Chief Rabbi’s Newly-established Advisory Council Comes Under Fire in England

A dispute developed here today over the membership of a panel of Anglo-Jewish rabbis which Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits created recently to serve as an advisory body to the Chief Rabbinate. A group of rabbis of the United Synagogue, Britain’s largest Orthodox synagogue group which sponsors and maintains the Chief Rabbinate, complained that the Council of the United Synagogue had been permitted to select only three of the six members of the advisory body, the other three being named by Dr. Jakobovits.

Leaders of British Jewry have taken no sides in the dispute but have expressed regret over “these internal squabbles” which they said tarnish the image of the Anglo-Jewish community as a whole. The advisory body is concerned with policy matters of the Chief Rabbinate but has no jurisdiction in matters of Halacha, Jewish law, which is the sole preserve of the Beth Din, the rabbinical high count.