Shlomo Moshe Amar שלמה משה עמר | |
|---|---|
 Rishon LeZion Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar | |
| Title | Rishon LeZionChief Rabbi of IsraelChief Rabbi of Jerusalem |
| Personal life | |
| Born | Shlomo Moshe Amar (1948-04-01)April 1, 1948 (age 77) |
| Nationality | Israeli Moroccan (honorary)[1] |
| Spouse | Mazal Amar |
| Parent(s) | Eliyahu Amar and Mima (Miriam) Amar |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Judaism |
| Denomination | Orthodox |
| Jewish leader | |
| Predecessor | Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron,Shalom Messas |
| Successor | Yitzchak Yosef |
| Residence | Jerusalem |
Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar (Hebrew:הרב שלמה משה עמר;Arabic:سليمان موسى عمار; born April 1, 1948)[2] is the formerSephardic Chief Rabbi ofIsrael. He served in the position ofRishon LeZion from 2003 to 2013; hisAshkenazi counterpart during his tenure wasYona Metzger. In 2014 he became the SephardicChief Rabbi of Jerusalem.[3]
Amar was born inCasablanca,Morocco, to Eliyahu and Mima (Miriam) Amar. His family immigrated to Israel in 1962 when he was 14. He studied in thePonovezh Yeshiva.[3] He transferred to a small Yeshiva in the northern town ofShlomi, where at age 19, was appointed the rabbi of the town. At age 20 he also served as the head ofkashrut for the city ofNahariyya.
Amar studieddayanut inHaifa under RabbiYaakov Nissan Rosenthal. Amar was a close associate and student of the spiritual leader of theShas party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi,Ovadia Yosef. Before his appointment as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Amar had served as the head of thePetah TikvaRabbinical Court. He was elected chief rabbi ofTel Aviv in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city.
Shlomo and his wife, Mazal Sabag, have 12 children. His daughter Yehudit Rachel is married to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the son ofSephardicChief RabbiYitzchak Yosef, and grandson ofOvadia Yosef.
As the former Rishon LeZion, Amar serves as the spiritual leader of the Sephardic community in the Land of Israel. Jews from around the world continue to look to him as a leader.[4][5][6]
Shlomo Amar worked heavily to bring theFalash Mura toIsrael, and stated "that anyone related to a member ofBeta Israel throughmatrilineal descent qualified as Jewish should be brought to Israel by the government". In January 2004, following the recommendations of theKnesset and the Chief Rabbis,Ariel Sharon announced a plan (still[when?] largely unimplemented) to bring all of the Falash Mura (presently close to 18,000) to Israel by the end of 2007. He stated in 2008,“We are all culpable, and we are all to blame for not bringing Ethiopia’s Jewry home (reference to theFalash Mura) with the rest of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Amar, following a heated debate concerning governmental policy towards Ethiopian immigrants. “No amount of heartfelt words can change that fact.”[7] More recently, Shlomo Amar has ruled that descendants of Ethiopian Jews who wereforced to convert to Christianity are "unquestionably Jews in every respect". With the consent ofOvadia Yosef, Amar ruled that it is forbidden to question the Jewishness of this community, pejoratively calledFalash Mura.[8][9]
In 2004, Amar traveled toPortugal to celebrate the centennial anniversary of theLisbon synagogue Shaare Tikvah. During his stay, Amar met descendants of Jewish families persecuted by theInquisition who still practice Judaism (Bnei Anusim) at the house of Rabbi Boaz Pash. A meeting between a Chief Rabbi and PortugueseMarranos (Bnei Anusim) had not happened in centuries. Amar promised to create a committee to evaluate thehalakhic status of the community. Due to the delay of the committee to do any work a second community in Lisbon, Comunidade Judaica Masorti Beit Israel, was later established to ensure the recognition of the Bnei Anusim as Jews.[10]
Rav Amar made news in September 2005 when he told aShinui 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.[11]
In November 2006, Amar submitted a draft bill toPrime MinisterEhud Olmert that would remove the conversion clause from the IsraeliLaw 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.[12][13] 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.[14]
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 theIsraeli 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, includingMenachem Mazuz,Yossi Beilin, andUTJ MKAvraham 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.[15] 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, particularlyimmigrants 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."[16]
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 asNRP MKZevulun Orlev, who said the bill would protect Jewish unity.[15]
In October 2014, afterJerusalem had gone 11 years without achief rabbi (following the death of Jerusalem's Chief RabbiShalom Messas), Amar was elected as theSephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem alongsideAshkenazi chief rabbiAryeh Stern. Amar had the support of both Jerusalem's mayorNir Barkat andThe Jewish Home's chairmanNaftali Bennett.[2][17]Amar has a close relationship with Jerusalem's current mayorMoshe Lion.[18]
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In anArabic-written letter addressed to theMuslim scholarYusuf Qaradawi, Amar criticizedPope Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam, stating: "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.'"[19] He later told Benedict that it was his duty to spread the message that the Jewish people belong in theLand of Israel.[20]
In April 2015, Amar said he had a "stomach churning" reaction to rabbiShlomo Riskin's creation of the "Day to Praise" which calls Christians and Jews to recite the JewishHallel prayer together onIsrael's Independence Day.[21]
In December 2019 he visitedBahrain for an interfaith event, where he met Bahraini kingHamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and religious leaders fromQatar,Kuwait,Jordan,Lebanon, Egypt, Russia, the United States, Italy, India, andThailand.[22]
Amar has faced heavy criticism over his comments onLGBT issues. In November 2016, he stated in an interview with theIsrael Hayom newspaper thathomosexuality was a "cult of abominations," and that it is "punishable by death" according to theTorah.[23][24] In July 2019, he stated that LGBT people "cannot be religious" and endorsedsexual conversion therapy.[25] In June 2021, he described the annualJerusalem LGBT Pride Parade as "the abomination parade".[26]
In September 2017, he stated that followers ofReform Judaism "shout aboutHolocaust deniers inIran, but they deny more than Holocaust deniers" in response to petitions demanding that theIsraeli government build a mixed-gender prayer site at theWestern Wall inJerusalem.[27][28]
In 2013 he was given the highest royal honor by the King ofMorocco,Mohammed VI.[29]In 2014 Amar met withKing Juan Carlos I of Spain and in April 2015 he was invited to meet withKing Felipe VI[30][31] of Spain at the Zarzuela Palace inMadrid, Spain to discuss Spanish citizenship for Sephardic Jews.[32]
Amar played a major role in comforting French Jews after theCharlie Hebdo shootings of 2015. He maintains a close relationship with the French community and Chief Rabbi of France,Haïm Korsia.[33]
Peres went first to the tent of former chief rabbi Shlomo Amar adjacent to the Ahavat Shalom Synagogue in the capital's Givat Hamivtar neighborhood
| Jewish titles | ||
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| Preceded by | Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel 2003–2013 | Succeeded by |
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