Shlomo Amar

In December 2019, he visited Bahrain for an interfaith event, where he met Bahraini king Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and religious leaders from Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Russia, the United States, Italy, India, and Thailand.

In September 2017, he stated that followers of Reform Judaism "shout about Holocaust deniers in Iran, but they deny more than Holocaust deniers" in response to petitions demanding that the Israeli government build a mixed-gender prayer site at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Amar has faced heavy criticism over his comments on LGBT issues. In November 2016, he stated in an interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper that homosexuality was a "cult of abominations," and that it is "punishable by death" according to the Torah. In July 2019, he stated that LGBT people "cannot be religious" and endorsed sexual conversion therapy. In June 2021, he described the annual Jerusalem LGBT Pride Parade as "the abomination parade".

In April 2015, Amar expressed his "stomach churning" in light of rabbi Shlomo Riskin's creation of the "Day to Praise" which calls Christians and Jews to recite the Hallel prayer together on Israel's Independence Day.

Rabbi Amar played a major role in comforting French Jews after the Charlie Hebdo shootings of 2015. Rabbi Amar maintains a close relationship with the French community and Chief Rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia. Rav Amar has been involved in the spread of Torah learning in Israel and abroad through many programs including the Semichas Chaver Program (SCP), which he oversees and certifies.

In October 2014, after Jerusalem had gone 11 years without a chief rabbi(Following the death of Jersusalem's Chief Rabbi Shalom Messas), Amar was elected as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem alongside Ashkenazi chief rabbi Aryeh Stern. Amar had the support of both Jerusalem's mayor Nir Barkat and The Jewish Home's chairman Naftali Bennett. Amar enjoys a close relationship with Jerusalem's current mayor Moshe Lion.

Rav Amar in his roles as Chief Rabbi has become an unofficial ambassador of worldwide Jewry and Sephardic Jewry. In 2013, Rabbi Amar was given the highest royal honor by the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI. Rabbi Amar had multiple meetings with Spanish royalty. In 2014 Amar met with King Juan Carlos I of Spain and again April 2015, Rabbi Amar was invited to meet with King Felipe VI of Spain at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid, Spain to discuss Spanish citizenship for Sephardic Jews.

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.

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. 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.

In 2004, Rav 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. This was an historical meeting that had not happened between a Chief Rabbi and Portuguese Marranos (Bnei Anusim) 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

Shlomo Amar was born in Casablanca, Morocco, to Eliyahu and Mima (Miriam) Amar. His family immigrated to Israel in 1962 when Shlomo was 14. Shlomo studied in the Ponovezh Yeshiva. He transferred to a small Yeshiva in the northern town of Shlomi, where at age 19, was appointed as the rabbi of the town. At age 20 he also served as the head of kashrut for the city of Nahariyya. Rav Amar studied dayanut in Haifa under Rabbi Yaakov Nissan Rosenthal. Rav 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. He was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city.

Shlomo Moshe Amar (Hebrew: שלמה משה עמאר; Arabic: سليمان موسى عمار; born April 1, 1948) is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. He served in the position of Rishon LeZion from 2003 to 2013; his Ashkenazi counterpart during his tenure was Yona Metzger. Since 2014, he currently serves as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.