Shlomo Amar
Encyclopedia
Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar has been the Sephardi
Chief Rabbi
of Israel
and the Rishon LeZion
since his appointment in 2003. His colleague is Rabbi Yona Metzger
, the Ashkenazi
Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Rabbi Amar was born in Casablanca
, Morocco
and immigrated to Israel in 1962 at age 14. He is a close associate of the spiritual leader of the Shas
Party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
. Before his appointment as co-Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Amar had served as the head of the Petah Tikva
Rabbinical Court
. He was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv
in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city.
Eli Yishai
to Ethiopia
to meet with the Falash Mura community, a group of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity
. He subsequently recommended that they undergo a conventional conversion to Judaism
, which provoked an angry reaction. Later in 2003, as Chief Rabbi, he reversed himself, saying that anyone related to a member of Beta Israel
through matrilineal descent qualified as Jewish and should be brought to Israel by the government (and then undergo a formal conversion ceremony after a period of study). In January 2004, following the recommendations of the Knesset
and the Chief Rabbis, Ariel Sharon
announced a plan (still largely unimplemented) to bring all of the Falash Mura (presently close to 18,000) to Israel by the end of 2007.http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.30/news11.html
In May 2005 Amar publicly accepted the claims of the Indian Bnei Menashe
as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. He sent a Bet Din to India
in September to begin the conversion process.http://www.haaretz.com/news/amar-bnei-menashe-are-descendants-of-ancient-israelites-1.154715
MK that he was willing to support
civil marriages for non-Jews and people who are unaffiliated with a religion. Amar pointed out the difference between his idea and that of his predecessor, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron
, who had proposed civil marriage for anyone interested in 2004. Amar's plan, by comparison, would only apply to the marriage of non-Jews with each other. Amar stated that his suggestion was designed to solve the problem of Israel's 300,000 religionless, non-Jewish immigrants, many from the former Soviet Union who claim Jewish identity and citizenship, but whose Jewish status may not be accepted by Orthodox standards and the Chief Rabbinate. Amar called on representatives of the non-Jewish immigrants to discuss the matter with representatives of the rabbinate.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=605605
, Sephardic
Chief Rabbi
Shlomo Amar criticized Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam, writing: "our way is to honour every religion and every nation according to their paths, as it is written in the book of prophets: 'because every nation will go in the name of its Lord.'" He later told Benedict that it was his duty to spread the message that the Jewish people belong in the Land of Israel.
Ehud Olmert
that would remove the conversion clause from the Israeli Law of Return
. This would prevent converts from all streams of Judaism, including Orthodox Judaism, from having automatic citizenship rights in Israel, and restrict the Law of Return to applying only to Jews by birth whose mothers were Jewish. This also affects potential immigrants who are descended from only one Jewish parent or grandparent, not all of whom would be accepted as Jewish under Orthodox law. See also: Matrilineal descent and Who is a Jew?
Amar said in interviews that the bill was designed to prevent "a situation where there are two peoples in the State of Israel." Amar said the Law of Return's inclusion of converts had turned the conversion process into a political rather than religious exercise, and that many people were converting for immigration purposes, not out of sincere religiosity. Amar suggested that an alternative could be that converts, upon arriving in Israel, went through a naturalization process via the Citizenship Law. The bill also gives rabbinic courts and the Chief Rabbinate sole authority over conversions.
Amar said that the bill was partially written in response to the Israeli Supreme Court deliberating a dozen petitions by the Israeli Reform movement to allow Reform converts to stay in Israel. Jews converted under Reform or Conservative auspices abroad have been accepted under the Law of Return since 1989, but the 2006 case deals with conversions that occurred in Israel. Amar argued that if the Reform converts were permitted to stay in the country, they would eventually become frustrated with their inability to marry Jews (as the Chief Rabbinate would not recognize their conversions as valid) and this would lead to them marrying non-Jews, which would polarize the state.
Amar received some criticism from the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel and America, and various Israeli politicians and government figures, including Menachem Mazuz
, Yossi Beilin
, and UTJ
MK Avraham Ravitz, who said he did not believe Amar's bill, if passed, would stop Reform or Conservative converts from receiving citizenship, which would lead back to the initial problem of "two peoples" in Israel. He added that Amar's proposed bill would constitute blatant discrimination against converts. Other commentators noted that the citizenship process for non-Jews can be long and arduous, and pointed out that there are presently many naturalized Israelis, particularly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who do not meet the halakhic definition of a Jew. One report, challenging Amar's claim that his bill was meant as a preventative measure, wrote, "The 'division of the Jewish people in Israel' is a present reality, not a future possibility."
However, some in Israel's legal community supported separating religious conversion from the secular citizenship process. Amar also received support from several religious politicians such as NRP
MK Zevulun Orlev
who said the bill would protect Jewish unity.
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and the Rishon LeZion
Rishon LeZion (title)
This list of Sephardi chief rabbis of the Land of Israel documents the rabbis who served as the spiritual leader of the Sephardic community in the Land of Israel from the mid 17th-century to present. The Hebrew title for the position, Rishon le-Zion, This list of Sephardi chief rabbis of the Land...
since his appointment in 2003. His colleague is Rabbi Yona Metzger
Yona Metzger
Yona Metzger is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. His counterpart is Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel since their appointments in 2003.-Background:...
, the Ashkenazi
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Rabbi Amar was born in Casablanca
Casablanca
Casablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and immigrated to Israel in 1962 at age 14. He is a close associate of the spiritual leader of the Shas
Shas
Shas is an ultra-orthodox religious political party in Israel, primarily representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Judaism.Shas was founded in 1984 by dissident members of the Ashkenazi dominated Agudat Israel, to represent the interests of religiously observant Sephardic and Mizrahi ...
Party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
Ovadia Yosef
Ovadia Yosef is the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, a recognised Talmudic scholar and foremost halakhic authority.He currently serves as the spiritual leader of the Shas political party in the Israeli parliament...
. Before his appointment as co-Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Amar had served as the head of the Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...
Rabbinical Court
Beth din
A beth din, bet din, beit din or beis din is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel...
. He was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city.
Work with "lost tribes"
In 2002 Amar was sent by then Interior MinisterInterior minister
An interior ministry is a government ministry typically responsible for policing, national security, and immigration matters. The ministry is often headed by a minister of the interior or minister of home affairs...
Eli Yishai
Eli Yishai
Eliyahu "Eli" Yishai is an Israeli politician and head of the Shas party. He currently serves as a member of the Knesset for Shas, and as both one of four Deputy Prime Ministers and Minister of Internal Affairs.- Political life :...
to Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
to meet with the Falash Mura community, a group of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. He subsequently recommended that they undergo a conventional conversion to Judaism
Conversion to Judaism
Conversion to Judaism is a formal act undertaken by a non-Jewish person who wishes to be recognised as a full member of the Jewish community. A Jewish conversion is both a religious act and an expression of association with the Jewish people...
, which provoked an angry reaction. Later in 2003, as Chief Rabbi, he reversed himself, saying that anyone related to a member of Beta Israel
Beta Israel
Beta Israel Israel, Ge'ez: ቤተ እስራኤል - Bēta 'Isrā'ēl, modern Bēte 'Isrā'ēl, EAE: "Betä Ǝsraʾel", "Community of Israel" also known as Ethiopian Jews , are the names of Jewish communities which lived in the area of Aksumite and Ethiopian Empires , nowadays divided between Amhara and Tigray...
through matrilineal descent qualified as Jewish and should be brought to Israel by the government (and then undergo a formal conversion ceremony after a period of study). In January 2004, following the recommendations of the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
and the Chief Rabbis, Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
announced a plan (still largely unimplemented) to bring all of the Falash Mura (presently close to 18,000) to Israel by the end of 2007.http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.30/news11.html
In May 2005 Amar publicly accepted the claims of the Indian Bnei Menashe
Bnei Menashe
The Bnei Menashe are a group of more than 9,000 people from India's North-Eastern border states of Manipur and Mizoram who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The claim appeared after a Pentecostalist dreamt in 1951 that his people's pre-Christian religion was Judaism and that...
as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. He sent a Bet Din to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in September to begin the conversion process.http://www.haaretz.com/news/amar-bnei-menashe-are-descendants-of-ancient-israelites-1.154715
Civil marriage proposal
Amar made news in September 2005 when he told a ShinuiShinui
Shinui is a Zionist, secular and anti-clerical free market liberal party and political movement in Israel. The party twice became the third largest in the Knesset, but both occasions were followed by a split and collapse; in 1977 the party won 15 seats as part of the Democratic Movement for...
MK that he was willing to support
civil marriages for non-Jews and people who are unaffiliated with a religion. Amar pointed out the difference between his idea and that of his predecessor, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron
Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron
Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron , is a former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.-Background:Rabbi Hamza Bakshi-Doron was born in Jerusalem and studied in several prominent Religious Zionist yeshivot...
, who had proposed civil marriage for anyone interested in 2004. Amar's plan, by comparison, would only apply to the marriage of non-Jews with each other. Amar stated that his suggestion was designed to solve the problem of Israel's 300,000 religionless, non-Jewish immigrants, many from the former Soviet Union who claim Jewish identity and citizenship, but whose Jewish status may not be accepted by Orthodox standards and the Chief Rabbinate. Amar called on representatives of the non-Jewish immigrants to discuss the matter with representatives of the rabbinate.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=605605
Interfaith relations
In a letter to the Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf QaradawiYusuf al-Qaradawi
Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a controversial Egyptian Islamic theologian. He is best known for his programme, ash-Shariah wal-Hayat , broadcast on Al Jazeera, which has an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide...
, Sephardic
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
Shlomo Amar criticized Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam, writing: "our way is to honour every religion and every nation according to their paths, as it is written in the book of prophets: 'because every nation will go in the name of its Lord.'" He later told Benedict that it was his duty to spread the message that the Jewish people belong in the Land of Israel.
Amending the Law of Return
In November 2006 Amar submitted a draft bill to Prime MinisterPrime Minister of Israel
The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful political figure in Israel . The prime minister is the country's chief executive. The official residence of the prime minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem...
Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert is an Israeli politician and lawyer. He served as Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, as a Cabinet Minister from 1988 to 1992 and from 2003 to 2006, and as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003....
that would remove the conversion clause from the Israeli Law of Return
Law of Return
The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and gain citizenship...
. This would prevent converts from all streams of Judaism, including Orthodox Judaism, from having automatic citizenship rights in Israel, and restrict the Law of Return to applying only to Jews by birth whose mothers were Jewish. This also affects potential immigrants who are descended from only one Jewish parent or grandparent, not all of whom would be accepted as Jewish under Orthodox law. See also: Matrilineal descent and Who is a Jew?
Amar said in interviews that the bill was designed to prevent "a situation where there are two peoples in the State of Israel." Amar said the Law of Return's inclusion of converts had turned the conversion process into a political rather than religious exercise, and that many people were converting for immigration purposes, not out of sincere religiosity. Amar suggested that an alternative could be that converts, upon arriving in Israel, went through a naturalization process via the Citizenship Law. The bill also gives rabbinic courts and the Chief Rabbinate sole authority over conversions.
Amar said that the bill was partially written in response to the Israeli Supreme Court deliberating a dozen petitions by the Israeli Reform movement to allow Reform converts to stay in Israel. Jews converted under Reform or Conservative auspices abroad have been accepted under the Law of Return since 1989, but the 2006 case deals with conversions that occurred in Israel. Amar argued that if the Reform converts were permitted to stay in the country, they would eventually become frustrated with their inability to marry Jews (as the Chief Rabbinate would not recognize their conversions as valid) and this would lead to them marrying non-Jews, which would polarize the state.
Amar received some criticism from the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel and America, and various Israeli politicians and government figures, including Menachem Mazuz
Menachem Mazuz
Menachem Mazuz is an Israeli jurist, who served as the Israeli Attorney General in the years 2004-2010. Mazuz was born in Djerba, Tunisia, the fourth in a family of nine children of the rabbi of one of the island's Jewish communities...
, Yossi Beilin
Yossi Beilin
Dr. Yosef "Yossi" Beilin is a left-wing Israeli politician and a former Knesset member, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and Justice Minister, representing both the Labor Party and Meretz-Yachad, of which he served as chairman between 2003 and 2006. He is best known for his involvement with the...
, and UTJ
United Torah Judaism
United Torah Judaism is an alliance of Degel HaTorah and Agudat Israel, two small Israeli Haredi political parties in the Knesset. It was first formed in 1992.The two parties have not always agreed with each other about policy matters...
MK Avraham Ravitz, who said he did not believe Amar's bill, if passed, would stop Reform or Conservative converts from receiving citizenship, which would lead back to the initial problem of "two peoples" in Israel. He added that Amar's proposed bill would constitute blatant discrimination against converts. Other commentators noted that the citizenship process for non-Jews can be long and arduous, and pointed out that there are presently many naturalized Israelis, particularly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who do not meet the halakhic definition of a Jew. One report, challenging Amar's claim that his bill was meant as a preventative measure, wrote, "The 'division of the Jewish people in Israel' is a present reality, not a future possibility."
However, some in Israel's legal community supported separating religious conversion from the secular citizenship process. Amar also received support from several religious politicians such as NRP
National Religious Party
The National Religious Party ) was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement. Formed in 1956, at the time of its dissolution in 2008, it was the second oldest surviving party in the country after Agudat Yisrael, and was part of every government coalition until 1992...
MK Zevulun Orlev
Zevulun Orlev
Zevulun Orlev is an Israeli politician and a former leader of the National Religious Party. He was Minister of Welfare & Social Services , and is currently a Member of the Knesset for the The Jewish Home party...
who said the bill would protect Jewish unity.