Israeli Rabbinical Courts Face Calls for Oversight After IT Shutdown

The rabbinical courts of Israel derive their authority from statute and receive public funding while exercising exclusive jurisdiction over divorce, custody, alimony, and property matters for Jewish citizens. The courts employ 111 male rabbinical judges and no female judges.

Senior management positions are also held exclusively by men. The appointments committee conducts its work in closed sessions based on political deals and loyalties. A process to appoint a new director-general is currently underway. The law permits this appointment without a public tender or transparency requirements.

The Rackman Center has petitioned against the procedure.

Days ago the rabbinical courts' entire IT infrastructure, including email, calendars, and databases, was shut down after an unpaid debt of NIS 700,000 to Microsoft. The outage directly affected couples in ongoing divorce proceedings.

A recently passed law grants the rabbinical courts authority to decide certain civil disputes, including contracts, labor, and property matters, with immediate enforcement. The expansion was presented as consensual arbitration. The state provides the courts' legal authority, budgets, and enforcement power.

Critics note that no corresponding requirements for transparency, representation, or external review were added with the new powers. Naomi Avraham, an attorney and social activist who left the haredi community, described in a Haaretz interview how public budgets of billions of shekels are managed without transparency and how a small number of families control education, media, and matchmaking within the Lithuanian-haredi establishment.

The writer, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, heads the Rackman Center at Bar-Ilan University and has called for full transparency in appointments, effective public oversight, and the appointment of a woman as director-general of the Rabbinical Courts.