According to an Israeli law passed in 2013, rabbis like Elli Fischer who perform halakhic marriages outside the purview of the chief rabbinate can be punished with up to two years in prison. But unlike other religious critics of the institution—which comprises not just the two chief rabbis but an entire network of local rabbis, religious courts, and kashrut supervisors, along with a bureaucratic apparatus for performing marriages and conversions—Fischer believes that it cannot be reformed but must be fundamentally changed so as to limit its power:

The problem with the chief rabbinate and the related Ministry of Religious Services is not that they have deviated from their historical mission and are now malfunctioning. By design, the chief rabbinate reduces rabbis to bureaucrats. As a government agency like any other, it is subject to partisan wrangling and the temptations of patronage and corruption. Worse, it is particularly ill-suited to functioning as a government bureaucracy. [As a] historical institution, the [Jewish clergy] traditionally functioned on the basis of collegial trust, the flexibility to address unique circumstances, and tolerance of local differences. . . . [Forcing it to become] part of a rigid, regulated, centralized, and bureaucratic regime . . . has made it monstrous.

In recent polls, 71 percent of Israeli Jews expressed dissatisfaction with the chief rabbinate and about 65 percent favored its dissolution. But what does “dissolution” mean in this context? What does the growing chorus of Israelis who demand “separation” of religion and state want?

It turns out that “separation” is not exactly the right word for what Israelis want. Even if it were, it would be politically unattainable. . . .

The goal, therefore, must not be to separate the Jewish religion from the Jewish state but to minimize the degree to which religious institutions exercise the coercive power of the state.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.