On October 19, 2025, the Chief Rabbinate submitted to the High Court of Justice (HCJ) a request for a further hearing on the July judgment. That ruling—authored by Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg and joined unanimously by Justice Dafna Barak-Erez and Justice Ofer Grosskopf—requires the Rabbinate to allow women to sit its halakhic examinations. The Rabbinate now also seeks a stay of execution, delaying implementation pending additional proceedings. Its position argues a fundamental halakhic difficulty with permitting women to take the Rabbinate’s exams on the same terms as men. Accordingly, it proposes a narrowed framework: women would be examined only in subjects deemed “clearly permissible” (e.g., Shabbat and niddah), with alternative exams outside the Rabbinate for other areas.
The July judgment held that access to the exams themselves may not be denied to women, emphasized the concrete harms of exclusion—professional benefits, equivalency to academic degrees, and eligibility for public tenders—and rejected any “separate but equal” arrangement. The original 2019 petition was filed by ITIM, the Rackman Center, and Kolech on behalf of six women Torah scholars: Rabbanit Avital Engelberg, Rabbanit Shlomit Flint, Rabbanit Sarah Segal-Katz, Rabbanit Rachel Keren, Rabbanit Michelle Cohen Farber, and Rabbanit Shlomit Piamenta. Their request was not for semikhah (ordination) but for the right to sit state-run exams within a single public system.
The present motion goes to the heart of religion–state relations, gender equality, and the scope of the Rabbinate’s authority—and the debate continues.
