Tel Aviv’s Chief Rabbi Issar Unterman today requested his supporters to desist from a campaign to promote his candidature to succeed the late Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog. He also intimated that he favors the American Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik for the post. He made known that he would not seek the exalted post if Rabbi Soloveitchik announced his candidature.
The succession to the post occupied by the revered Rabbi Herzog is thus narrowed down to the Chief Chaplain of Israel’s armed forces. Rabbi Shlomo Gore and Rabbi Soloveitchik. While the former enjoys political backing and would be welcomed by progressive religious elements who are alienated from strict orthodoxy. Rabbi Soloveitchik is destined to be the choice of the rabbinical circles. Comprising two-thirds of the electors–mayors and heads of local councils provide the remaining third–rabbinical circles will undoubtedly carry the day and the next Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, may, as in the past, be drawn from overseas.
In addition to great scholarship, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s richest asset appears to be that he does not seek the post, a rabbinical personality told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The Bostonian, who heads the Talmudic Faculty of Yeshiva University in New York, and is president of the Halacha Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America, was sounded out last year about an interim appointment during Rabbi Herzog’s illness. He then resisted persuasion but a deputation of prominent Israel rabbis is now drawing up a petition asking him to yield.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
