Aryeh Stern

Rabbi Stern was elected Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem on 22 October 2014. The position had been vacant for eleven years, following the passing of the former Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Rabbi Yitzhak Kolitzm in 2003.

On 28 December 2014, Rabbi Stern was appointed by President Reuven Rivlin as a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel.

Rabbi Stern was elected by a majority vote of 27 of the 48 representatives from the city's synagogues, city councils, and voters appointed by Naftali Bennett. He had been elected the candidate of the Religious Zionism sector in 2009. He faced a series of obstacles by political opponents, including motions in the Supreme Court to disqualify him from running due to an expired rabbinical certificate, and an attempt to postpone the elections until after his seventieth birth day when he would become ineligible to submit his candidacy.

Following the passing of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook in 1982, Rabbi Stern was appointed as lecturer in the Mercaz HaRav Kook yeshiva. He also lectures in other yeshivas, including Yeshivat HaKotel, Yeshivat Kiryat Shmona, Yeshivat Or Etzion, and Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tikva. Rabbi Stern was the head of Hadrom high school yeshiva in Rehovot, and was one of the founders of the Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts for the religious-national sector in 1989. In addition, he has been instrumental in the organization of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's House in Jerusalem, an active museum of Rabbi Kook's life, and in the establishment of the Merchavim Institute for training teachers and religious educators. Over the years, Rabbi Stern has written hundreds of Halachic responsa and religious-philosophical articles regarding Jewish thought.

Aryeh Stern (Hebrew: אריה שטרן, born 27 November 1944) is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel, and the chief editor of the Halacha Brura and Berur Halacha Institute.

Aryeh Stern was born in 1944 in Tel Aviv, and studied at the HaYishuv HaChadash yeshiva, led by Rabbi Yehuda Kolodetsky. Stern then moved to the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and after a short while to the Mercaz HaRav Kook yeshiva, following his rabbi who served as its head, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. After Rabbi Stern married, he commenced his studies for dayanut, Jewish-religious judgeship, in the Tel Aviv kolel of Rabbi Ephraim Bordiansky, who also instructed Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.