Israel’s chief rabbinate recently attempted to remove Shlomo Riskin—a highly regarded Modern Orthodox rabbi—from his post as chief rabbi of the town of Efrat by refusing to grant a routine waiver of the mandatory retirement age. Shlomo Brody writes that this “attempt to deploy this law capriciously, for ideological reasons . . . is an outrage,” but takes the opportunity to discuss the halakhic basis for mandatory retirement:
The Talmud [asserts that] “the older Torah scholars become, the more wisdom increases within them.” Yet the same passage also cites numerous examples of the physical and emotional toll which old age can take on elderly scholars. . . .
A second text addresses [the question of] whether old age impairs the judgment of senior jurists. The sages ruled that ideally, one should not become a judge until he has sufficiently aged. Yet they also declared that one who has become “very elderly” may no longer hear cases regarding capital crimes, fear[ing] that an elderly judge might have lost his merciful “fatherly” touch because he had forgotten the difficulty of raising children, or that, alternatively, his old age may make him impatient and mean-spirited.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Not-Just-News/Ask-The-Rabbi-Can-the-Chief-Rabbinate-force-Rabbi-Riskin-to-retire-405766