This week’s elections for the Chief Rabbinate, which drew much greater attention from both politicians and the public than in the past, ended in the victory of rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef. Both are sons of former chief rabbis, and both enjoyed the support of the ultra-Orthodox leadership. Their election guarantees that the official state rabbinate will remain the same as it was, without even the thin coating of openness promised by Rabbi David Stav, the losing candidate of Habayit Hayehudi and the center-left parties.

The nonreligious public sees the Chief Rabbinate as a bureaucratic organization that is meant to issue kashrut certificates, conduct marriages and arrange divorces, and that suffers from rot, corruption and nepotism. The rabbinate also represents values that are unacceptable in today’s Israeli society, such as discrimination against women − who are not allowed to serve as Orthodox rabbis − and ethnic segregation.

But criticism of the rabbinate generally focuses on these evils, while ignoring its central mission: official state coercion to preserve the “purity of the Jewish People,” through laws governing personal status. These laws prevent marriages between Jews and non-Jews inside Israel, as well as same-sex marriages and even marriages between a cohen ‏(member of the priestly caste‏) and a divorcee.

The rabbinate represents an ideology that strives to preserve the genetic profile of the Jewish community and creates serious difficulties for those who want to join its ranks. Such an ideology must be called by its true name: racism.

The religious establishment shares Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben Dahan’s way of thinking: “Individual rights are destructive.” As far as he is concerned, nothing is more important than ensuring “the continuity of the Jewish People” through in-marriage, and Israeli citizens must subordinate themselves to that goal.

The state gives official sanction to the rabbinate’s racism by the very existence of an official institution intended to limit individual freedom in choosing a spouse. Only instituting civil marriage and divorce and abolishing the legal status of the Orthodox rabbinate will guarantee Israel’s future as a liberal and democratic state that respects human and civil rights.

Religious services must be reorganized outside an official state authority, along the lines of the Haredi rabbinate, which functions due to the support of its community rather than due to state coercion. This is the battle on which secular society must focus. The election of the conservative rabbis Yosef and Lau gives it an opportunity to do so.