Rabbi Chaim Druckman, non secular chief of political non secular Zionism, dies at 90

Rabbi Chaim Druckman, a number one, if controversial, determine within the conservative finish of the non secular Zionist motion, died on Sunday after contracting the coronavirus earlier this month on the age of 90.

Druckman, a protégé of the influential nationalist Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, was credited with coining the identify of Gush Emunim — actually, the Believers’ Bloc — for the nascent settler motion, which was based in his Merkaz Shapira front room in 1974. The motion finally shifted the predominant component inside non secular Zionism from the center-left political place it had maintained on the founding of the state to the proper, after which to the far-right the place it stands as we speak.

A winner of the Israel Prize, Druckman was a serious energy dealer in Israeli politics for many years, as a Knesset member, a deputy minister and extra just lately because the non secular chief of spiritual Zionist events. He additionally held influential non secular posts, serving as dean of the Or Etzion Yeshiva, head of the community of all seminaries affiliated with the non secular Zionist Bnei Akiva motion, and president of the union of Hesder yeshivas, seminaries for males who mix army service with bible study.

Over time, Druckman butted heads with ultra-Orthodox rabbis over his extra liberal views on conversion to Judaism, in addition to with state authorities for his at-times subversive stances, notably his requires non secular troopers to refuse orders to evict West Financial institution settlements. He has additionally confronted criticism for defending outstanding sexual offenders.

Druckman contracted the COVID-19 virus earlier this month, for the second time. He initially obtained therapy from a crew of docs at his residence in the neighborhood of Mercaz Shapira in central Israel, however was moved to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem final week after his situation deteriorated.

Medical doctors resuscitated Druckman final Wednesday afternoon, however he remained in critical situation by the weekend.

“The rabbi was hospitalized in Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in very critical situation and was handled diligently the workers of the intensive care ward for the previous 10 days, however they had been finally compelled to pronounce him useless this night,” the hospital stated.

Druckman was shortly eulogized by the nation’s main politicians and public figures.

“The Torah of Israel, the folks of Israel, and the land of Israel had been his focus hour after hour, day after day, and he devoted his life for the State of Israel and the Jewish folks,” stated President Isaac Herzog.

Non secular Zionism occasion chief Bezalel Smotrich referred to Druckman’s loss of life in Biblical phrases. “We’ve got turn out to be orphans, fatherless,” he wrote, citing the E-book of Lamentations.

“The folks of Israel and your complete world has misplaced one of many non secular giants of our generations, a pious man, a trainer, a person whose entire life was devoted to the Torah of the land of Israel, to the folks of Israel and the land of Israel,” Smotrich stated.

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who was as soon as one in all Druckman’s prime disciples, recalled his former non secular chief as a person of moderation “who used all of his power to mediate and to unify all elements of the Israeli folks.”

Incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu particularly recalled Druckman’s efforts within the space of conversion, saying the rabbi “discovered a approach of bringing hearts collectively that helped lots of recent immigrants to affix the ranks of our folks.”

From Kuty to Palestine

Born within the city of Kuty in what was then-Poland and now Ukraine in 1932, Druckman survived the Holocaust first by hiding together with his dad and mom after which by fleeing Europe in 1944, posing because the son of a pair that had no youngsters of their very own as a way to immigrate to then-Palestine. Shortly after the battle, his dad and mom joined him within the Holy Land.

In Palestine, Druckman studied in a Bnei Akiva-affiliated yeshiva in the neighborhood of Kfar Haroeh, and — in 1949, enlisted within the nascent Israel Protection Forces within the Nahal program, throughout which era he additionally helped set up the non secular communities of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi in northern Israel and Kibbutz Saad close to the Gaza border.

After his army service, Druckman studied on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva — the flagship establishment of the non secular Zionist motion — in Jerusalem below Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi and the progenitor of the non secular Zionist theology. An excellent and devoted scholar, Druckman emerged as one in all Kook’s prime disciples.

After a quick stint in the US within the mid-Fifties as a Bnei Akiva emissary, Druckman was despatched by Kook to run the Or Etzion Yeshiva in Mercaz Shapira, then a tiny, new group shaped on the grounds of an deserted Palestinian village northeast of Ashkelon. As dean of the Or Etzion Yeshiva, Druckman taught a few of Israel’s most influential leaders, together with Protection Minister Benny Gantz, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, Likud Knesset member Israel Katz, and plenty of others.

On Sunday evening, Gantz eulogized his former trainer, recalling his time on the Or Etzion Yeshiva.

“My coronary heart weeps over the loss of life of Rabbi Druckman. I had the honour of being one in all his college students on the Or Etzion Yeshiva as a youth,” Gantz stated. “The rabbi was a believer, devoted to the State of Israel and the Zionist thought… and I at all times discovered that he had an open ear.”

Following the devastating 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict, Druckman and a bunch of different Kook college students shaped Gush Emunim, a bunch devoted to hardline insurance policies on territorial points, notably these coping with the biblical land of Israel.

“This land is the Land of Israel, and within the Land of Israel Jews [should be allowed] to settle wherever,” Druckman stated in a recent interview wherein he additionally supported the creation of a “halachic state,” one working in accordance with Jewish legislation.

Forward of the fateful 1977 elections, which might lead to Israel’s first Likud-led authorities, Kook tapped Druckman to run as quantity two on the ticket of the Nationwide Non secular Social gathering, extra generally identified by its abbreviation Mafdal.

When Menachem Start’s Likud gained once more in 1981, Druckman was named deputy non secular companies minister. He served in that position for simply seven months earlier than quitting in protest of the federal government’s eviction of the Yamit settlement on the Sinai Peninsula as a part of the peace settlement with Egypt. Throughout that point, Druckman and his household additionally briefly moved to Yamit as a way to additional struggle the expulsion.

“I oppose it. I voted in opposition to it. The Yamit space is Eretz Yisrael in accordance with the Bible,” Druckman told a reporter in 1982, utilizing the Hebrew time period for the Land of Israel. “Eretz Yisrael you construct, you don’t destroy. I’m in opposition to evacuating any settlement, no matter we get in return.”

In 1983, Druckman broke off from the extra centrist Mafdal and helped type a right-wing non secular Zionist occasion, Morasha, which carried out poorly within the following election. In 1986, Druckman left Morasha and rejoined Mafdal. Two years later, he dropped out of politics. Druckman returned to the Knesset in 1999, serving the total four-year time period throughout the coronary heart of the Second Intifada, earlier than retiring from official political life in 2003.

For years, he served because the non secular chief of the Jewish House occasion below Naftali Bennett, earlier than switching to publicly help Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religous Zionism occasion forward of the March 2021 elections.

Conversion controversy

Starting within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, following the wave of immigration from the Soviet Union, Druckman grew to become deeply concerned within the situation of conversion to Judaism, serving because the chief rabbinic decide, or Av Beit Din, on a conversion court docket and main a authorities fee that advocated performing extra lenient conversions for minors. In 2004, he was appointed head of the State Conversion Authority, a physique inside the Prime Minister’s Workplace that oversees conversions in Israel.

His extra reasonable stances on conversion put Druckman deeply at odds with the much more stringent positions of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. This long-simmering disagreement got here to a head in 2007 when a rabbinic decide listening to a divorce case involving a girl who had transformed in Druckman’s court docket dominated that her conversion was invalid and the Druckman and the opposite judges on the conversion court docket had been “sinners and heretics.” When the girl appealed this to the Excessive Rabbinical Court docket, the judges not solely upheld the decrease court docket’s ruling however expanded it, nullifying all conversions carried out by Druckman within the earlier 9 years and declaring him a disqualified decide.

This dramatic ruling affected hundreds of people that transformed by Druckman and formally remained in place for 4 years till the Excessive Court docket of Justice overturned the rabbinic court docket’s ruling.

Although it was finally for naught, Druckman was a reluctant however eventual supporter of the outgoing authorities’s conversion reforms, which ultimately didn’t move earlier than the coalition fell aside earlier this 12 months.

A murky historical past of defending the indefensible

As a staunch believer in and chief of the settlement motion, Druckman has usually spoken out in opposition to the eviction of West Financial institution outposts by the army, saying that non secular troopers ought to attempt to get out of performing such operations and outright refuse if compelled to.

Druckman voiced his views forward of Israel’s 2005 Disengagement, when the federal government evacuated all settlements within the Gaza Strip and quite a few them within the northern West Financial institution, signing a letter together with quite a few different non secular Zionist rabbis claiming that Jewish legislation forbade “a Jew from collaborating in or in any approach helping within the dismantling of a settlement or an outpost within the land of Israel.” Druckman made comparable remarks in 2010, although he considerably softened his language, leaving it unclear if he believed troopers ought to explicitly refuse an order to evict a settlement.

Not like a few of his extra zealous contemporaries, Druckman typically tried to strike a stability between his extra non secular sensibilities and the realities of dwelling in a democratic nation. He opposed a spiritual ruling that forbade Jews from renting residences and houses to Arab Israelis however stated it was justified to refuse to lease to Arabs in some instances.

Druckman usually defended Jewish extremists, together with these convicted of violent crimes in opposition to Palestinians. In 1988, when he was a Knesset member, Druckman despatched a letter of help to a member of the Jewish Underground terrorist group upon his launch from jail, after serving a four-year sentence for his position in a lethal terror assault on the Islamic School in Hebron in 1983 that left three Palestinian college students useless and dozens wounded. In 2012, Druckman organized a send-off occasion for a Zvi Strock, the son of now-Non secular Zionism MK Orit Strock, who was convicted of torturing a Palestinian teenager 5 years prior. Extra just lately, in 2019, he led a campaign to boost cash to pay the authorized charges of a settler youth who was indicted for killing a Palestinian mom of eight.

Druckman has additionally stood by rabbis accused of sexual assault. Druckman was chastised by the state legal professional in 1999 for failing to report a number of instances of sexual abuse by the dean of Netiv Meir Yeshiva, Ze’ev Kopolevitch, who was later convicted of performing indecent acts on his college students.

Although Druckman in 2012 acknowledged he ought to have reported the matter to police, he once more got here to the protection of one other rabbi convicted of sexual abuse, the charismatic Moti Elon, in 2013. Even after Elon was discovered responsible, Druckman introduced the disgraced rabbi to talk at his Or Etzion Yeshiva for years, till lastly in 2019, after years of criticism, he determined to cease inviting him, saying in a public letter that Elon ought to not seem in public. In current months, Druckman has been dismissive of rape allegations in opposition to Rabbi Zvi Tau, calling them “gossip.”

Druckman is survived by his spouse of 65 years, Sarah, a physician, one of many first non secular ladies to graduate from Hebrew College’s medical program.

The 2 have 9 youngsters, together with one adopted daughter and a daughter with Down syndrome. They’ve scores of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.