2 New Chief Rabbis Chosen in Israel

After one of the nastiest political contests in Israel’s 45 years, two new chief rabbis were chosen for the nation Sunday, and they immediately pledged to promote understanding and harmony among the country’s sharply divided religious communities--and with its secular majority.

An electoral college of 150 Israeli religious and lay leaders selected Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, 56, as the chief Ashkenazic rabbi for Jews of European origin and Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, 52, as the chief Sephardic rabbi for Jews from the Middle East.

Praying that there will be “peace among us and within us,” Lau sought to bring to an end the bitter campaign over the two posts, which are politically as well as spiritually influential, and to begin his 10-year term as chief rabbi by reaching out to those who do not strictly observe Jewish law.

“There is not a single Jew who does not have at least a spark of faith in his heart,” said Lau, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.

The target of an extraordinary smear campaign, which portrayed him as a womanizer who had over more than two decades victimized many of those coming to him for help, Lau said: “I am extending my hand in peace. . . . I personally forgive and pardon (my opponents) and hope to open a new era.”

Lau received 71 votes, finishing well ahead of his nearest rival, who got 46, but Lau’s total was just half of the valid votes cast in the three-man race--and at least 15 votes fewer than had been pledged to him before the Israeli tabloid press began its lurid daily attacks on his character.

Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, was hugged and kissed by his supporters, who pushed and shoved to get closer to him, and the announcement of his election set off a great round of singing, dancing and hand clapping at the Chief Rabbinate in central Jerusalem.

But Bakshi-Doron’s election was probably more significant politically, for with it Shas, a predominantly Sephardic religious party, conquered the last stronghold of the Ashkenazi-led National Religious Party, which for the first time is not in the government coalition and thus has lost its monopoly control of religious affairs here.

“Shas is now on the map,” Interior Minister Arye Deri, a Shas leader, said as Shas supporters celebrated. “I am very happy. . . .

“For 44 years, the rabbinate has been controlled by the National Religious Party. We have seen what has resulted. Now, the rabbinate will be for all of Israel, not one group or party.”

Bakshi-Doron and Lau will succeed Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu, whose terms expire next month. Bakshi-Doron, currently chief Sephardic rabbi in the northern port of Haifa, received 82 votes, easily beating his two rivals.

Times researcher Emily L. Hauser in Jerusalem contributed to this story.