(Israel Government Press Office)
Two newspapers discuss this evening’s election for the chief rabbinate:
Ma'ariv says that "One may hope that this evening's election for the chief rabbinate will be the start of a new and enlightened era." The author suggests that the new chief rabbis end the chief rabbinate's monopoly on kashrut certification, replace many of the officials involved in marriage licensing and bring about a "rabbinical spring," lest many non-religious Israelis move even further away from Jewish traditions.
The Jerusalem Post laments the unrealized vision of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, the founding father of the Chief Rabbinate, and notes that Rabbi Kook wanted to invigorate the rabbinate’s spiritual essence and transform the rabbinate into an organizing force. The editor regrets that Orthodox Judaism has not managed to develop “a more sophisticated approach to the tremendous sociological upheaval since the 19th century that led to the creation of the ‘secular Jew,’” and concludes: “Had Rabbi Kook’s model of the rabbinate come into being, Israeli society and world Judaism would have been dramatically transformed.”
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Yediot Aharonot asserts that "Neither US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey want to act in Syria or Iran," unless the action has, "in their view, a direct and immediate effect on the security of the US," and suggests that Syrians killing Syrians, for example, does not qualify. The author discerns a struggle between the Pentagon, which opposes US intervention in Syria, and the State Department, which favors it, and ventures that "The State Dept. is leaking every secret operation allegedly carried out by Israel in order to prove how easy and inexpensive it is" to act in Syria.
Yisrael Hayom discusses the peace process. The author believes that "The likelihood that US Secretary of state John Kerry will lead the sides to a stable peace agreement (as opposed to the Oslo accords, which collapsed quickly) is not high," and adds: "This is especially in light of the early difficulty of persuading the Palestinian side to enter into a framework of direct negotiations without preconditions and constraints." The paper suggests that a partial, but long-term, interim agreement may be more likely.
Haaretz criticizes the cancelation of a puppet theater festival for Palestinian children that was supposed to have taken place at East Jerusalem in June, due to a closure order issued by the Ministry of Public Security because the theater was funded by the Palestinian Authority in violation of the Oslo Accords, and states: “the thoughtlessness and bureaucratic pedantry of the decision underscores the human and political blindness generated by a situation in which Israel controls the Palestinian population without doing enough to define and regularize the relationship and reach some sort of accord.” The editor concludes: “This is yet another incident to which Talleyrand’s famous dictum could apply: ‘It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.’”
[Guy Maroz, Alex Fishman and Prof. Avraham Ben-Zvi wrote today’s articles in Ma'ariv, Yediot Aharonot and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]