Rabbi Chaim Druckman, giant of Israeli settlement and Religious Zionist movements, dies at 90

(JTA) — Rabbi Chaim Druckman, whose mission was to unite the folks of Israel, was father to a motion now poised to sow a few of its deepest divisions in many years.

Druckman, who died Sunday at 90 after contracting COVID-19, was a large within the non secular Zionism motion, which sought to combine the 2 preeminent philosophies that noticed themselves as bulwarks in opposition to Jewish disintegration: Orthodox Judaism and Zionism.

Within the Nineteen Fifties, he established the hesder motion, which blended Torah examine with army service. For tens of hundreds of spiritual Jews, his innovation resolved a dilemma that had beset Israel’s founders: What was probably the most significant means for younger Orthodox males to spend their first years of maturity?

“We examine Torah to satisfy our nationwide obligation and serve within the military to satisfy our non secular obligation,” Druckman usually stated.

Through the years, he led yeshivas and youth actions to increase that imaginative and prescient, and in 2012, he gained the Israel Prize, Israel’s nationwide award, for his lifetime of contributions to spiritual Zionist training.

But as a lot as he sought to bridge divides, he was as incessantly positioned at their fault traces, in recent times disparaging non-Orthodox Jews and mentoring extremists who search the marginalization of non-Jewish and non-Orthodox minorities in Israel. He additionally at the very least twice defended and sought to rehabilitate non secular leaders convicted of sexual abuse, together with of youngsters.

Druckman was born in 1932 in Kuty, in what was then Poland and what’s now Ukraine. He and his dad and mom went into hiding throughout the Holocaust after which fled to the Soviet Union. He entered British Mandate Palestine in 1944 posing because the little one of one other couple and was reunited together with his dad and mom after the battle.

He quickly turned a disciple of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the rabbi who helped form the nationalist outlook of the Nationwide Non secular Occasion. Kook’s teachings drove Druckman to grow to be one of many first leaders of the non secular Zionist motion to embrace the settlement of lands captured by Israel within the 1967 Six-Day Battle. He was on the seminal 1968 Passover seder in Hebron that’s broadly seen because the launch of the non secular settlement motion and is believed to have coined the identify of its principal physique, Gush Emunim, which implies bloc of believers.

Druckman turned a figurehead of the settlement motion, though he lived most of his life in Mercaz Shapira, the Israeli village close to Ashkelon the place he ran the influential Or Etzion Yeshiva. He served within the Knesset in coalitions led by Likud and Labor prime ministers, from 1977 to 1988 after which from 1999 to 2003, with quick intervals within the opposition.

Within the wake of the huge inflow immigrants after the autumn of the Soviet Union, Druckman as a senior non secular court docket choose led an effort to ease conversion to Orthodox Judaism. His suasions backfired, main haredi Orthodox judges to hunt the nullification of hundreds of conversions he had supervised.

Nevertheless a lot he preached reconciliation amongst Jews, he stood onerous and quick in opposition to any try to dismantle settlements, going as far as to advise troopers to refuse orders to participate within the elimination of settlements. He additionally stood by Jews accused and convicted of violent crimes related to tensions over the settlements, together with homicide and terrorism, elevating funds for these accused and welcoming them again into society.

He additionally stood by individuals who have been accused of sexual abuse a number of occasions. He was rebuked in 1999 for failing to report credible studies of sexual assault by a yeshiva head he supervised, Zev Kopilevich, and he later championed one other rabbi convicted of sexual abuse, Moti Elon. Whereas he conceded in 2013 that the federal government was proper to rebuke him, he additionally dismissed as “gossip” simply this month a number of allegations of rape in opposition to one other yeshiva head, Zvi Tau.

Till not too long ago, Druckman championed Naftali Bennett and his Jewish House Occasion because the pure inheritor to the Nationwide Non secular Occasion custom — however in 2021 when Bennett selected the trail of reconciliation as soon as championed by Druckman, becoming a member of a unity authorities with secular events, Druckman minimize him off and as an alternative embraced the extremist Non secular Zionist Occasion led by Bezalel Smotrich.

Druckman performed a task in brokering the entry of the Non secular Zionist Occasion into the federal government that Benjamin Netanyahu is anticipated to carry to energy in coming days. The entry of Smotrich and a colleague, Itamar Ben-Gvir, into the federal government is prone to precipitate a disaster with Diaspora Jewry. They favor limiting Israeli legal guidelines to favor the Orthodox, annexing the West Financial institution and loosening legal guidelines that limit troops from killing or bodily harming Palestinians.

At Druckman’s funeral on Monday, Smotrich stated Druckman “reproached” him incessantly for his excesses, however in a latest interview with Yisrael Hayom, the nationalist every day, Druckman made clear that lots of the concepts Smotrich champions had his blessing, together with his proposal for a state based mostly on non secular regulation and his plans for anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

Tens of hundreds of individuals attended Druckman’s funeral Monday in his dwelling village of Mercaz Shapira. Israel’s leaders at his funeral remembered him as a unifier.

“All of us have been your sons, all of us have been your college students,” President Isaac Herzog stated, in line with the Instances of Israel.