 With the Rabbinate existing as a government department, there have been calls for the entire department to be shut down, and for things to return to a localised model of rabbinate.These calls have increased in recent times because of two former Chief Rabbis being convicted of fraud, and the increasing encroachment of the religious institutions on the lives of Israelis.There are also charges that the office has become a political, rather than a religious, office, and that it has become beholden to the Haredi world and become their "puppets".