Shlomo Amar

Shlomo Moshe Amar (שלמה משה עמר; سليمان موسى عمار; born April 1, 1948) is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel.

His family immigrated to Israel in 1962 when he was 14.

He studied in the Ponovezh Yeshiva.

He transferred to a small Yeshiva in the northern town of Shlomi, where at age 19, was appointed the rabbi of the town.

At age 20 he also served as the head of kashrut for the city of Nahariyya.

Amar studied dayanut in Haifa under Rabbi Yaakov Nissan Rosenthal.

Amar was a close associate and student of the spiritual leader of the Shas party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef.

Before his appointment as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Amar had served as the head of the Petah Tikva Rabbinical Court.

Jews converted under Reform or Conservative auspices abroad have been accepted under the Law of Return since 1989, but the 2006 case deals with conversions that occurred in Israel.

Amar argued that if the Reform converts were permitted to stay in the country, they would eventually become frustrated with their inability to marry Jews (as the Chief Rabbinate would not recognize their conversions as valid), and this would lead to them marrying non-Jews, which would polarize the state.

He was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city.

Shlomo and his wife, Mazal Sabag, have 12 children.

His daughter Yehudit Rachel is married to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the son of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, and grandson of Ovadia Yosef.

As the former Rishon LeZion, Amar serves as the spiritual leader of the Sephardic community in the Land of Israel.

Jews from around the world continue to look to him as a leader.

In 2002, Rav Amar was sent by then-Interior Minister Eli Yishai to Ethiopia to meet with the Falash Mura community, a group of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity.

He subsequently recommended that they undergo a conventional conversion to Judaism, which provoked an angry reaction.

He served in the position of Rishon LeZion from 2003 to 2013; his Ashkenazi counterpart during his tenure was Yona Metzger.

Later, in 2003, as Chief Rabbi, he reversed himself, saying that anyone related to a member of Beta Israel through matrilineal descent qualified as Jewish and should be brought to Israel by the government (and then undergo a formal conversion ceremony after a period of study).

In January 2004, following the recommendations of the Knesset and the Chief Rabbis, Ariel Sharon announced a plan (still largely unimplemented) to bring all of the Falash Mura (presently close to 18,000) to Israel by the end of 2007.

In 2004, Amar traveled to Portugal to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Lisbon synagogue Shaare Tikvah.

During his stay, Amar met descendants of Jewish families persecuted by the Inquisition who still practice Judaism (Bnei Anusim) at the house of Rabbi Boaz Pash.

A meeting between a Chief Rabbi and Portuguese Marranos (Bnei Anusim) had not happened in centuries.

Amar promised to create a committee to evaluate the halakhic status of the community.

Due to the delay of the committee to do any work a second community in Lisbon, Comunidade Judaica Masorti Beit Israel, was later established to ensure the recognition of the Bnei Anusim as Jews.

Amar pointed out the difference between his idea and that of his predecessor, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, who had proposed civil marriage for anyone interested in 2004.

Amar's plan, by comparison, would only apply to the marriage of non-Jews with each other.

Amar stated that his suggestion was designed to solve the problem of Israel's 300,000 religionless, non-Jewish immigrants, many from the former Soviet Union who claim Jewish identity and citizenship, but whose Jewish status may not be accepted by Orthodox standards and the Chief Rabbinate.

Amar called on representatives of the non-Jewish immigrants to discuss the matter with representatives of the rabbinate.

Rav Amar made news in September 2005 when he told a Shinui MK that he was willing to support civil marriages for non-Jews and people who are unaffiliated with a religion.

In November 2006, Amar submitted a draft bill to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that would remove the conversion clause from the Israeli Law of Return.

This would prevent converts from all streams of Judaism, including Orthodox Judaism, from having automatic citizenship rights in Israel, and restrict the Law of Return to applying only to Jews by birth whose mothers were Jewish.

This also affects potential immigrants who are descended from only one Jewish parent or grandparent, not all of whom would be accepted as Jewish under Orthodox law.

Amar said in interviews that the bill was designed to prevent "a situation where there are two peoples in the State of Israel".

Amar said the Law of Return's inclusion of converts had turned the conversion process into a political, rather than religious, exercise, and that many people were converting for immigration purposes, not out of sincere religiosity.

Amar suggested that an alternative could be that converts, upon arriving in Israel, went through a naturalization process via the Citizenship Law.

The bill also gives rabbinic courts and the Chief Rabbinate sole authority over conversions.

Amar said that the bill was partially written in response to the Israeli Supreme Court deliberating a dozen petitions by the Israeli Reform movement to allow Reform converts to stay in Israel.

In 2014 he became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

Amar was born in Casablanca, Morocco, to Eliyahu and Mima (Miriam) Amar.