Yaakov Glasman

Rabbi Yaakov Glasman is a rabbi and communal leader in the Jewish community of Melbourne, Australia.

Rabbinic career

Glasman was a pulpit rabbi at the North Eastern Jewish Centre, before taking up the role at St. Kilda Hebrew Congregation, one of Australia's oldest active congregations, replacing Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn.

Glasman was the president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria (RCV), and when the Organization of Rabbis of Australia (ORA) was closed due to the revelations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Glasman was elected to be the inaugural president of the new Rabbinical Council of Australia and New Zealand (RCANZ). He held this position until he handed the role over to Rabbi Moshe Gutnick.

Positions

Glasman has taken a number of positions on various topics that have put him at odds with the majority of his rabbinic colleagues.

He has been very outspoken about his desire to accept LGBT Jews into the Orthodox community. During the Marriage Equality Plebiscite in 2017, while still president of the RCANZ, Glasman took a stand against the RCV who had released a statement saying that all Jews should vote against the proposal. Glasman said that the RCV should not be telling people how to vote on divisive issues. In response to Glasman's statement, Rabbi Chaim Cowen, one of the authors of the statement, resigned from the RCANZ. However it was reported that Glasman did favour some discrimination against same sex attracted employees in Jewish schools.

During the Royal commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Glasman took a consistent stance on the historic wrongs of the covering up of abuse, and was forceful in his view that under Jewish law any knowledge of abuse must be taken to police. Glasman dismissed some of the troubling findings from the Royal Commission as a fringe group within the rabbinic community. One of these claims included they did not know as a fact that it was against the law for an adult to touch the genitals of a minor. Glasman claimed that the rabbinic community had distanced themselves from such claims, and that they were disturbed by them.

Glasman joined the rabbinic community in opposing the proposed Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation in Victoria. Glasman said "halakha views human life as sacred and its worth is not measured by varying levels of quality of life. With regard to end-of-life decisions, halakha clearly and categorically prohibits the performance of any act that shortens a patient’s life."