The Israeli chief rabbinate has backed down from its effort to force Shlomo Riskin—a popular Modern Orthodox rabbi—into retirement as retaliation for his dissenting views on certain key issues. Elli Fischer argues that the most desirable outcome would be for Riskin and his congregants to reject the chief rabbinate altogether:

Part of the larger religion-state issue in Israel is that most citizens, even those calling for the “abolition” of the chief rabbinate, have a hard time envisioning what life would look like without it. The centralization of religious services in Israel was a key part of David Ben-Gurion’s particular brand of statism and his desire to replace community consciousness with state consciousness. Though this state consciousness . . . has begun to fail, Israelis have not yet relearned how to build religious communities. They have become dependent on the state to allocate land and funds for synagogues, . . . to fund and staff burial societies, and to dictate what foods are and are not kosher. Abolishing the chief rabbinate would create a vacuum of instability, temporarily at least. It is hard to predict the long-term ramifications of such instability. . . .

The chief rabbinate and the Ministry of Religious Services are obviously well-funded, but they draw their real authority from the people. If people stopped caring whether the chief rabbinate thinks they are Jewish or married, or whether it deems a particular product kosher, it would become a paper tiger.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.