbis of towns and communities whose salaries are partly funded by the state. This vast apparatus – especially the city and council rabbi system – is a gold mine for the ultra-Orthodox parties, which despise the Chief Rabbinate yet continue to milk the state coffers through it.

In recent years, due to political struggles, mainly within the ultra-Orthodox community, hardly any rabbis were appointed. Shas and United Torah Judaism see these dozens of vacant posts as a naked political opportunity.

Religious Zionism, incidentally, though it too has an interest in appointing rabbis in its own spirit, is completely out of the game. To rig the outcome, Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli of Shas changed the regulations governing the makeup of the bodies that elect rabbis. The new rules give him near-total control over the results. Together with Shas’s grip on the Interior Ministry – another lever of pressure over local authorities – they are virtually a green light for Shas to install the rabbis it wants.

And it works. In Beersheba, Aryeh Deri’s nephew was appointed. In Jerusalem, his brother is expected to be appointed, and his son-in-law is expected to become the rabbi of the secular, liberal city of Herzliya. In Hod Hasharon, Rabbi Elharar, affiliated with Shas, was elected over a Religious Zionist rabbi who serves in the reserves and is far better suited to the city’s character. In Kiryat Ono, another secular city, Shas’s candidate was chosen. Last week, Shas replicated that success in Tel Aviv.

According to the Jewish religious conception, the rabbi is the mara d’atra – the local halachic authority. His role is to serve as the spiritual leader of the community in which he officiates. To succeed, he must earn the community’s trust and speak its language. The proper way to choose a rabbi is by the community itself. And the proper rabbi for a community reflects its spirit and can connect with its people. But that is a far cry from the current reality.

How many Jewish Israelis even know who their city rabbi is? How many members of the religious community have asked their city rabbi a halachic question or attended a class he has given in the past year? Ever?

In many cases, the answer is: very few. For the great majority of Jewish Israelis, the local rabbi is simply irrelevant.

The law does grant local rabbis some administrative powers, such as responsibility for marriage registration and the city’s kashrut system. But as many cities without an official rabbi have proved – and continue to prove – these functions can be performed by religious council officials. Moreover, unlike almost every other civil service position, including chief rabbis, local rabbis essentially enjoy lifetime tenures.

Their performance, their relevance, and their contribution to the place they serve are simply beside the point.

Rabbi Kook’s vision of community rabbis – the vision of the founder of the Chief Rabbinate – was that they would lead their communities to spiritual heights. This was a noble ambition. But it has shattered against the contemporary Israeli reality, which has turned these positions into jobs for cronies and a never-ending source of blasphemy and hostility toward Judaism.

It is time to abolish these unnecessary positions.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)