Israel: Rabbi Haim Druckman, spiritual leader of religious Zionists, dies aged 90

Zionist religious leader Rabbi Haim Druckman has died aged 90 following a weeks-long battle with the coronavirus, Israeli media reported. Israel Prize winner Chaim Druckman has been an important player in Israeli politics for decades, serving as a Knesset member, deputy minister and, more recently, spiritual leader of religious Zionist parties.

He has also held influential religious positions, as dean of Yeshiva Or Etzion, head of the network of all seminaries affiliated with the religious Zionist movement Bnei Akiva, and president of the union of yeshivas Hesder, seminaries for men who combine military service and religious study.

Druckman contracted Covid-19 earlier this month for the second time. He was initially treated by a team of doctors at his home in the Mercaz Shapira community in central Israel, but was transferred to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after his condition deteriorated. He leaves behind a wife of 65 years, nine children and hundreds of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

New Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed sadness over the loss of the rabbi. “A great light of love for Israel went out today,” he said. “As someone who personally experienced the horrors of the Holocaust as a child, Rabbi Druckman devoted himself to nation-building when he immigrated to Israel…His great activity as a member of the Knesset reflects the fact that he was not only a representative of the sector he represented, but also a loyal messenger to the general public in Israeli society.

“I mourn the passing of Rabbi Chaim Druckman. He was a public emissary and spiritual leader who led with vision and action some of the most important undertakings of Torah, Zionism and revivalism of our generation,” he said. tweeted President Isaac Herzog.

“The Jewish people are losing one of the spiritual giants of their generation, a righteous man, an educator, a man who dedicated his life to the Torah, to the Jewish people and to the land of Israel,” Betsalel Smotrich said in a statement.

Born in 1932 in Poland, he escaped deportation during the Second World War and immigrated to Palestine in 1944 under British mandate. A student of Rabbi Tzvi Yehouda Kook, the spiritual leader of the Gush Emunim (faith bloc), the movement that founded the settlements in the West Bank, he is considered one of his successors since the 1990s.

Entering politics in 1977 within the National Religious Party (PNR), an ally of Menachem Begin’s Likud, he had sat in the Knesset (Parliament) for 14 years. Responsible for conversions to Judaism in the Prime Minister’s office in the late 1990s, he advocated a more liberal policy than that imposed by the Israeli rabbinate, run by ultra-Orthodox. In 1993, he was injured when a Palestinian terrorist shot his car, an attack in which his driver was killed. He received the prestigious Israel Prize in 2012 for his contribution to society.