Rabbi Yitzhak Kolitz

Many of the flock of the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Yitzhak Kolitz, who has died aged 81, are descended from European Jews who emigrated to Ottoman Palestine before the predominantly secular Zionist influx of the 20th century. These haredim - literally, those who tremble before God - still feel at odds with the mores of the worldly Israeli polity, despite their growing numbers.

Kolitz was exceptional, a state-appointee whose judgments they could accept. At the same time, he had to heed the concerns of Jerusalem's non-observant and "modern orthodox" Jews. Powerful behind the scenes, if somewhat diffident in public, he was forever mediating between halacha (religious law) and parliamentary legislation.

Liberal streams of Judaism - conservative and reform - may remember him for his view that progressives were not legitimately Jewish because they spurned halacha. He rejected the validity of their conversions, and virulently opposed their participation in Jerusalem's religious council. For years, he encouraged an orthodox boycott of any bodies that accepted reform rabbis, thereby creating a crisis in the state-backed religious establishment.

Reform and conservative Jews constitute a tiny percentage of the Israeli population, but make up the overwhelming majority of synagogue-affiliated Americans. Kolitz's slight exacerbated a latent rift between diaspora Jews and Israel.

Unlike the national chief rabbis of Israel and Britain, Kolitz eschewed interfaith dialogue. He condemned Christian proselytisers, and attacked a conference at which Jewish and Christian leaders discussed modern challenges. "The whole concept of inter-denominational dialogue is foreign to Judaism," he declared.

Above all, Kolitz strenuously upheld the traditional Jewish injunction against harming graves. "Human bones are not earthen vessels to be displayed in a museum," he stated. Rioting erupted in haredi neighbourhoods in 1992, when excavations for road expansions in northern Jerusalem revealed five ancient burial caves. To Kolitz, a seamless thread connected the Jews of millennia past to their present-day descendants.

"Of course, we have to take account of the needs of the living", he said, referring to Jerusalem's dreadful traffic jams, "but we have to do so without offending the honour of the dead. These dear Jews lived to see our holy temple; why should we disturb their eternal repose?"

At first, the rabbi backed Atra Kadisha, a haredi group that disrupts archaeological excavations. "In politics, there are compromises, but in Jewish law there cannot be," he announced in 1993. By 1998, however, he had fashioned what he thought was a face-saving settlement, only to be berated by haredim who felt he had betrayed them.

Meanwhile, one columnist accused politicians of "kow-towing to the most radical, least accommodating interpreters of halacha." Kolitz remained agnostic about the occupied territories and disparate claims to Jerusalem. All his life, he defended "Torah-true Judaism". He proudly ordained the first Israeli-educated Russian rabbis since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

Born into a rabbinical family, Kolitz grew up in Olita (Alytus), a town straddling the Neman river in southern Lithuania. At the age of 11, he left for British mandate Palestine - a fortuitous move, as the Nazis and their local minions later killed virtually every Jew in Olita. He studied Torah at Jerusalem's esteemed Hebron yeshiva (or religious school), became a rabbinical court judge in 1955, headed two religious high schools, and was ordained chief rabbi in 1981.

The young student emulated his mentor Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (1878-1953), in becoming a strict interpreter of laws. At the same time - and also like Karelitz - Kolitz used patience and personal modesty to solve problems. On one occasion, he co-authored an edict to assist women held in agunah (marital bondage), ruling that if a selfish husband would not grant his wife a divorce as mandated by a beit din (or Jewish court), he should be socially and financially ostracised and effectively barred from his synagogue.

Kolitz married a prominent Karliner rabbi's daughter, Gittel Tova, who sustained her husband during their early years of penury. She died in 1999; Kolitz leaves a sister, Rachel Maralioth, and many children and grandchildren.

· Yitzhak Kolitz, rabbi, born 1922; died July 24 2003