Halakhah, Law, and Worldview: Chief Rabbis Goren and Yosef and the Permission to Marry a Second Wife in Israeli Law

In the present article I argue, based on an examination of archival material that has not been investigated to date, that a similar move occurred in the second half of the 1970s: a debate between the two Chief Rabbis concerning the permission of Jewish men to marry, which was decided in practice by a change in existing legislation, clearly favoring the position of R. Ovadia Yosef over that of his Ashkenazi counterpart, R. Shlomo Goren. But whereas the legislation initiated by rabbis Herzog and Ouziel greatly reduced the ability of a Jewish man to marry a second wife (with a further narrowing in 1959), 33 years later Israeli law acted to extend this ability.