On Thursday the Rabbanut changed the criteria regarding who is allowed to conduct weddings in Israel. What seems to be a lightening of the restrictions for some will make it more difficult for others.

According to Bechadrei and Srugim (each from its own perspective), the Rabbanut has been working with the rabbonim of Tzohar to change the rules of what it takes to qualify to be certified for officiating at weddings. The new rules will require a rav to have semicha from the Rabbanut, be tested in the halachos of marriage by a senior rav of the Rabbanut along with by another rav from a list of 10 rabbonim that will be approved, an ishur from 3 city rabbis that the applicant did indeed serve as a rav for a community of at least 30 families, and an ishur from a city rabbi that he assisted on at least 10 weddings and served as rav of a community for at least 2 years.

That is for a rav. A rosh yeshiva or head of an educational institution has different criteria. They would have to meet the following conditions: their institution must be approved by the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Education, along with having letters from rabbonim and ishurim of level of seniority.

An admor that wants to qualify as a certified wedding officiator needs to qualify under the following criteria: ishur from 3 city rabbis that he is the admor for a chassidus of at least 50 families, that he learned in a yeshiva for at least 10 years over the age of 18, served as admor for at least 5 years and ishur from a city rav that he assisted on at least 10 weddings.

For community rabbis this makes life easier. For haredi rosh yeshivas and chassidic admorim, who commonly officiate the weddings in the haredi communities, the new criteria makes it harder. Until now they have had almost no limitations on their abilities to qualify, and now they will have to meet all the above requirements.

This has the support of chief rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar.

I'd say that it is good to have equal sets of guidelines and criteria. When the system is fairly standardized, the level and quality is known. If these changes were goign to be made, I don't see a problem with it in theory.

The only thing I think should be added t it is that current rabbis and rosh yeshivas who have been conducting weddings should be grandfathered in and not be forced to go through the certification process that will likely be considered demeaning or degrading for many of them.

Why should a senior rosh yeshiva or admor have to go through the process of certification when he has been conducting weddings for 30 years for hundreds of young men over the years? That can be very demeaning - he would have to "assist" a different rabbi on a bunch of weddings, he would have to go around asking for ishurim for different things, it is not respectful.

The criteria should be applied, I think, to new rabbis and rosh yeshivas, while the older ones with experience should be grandfathered in.


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A friend of mine just told me this brief anecdote.

He was by a party of a Hassidic Admor the other day. The party was in honor of the Admor having completed renovations on his beis midrash (this is an admor of a small group of hassidim). I guess it was a "Chanukkas Ha'Bayis".

Anyways, this guy notices three men who seemed out of place. Their were some Hassidim there, there were some people from the neighborhood, and there were three kind of scruffy looking men. They were sefardi and looked like they might belong to the underworld (Israeli mafia) - this is his description, and neither I nor he mean anything derogatory toward anybody sefardi, but these three happened to look like they might belong to the mafia.

Anyways, he goes and sits next to them and chats. he asks them what they are doing there. They tell him where they are from and it turns out they had donated a lot of the money for the renovations. he asked what their connection is to the rebbe. their response was "Achla Admor!".

"Achla" is a slang word in Hebrew that means "Cool". So they were saying they sponsored the renovations for the rebbe because they thought he was "cool".

Achla Admor!