State halakha – adapting halakha to the state and a modern army out of the sanctity of human life and courage in ruling.
Biography
The first Chief Military Rabbi and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. He created a halakhic foundation for the army and Israeli sovereignty, released the agunot of fallen IDF soldiers, and formed an orderly teaching on national questions – from the laws of war to ascending the Temple Mount.
includes 4 inspiration linksThe generations follow the Rambam’s introduction to the Mishneh Torah. A dashed line is inspiration, not direct transmission.
A Halakhic Life's Work and a National-Statist Doctrine: The Work and Torah Teaching of Major General Rabbi Shlomo Goren
20 min read·3,924 words
Summary
This survey traces the revolutionary figure of Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the man who shaped military and state halakha with the founding of the State of Israel. The text sketches the course of the rabbi's life, from his days as a young Torah prodigy to his service as Chief Military Rabbi and the mark he left as Chief Rabbi of Israel, with emphasis on halakhic courage and on an outlook that sanctifies human life and moral values. The source details his monumental contributions, among them the regulation of the laws of war and the army that balance operational necessity with compassion, the resolution of the painful human problems of the agunot (the "chained" wives) of fallen IDF soldiers, and the establishment of a systematic doctrine on ascending the Temple Mount. The aim of the work is to present Rabbi Goren's activity as a bridge between the traditional rabbinic world and the needs of modern sovereignty, highlighting his determination to pay a personal price for the integrity of the nation and for halakhic justice.
The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 brought about a historic transformation in the world of Jewish halakha, which was required to pass at once from the framework of an exilic community, deprived of political power and passive, to a system of law and morality meant to guide an independent state sovereignty.[1] The man who stood at the heart of this Torah revolution, displaying halakhic daring and a profound religious-Zionist statism, was Major General Rabbi Shlomo Goren, of blessed memory.[1, 2, 3] As the first Chief Military Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later as the Chief Rabbi of the State, Rabbi Goren labored to develop "laws of the state" and the laws of the army and of war, uniquely combining brilliant analytical Talmudic erudition with an activist national outlook and uncompromising human sensitivity.[1, 2, 4]
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Roots, Education and Formative Stations of Life
Rabbi Shlomo Goren (originally Goronchik) was born on 21 Shevat 5678 (3 February 1918) in the town of Zambrów in Poland, to his parents Avraham and Chaya Tzippora.[4, 5, 6] In 1925, when he was about seven, the family immigrated to the Land of Israel and was among the founders of the religious moshav Kfar Hasidim, where Rabbi Goren studied at the school of the Mizrachi movement.[4, 5, 6] His exceptional Torah talent and his genius were evident from his early youth; after his family moved to Jerusalem he studied at the Etz Chaim Talmud Torah, and at the age of only 12 he was admitted to the prestigious Hebron Yeshiva, an achievement without precedent in the history of that institution.[5, 6]
At the age of only 17 Rabbi Goren received rabbinic ordination, and in the same year he published his first Torah work, Nezer HaKodesh ("The Holy Crown"), which dealt with halakhic novellae on the Laws of Disqualified Consecrated Offerings in Maimonides' (Rambam's) Mishneh Torah.[4, 5] During his years of study he absorbed Torah from great sages who shaped his path of thought and learning, foremost among them our master Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, the head of the Hebron Yeshiva Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, the leading halakhic authority of the generation Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, and his future father-in-law, Rabbi David Cohen ("the Nazir"), one of the foremost disciples of Rav Kook.[2, 5] His marriage to Tzfiya Goren in 1945 deepened his attachment to the teaching of "the Nazir" and to vegetarianism, a way of life he later adopted following a formative visit to a slaughterhouse in Canada.[2, 5] Of this marriage his children were born, among them the retired judge Tehiya Shapira.[2]
Alongside his yeshiva studies, Rabbi Goren acquired an academic education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the years 1940–1944.[2, 5] His security activity began when he joined the Haganah during the Great Arab Revolt in 1936.[5] Later, because of his dissatisfaction with the Haganah's line of action, he joined Lehi and operated in the underground under the code name "Yirmiyahu," although he firmly opposed harming innocent Arabs merely because of their origin.[5, 7] With the establishment of the IDF he was called upon to set up the first Military Rabbinate, and for about 23 years he shaped the face of religion in the army with the rank of major general, until his retirement in 1971.[2, 5, 8] After that he served in the municipal and national rabbinic leadership.[2, 4]
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Laying the Foundations of the Laws of the Army and of War: The Meshiv Milchamah Project
Rabbi Goren's most revolutionary contribution to the world of Torah was the writing of his comprehensive halakhic rulings on matters of the army and war, which were collected in the three monumental volumes of his responsa, Meshiv Milchamah ("Turning Back the Battle").[1, 8, 11] Rabbi Goren was required to investigate questions that had not been discussed in practice since the destruction of the Second Temple, and he set up a complete body of Torah that balances the operational duty to win with Jewish moral values.[1, 12]
Principles of the Morality of Combat and the Attitude to Human Life
In the comprehensive essay that opens the Meshiv Milchamah series, Rabbi Goren sets out his value-based conception of the morality of combat, which he divides into several principal layers that follow from one another systematically [12]:
The value of the "image of God" as the supreme value: Rabbi Goren states categorically that human life is the very highest value in the Torah of Israel.[12] This value is not limited to members of the covenant alone but applies to every human being created in the image of God, without discrimination.[12] He proves this at length through the sayings "Beloved is man, for he was created in the image" and the prohibition on singing a song of praise at the downfall of the wicked, and concludes from this that there is an absolute prohibition on rejoicing at the downfall of Israel's enemies, since the Holy One, blessed be He, does not desire the destruction of His creatures.[12]
The commandment of war and the prohibition on evading operational duty: alongside compassion and the recognition of the sanctity of life, there is an absolute halakhic obligation to go out and fight the enemy without fear.[12] Rabbi Goren relies on the sharp ruling of Maimonides (Rambam), according to which a soldier who hesitates, is afraid or refrains from fighting wholeheartedly transgresses a Torah prohibition and is regarded as though he had shed the blood of all.[12] Therefore there is no room for evasion or moral slackness in the hour of battle.[12]
The halakhic distinction between combatants and non-combatants: despite the broad permission to kill the enemy in time of war, this permission is limited solely to active combatants.[12] There is a complete prohibition on harming a non-combatant civilian population, women and children.[12] Rabbi Goren clarifies that ancient commands of annihilation such as "you shall save alive nothing that breathes" were local and specific to their time because of the cruelty of the ancient nations, and that nothing may be learned from them for the wars of our generation, which are waged by right of self-defense.[12] Likewise, the saying of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi), "The best of the gentiles in war—kill," is explained by him as merely a historical description of the Egyptian danger, and it does not constitute a halakhic ruling permitting harm to civilians.[12] Any deliberate harm to non-combatants falls under the general Torah prohibition of murder.[12]
Compassion for captives, respect for the fallen, and a moral "supra-halakha": in capital matters there is a duty to act beyond the dry letter of the law.[12] Jewish wartime morality requires treating prisoners of war with compassion and taking care over the dignity and burial of the enemy's dead, in direct connection with the recognition that all were created in the image of God.[12] Likewise, there is a broad indirect responsibility on leaders and on anyone placed in charge of a population in time of emergency.[12]
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Operational Decisions and Halakhic Practice in Time of Emergency
The combination of Rabbi Goren's statist determination and his halakhic authority found practical expression in the fateful hours of the State of Israel, both in regulating the laws of the army and in the efforts to bring the fallen to burial and to release agunot.[1, 5, 9]
Rabbi Goren's Testimony and the Preparations for the Six-Day War (1967)
Rabbi Goren's historical testimony reveals his dramatic involvement in preparing hearts and in preparing the army, halakhically and in terms of morale, on the eve of the Six-Day War [9]:
The rapid return home and the public oath: in May 1967 Rabbi Goren was on a mission in Australia, and on hearing the news of Nasser's demand for the evacuation of UN forces from Sinai he understood that war was near and hurried back to Israel.[9] On his way back, during the Sabbath in New York, he swore before the worshippers of the local synagogue that in every scenario the IDF would win, and declared that he planned to sound the shofar at the Western Wall.[9]
Pressing for going to war and preparing the Military Rabbinate: on his return he met with the head of Military Intelligence and pushed for an active preemptive war, and he also convened the staff of rabbis and religious officers of the commands.[9] He organized the system for identifying the fallen, the mobilization of command burial units and the allocation of temporary burial grounds in the north and the south.[9] At the same time, he printed hundreds of thousands of copies of a special prayer before going into battle that he had composed himself, and he worked to solve the shortage of Torah scrolls for the soldiers.[9]
Overall halakhic authority and the confrontation over the shaving order: the Chief Rabbinate of Israel granted Rabbi Goren full power of attorney to decide alone every halakhic question that would arise during the war.[9] He used this authority to confront the Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin and the Chief Engineering Officer, who demanded mass shaving of soldiers' beards because of the wearing of gas masks; Rabbi Goren refused firmly and obtained a compromise that left the beards in place.[9]
Special Sabbath permissions and the renewal of the laws of war: on the Sabbath before the outbreak of the war, Rabbi Goren permitted a series of actions that are ordinarily regarded as desecration of the Sabbath, viewing them as a matter of national danger to life (pikuach nefesh): digging fortifications to protect the residents of Jerusalem from shelling, one-time work by employees of the Tadiran company to produce vital communication devices, preparing combat rations and holding training for recruits.[9] On that Sabbath he addressed the soldiers, prophesied victory on the basis of the verse "and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword" (Leviticus 26), and repeated his intention to pray at the Western Wall and to read the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.[9]
The Project of Releasing the Agunot of Fallen IDF Soldiers
The crowning achievement of Rabbi Goren's humane halakhic work was his tireless devotion to bringing fallen IDF soldiers to burial and releasing their wives from the status of agunot.[1, 5] This activity required of him a combination of scientific research, meticulous collection of physical data and supreme halakhic courage in order to rule on the deaths of fighters whose place of burial was unknown.[1, 5] In this framework Rabbi Goren resolved the complex aguna problem of the wives of the fallen of the War of Independence, the wives of the fallen of the submarine Dakar, the wives of the fighters of the destroyer Eilat that was sunk off the coast of Egypt, and the fallen of the ship ZIM Masada that sank on the high seas.[1, 5, 8] These rulings won enormous public resonance and were regarded as a model of "the power of permission" (koach de-hetera: preferring the lenient line, grounded in profound learning).[1, 5]
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The Great Halakhic Struggle: The Affair of the Langer Brother and Sister
Rabbi Goren's work as Chief Rabbi of Israel was marked by his readiness to enter into the thick of the hardest public controversies in the country.[2, 13, 14] The stormiest case linked to his name, which changed the relationship between the state rabbinate and the Haredi public, was the ruling in the "brother and sister affair," given on 13 Kislev 5733 (3 December 1972).[13]
The Background of the Affair and the Development of the National Crisis
The affair began when Hanoch and Miriam Langer were declared mamzerim by the establishment rabbinical courts.[14] Their mother, Chava Ginzburg, had married in 1923 in Poland a man named Bolek Borkowski in a ceremony held in a church in the town of Łuków.[14] Later, under heavy pressure from the bride's parents, Borkowski agreed to undergo a conversion process, but the details of the conversion (whether he was circumcised according to halakha and whether he immersed before a valid court) remained entirely unclear.[14] Chava separated from him without a get (bill of divorce) and married again, to her second husband, from whom Hanoch and Miriam were born.[14] The question of the siblings' status as mamzerim depended entirely on the validity of the first husband's Jewishness: if Borkowski's conversion was not valid, then the first marriage was void from the outset, and consequently the children born to her from the second man are not mamzerim.[14]
The siblings appealed to the Great Rabbinical Court.[14] Among those sitting on the panel was Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, who inclined to rule leniently in their case because of Borkowski's inability to recite the Shema and his general conduct, but no final, clearing ruling was reached.[14] The affair turned into a sharp political crisis: the sister, who was a soldier at the Kirya, turned personally to Rabbi Goren while he was serving as Chief Rabbi of the IDF, and he became convinced that the matter could be resolved.[14, 15] The crisis threatened the stability of the government: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan threatened to legislate civil marriage, Prime Minister Golda Meir met the siblings with emotion, and the Independent Liberals faction submitted a bill to permit civil marriage for those barred from marriage.[13, 14]
The Legal Deliberation and the Bold Ruling
Upon his election to the office of Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Goren exercised his full authority and convened a special, secret court panel of nine judges.[14] Rabbi Goren's name was the only one published, while the eight other judges remained anonymous in order to protect them and their families from threats and harm.[14] The court cleared the brother and sister completely and permitted them to marry according to the law.[13, 14] The ruling rested on a fundamental dispute in the laws of evidence and presumptions (chazakot) between Rabbi Goren and the senior Haredi halakhic authorities.[14]
The ruling aroused unprecedented fury among the Haredi public.[13, 14] The Council of Torah Sages, headed by the head of the Hebron Yeshiva Rabbi Moshe Chevroni, declared the ruling completely void.[13] Rabbi Goren was placed under tight police protection, young members of the NRP (Mafdal) mobilized to defend him, and even the date of his father's memorial day and the place of his father's burial were kept secret for fear that the grave would be desecrated.[13] This affair deepened the rift between the statist religious-Zionist stream and the Haredi stream, and brought to sharp debate the limits of halakhic flexibility in the face of human needs.[13]
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The Sanctity of the Temple, the Temple Mount and Religious-Zionist Statism
Rabbi Goren's view of the State of Israel and its institutions was marked by a profound "statism" (mamlachtiyut): seeing the institutions of the state as a sanctified instrument for advancing national redemption, while avoiding violent struggles against the government and preferring positive ways of exerting influence.[3] This outlook found expression in his attitude to the sanctity of the places liberated in the Six-Day War, foremost among them the Temple Mount.[6, 16] Rabbi Goren was among the first to ascend secretly to the Dome of the Rock (identified as the site of the Holy of Holies) carrying a Torah scroll and a shofar.[6]
The Halakhic Doctrine on Ascending the Temple Mount
While most of the great Torah authorities of his generation forbade ascending the Temple Mount across the board for fear of ritual impurity, Rabbi Goren developed in his book Har HaBayit ("The Temple Mount") a revolutionary halakhic approach that maps the mount topographically and divides it into different zones of sanctity, while permitting a controlled ascent to certain parts.[16, 17, 18]
The sanctity of the Mount Moriah compound (in its historical size of 500 cubits by 500 cubits) is divided into two distinct halakhic levels [17, 18]:
The sanctity of the Azarah (the Temple courtyard): defined as the sanctity of the "camp of the Divine Presence."[18] Entering it in a state of corpse impurity is forbidden by Torah law; one who does so deliberately is liable to karet, and one who does so inadvertently is liable to a sin offering.[18] The Sages were stringent and forbade those impure through contact with the dead to enter even the area of the "Cheil" that surrounds the Azarah.[18]
The sanctity of the rest of the Temple Mount: defined as the sanctity of the "Levite camp."[18] Halakhically, those impure through contact with the dead are permitted to enter this area (even the dead body itself is permitted to enter the Levite camp), but the entry of people with an impurity that issues from their bodies (such as zavim, niddot and those who have had a seminal emission) into this compound is completely forbidden by rabbinic law (divrei soferim).[18]
Rabbi Goren ruled that ascending to the parts of the mount that were added by King Herod (mainly in the south of the mount) is permitted and is even a mitzvah, provided that the one ascending strictly observes rigorous halakhic conditions [17]:
The obligation of immersion by Torah law: the one ascending is obligated to immerse in a valid mikveh for purification (as is the law for a niddah and for one who has had a seminal emission who seek to be purified of impurities that issue from their bodies).[17] This obligation applies to every person who has reached the age of nine and has become impure through a seminal emission, and the immersion is performed with a special blessing if he is certainly obligated in it.[17] There is no need to make the immersion immediately precede the ascent, and the law of a tevul yom (one who has immersed that day) permits him on the mount, but care must be taken not to bathe in hot water between the immersion and the ascent.[17]
The laws of reverence for the Sanctuary: one must enter the mount with gravity and holy awe.[17] Entering in leather shoes is forbidden (and some are stringent regarding any stiff shoe, in the manner of Yom Kippur); the feet must be completely clean; it is forbidden to carry a backpack, an exposed wallet or a belt with an external pouch (but a covered wallet is permitted); one must take care to wear respectable and fitting clothing; there is an absolute prohibition on spitting on the mount or engaging in mundane talk.[17] The ascent and the circuit are made along a defined route: "One enters by the right, circles, and exits by the left."[17]
Rabbi Goren's teaching emphasized that ascending the Temple Mount, together with the observance of all the stringencies of purity and of reverence for the Sanctuary, awakens and strengthens in the heart the expectation, the hope and the desire for the building of the Third Temple and the renewal of the sacrificial service.[18, 19]
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Torah and Inter-Hasidic Ties: Rabbi Goren's Relations with Chabad
Alongside his state duties, Rabbi Goren maintained warm and friendly relations with great Torah sages of all streams, and especially with Chabad Hasidism in the Land of Israel and around the world.[6] This bond reached its peak in a series of personal and extraordinary meetings that Rabbi Goren held with the leader of the movement, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in New York.[6]
Rabbi Goren was received in a private audience (yechidut) with the Rebbe four times, once a year, over four consecutive years.[6] These meetings were of a deeply learned and reflective character: each meeting began at 11:30 at night and continued without a break for more than four hours, until nearly 4:00 in the morning.[6] In the course of these long conversations the two leaders discussed intricate halakhic questions on the agenda of the sovereign state, and at the end of each meeting the Rebbe would hand Rabbi Goren a special, personal Torah message (a "devar Torah") to pass on to the Chabad Hasidim in the village of Kfar Chabad on his return to Israel.[6] This close bond underlined the immense mutual esteem that the great Torah sages felt for Rabbi Goren, even when they disagreed with his public rulings.
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Summary
The work and Torah teaching of Major General Rabbi Shlomo Goren, of blessed memory, sketch the figure of a pioneering and daring halakhic leader, who saw in the founding of the State of Israel the beginning of the flowering of our redemption and did not shrink from confronting the challenges of modern sovereignty.[1, 2, 9] His halakhic teaching, as expressed in his books Meshiv Milchamah and Har HaBayit, laid the foundations for the laws of the army and of combat in our generation, setting the value of the sanctity of human life and of the "image of God" as a lamp to the feet of the Jewish fighter.[12, 16]
Whether in the complex release of the agunot of those who fell in Israel's wars, in dramatic decisions in hours of national emergency, or in rulings that divided the world of rabbinic judges, such as the brother and sister affair, Rabbi Goren's path was always marked by public courage and a readiness to pay a heavy personal price for the unity of the nation and the relief of individual distress.[5, 9, 13] His Torah, scholarly and statist legacy continues to stand as a central pillar in the halakhic, moral and security discourse of the State of Israel for generations to come.[1, 12]
Sovereignty, Halakha and Statism: The Life's Work, Torah Teaching and Halakhic Controversies of Rabbi Shlomo Goren
22 min read·4,317 words
Summary
This survey draws a portrait of Rabbi Shlomo Goren as a historic key figure who devoted his life to establishing a statist and sovereign halakha with the founding of the State of Israel. The text examines his work as the first Chief Military Rabbi, emphasizing his decisive contribution to establishing military ethics and to integrating religious life within the IDF as an egalitarian and unified army. Alongside a description of his symbolic and military role in the Six-Day War and in the liberation of the holy places, the source analyzes his innovative teaching, which grants halakhic legitimacy to the secular institutions of government. Finally, the survey dwells on the stormy halakhic controversies he conducted, such as the mamzerim affair, which expressed his readiness to decide complex national questions even at the cost of a deep rift with the conservative Haredi world.
Introduction: Establishing a Sovereign Halakha in the Era of National Revival
The return of the people of Israel to a life of political sovereignty in its land in the middle of the twentieth century confronted the world of halakha with challenges that had no precedent in nearly two thousand years of exile.[1] The system of Jewish law, which had developed and taken shape mainly under the circumstances of a community lacking independent governmental power, was suddenly required to offer practical, state-level solutions to questions of the army, war, the running of a state, foreign relations and national identity.[1, 2] The most central, daring and stormy figure who took upon himself the historic task of establishing a sovereign "state halakha" was Rabbi Shlomo Goren.[1, 3]
Rabbi Shlomo Goren (originally Goronchik) was born on 3 February 1918 (21 Shevat 5678) in the town of Zambrów in Poland, to his parents Avraham and Chaya Tzippora.[3, 4, 5] In 1925 he immigrated with his family to the Land of Israel; the family settled first in Kfar Hasidim, a religious agricultural settlement of which his father was among the founders.[1, 4] There he received his early education at the school of the Mizrachi movement.[3, 4] When the family moved to Jerusalem, he went on to study at the Etz Chaim Talmud Torah, where he was quickly recognized as an exceptional prodigy, far beyond the ordinary.[1, 3] At the age of only 12, in a case unprecedented in the history of the institution, he was admitted to the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem.[3, 4] Already at the age of 17 he received rabbinic ordination and published his first scholarly work, Nezer HaKodesh, which dealt with novellae on the Laws of Disqualified Consecrated Offerings in Maimonides' (Rambam's) Mishneh Torah.[1, 4]
Alongside his tireless diligence in Torah, Rabbi Goren sought to broaden his intellectual horizons. In the years 1940–1944 he studied general philosophy, classics and mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1, 4] In 1945 he married Tzfiya, the daughter of Rabbi David Cohen ("the Nazir"), who was one of the foremost and most influential disciples of Rav Kook.[3, 4] This family and spiritual bond instilled in Rabbi Goren the cosmic-messianic worldview of the Kookian school, and also led him to adopt a strictly vegetarian way of life, a decision he finally took following a visit he made to a slaughterhouse in Canada in the course of kashrut supervision.[4]
Rabbi Goren's security activity began as early as 1936, when he joined the Haganah at the outbreak of the Great Arab Revolt.[4] In the years between the Second World War and the founding of the state, out of dissatisfaction with the Haganah's policy of restraint (havlagah), he moved to the ranks of the Lehi underground, in which he operated under the underground code name "Yirmiyahu."[1, 4, 5] Nevertheless, his humane moral outlook prevented him from agreeing to Lehi's extreme acts of terror, and he firmly opposed harming innocent Arabs merely because they were Arabs.[4] With the outbreak of the War of Independence he returned to the ranks of the Haganah, understanding that in a time of all-out war the ranks must be united, and served as a combat sniper in the hard battles for the defense of Jerusalem.[1]
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Establishing the Military Rabbinate and Shaping the IDF as a State Army
The historic meeting between Rabbi Goren and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during the first truce of the War of Independence redefined the relations between religion and state within the most sensitive institution of the new sovereignty, the Israel Defense Forces.[1] This meeting, which also led to the Hebraization of his surname from "Goronchik" to "Goren," laid the foundations for his official appointment as the first Chief Military Rabbi of the IDF.[1] Rabbi Goren and Ben-Gurion shared a common and uncompromising worldview: the IDF must be a state army, uniform and egalitarian, without separate units for religious and secular soldiers.[1]
In order to enable religious soldiers to serve full and equal service without giving up their faith, Rabbi Goren laid down a series of orders and institutional infrastructures that accompany the IDF to this day.[1] He determined that a synagogue would be set up in every military base as an integral part of the camp, but emphasized that soldiers must not be compelled to attend it, thereby distinguishing the IDF from the rigid model of the British army.[1] In the field of kashrut he instituted strict rules, such as a prohibition on dairy cooking in the military kitchens and the purchase of separate utensils for meat and milk.[1] When religious cooks of the Alexandroni Brigade were punished for refusing to cook on the Sabbath, Rabbi Goren fought the high command until a regular General Staff order was issued that protected their rights and institutionalized the system of kashrut supervisors.[1]
One of the heaviest halakhic and moral challenges Rabbi Goren faced was the question of releasing agunot and identifying the fallen of the war.[1, 4] In the winter of 1949 Ben-Gurion charged him with investigating the fate of the 87 missing men of the religious company of the Alexandroni Brigade, which was entirely wiped out in battle in the Faluja pocket in December 1948.[1] Rabbi Goren worked with self-sacrifice on the battlefields to locate the bodies of the fallen and to bring them to burial in Jewish graves.[1, 4] In this framework he was required to develop pioneering halakhic methodologies for identifying the fallen by modern means.[7] He determined, relying on Talmudic discussions in tractate Yevamot and on chapter (siman) 17 of the Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer, that fingerprints and scientific forensic measurements have the status of a "definitive sign" (siman muvhak), which makes it possible to declare a soldier dead and to release his widow from her status as an aguna.[7] This humane and halakhic project continued throughout his tenure, and found prominent expression also in the complex handling of the fallen of the submarine Dakar and the destroyer Eilat.[4]
Alongside his institutional activity, Rabbi Goren developed a unique and deep relationship with Chabad Hasidism and its rabbis in Israel and in the United States.[3] During his tenure as Chief Military Rabbi, Rabbi Goren entered into a private audience (yechidut) with the Lubavitcher Rebbe on four different occasions, once a year over four consecutive years.[3] These meetings were extraordinary in their length; they always began at 23:30 at night and lasted nearly four consecutive hours until the early morning, and each time the Rebbe handed him a unique Torah message intended for the Hasidim in Kfar Chabad.[3] Rabbi Goren used these meetings to urge the Rebbe to come to the Land of Israel, and even received a promise that if the Rebbe decided to leave New York, the first place he would travel to would be the Land of Israel.[3]
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The Historic Campaign of the Six Days and the Temple Mount
The full potential of Rabbi Goren's statist and charismatic leadership burst forth in all its force during the Six-Day War in 1967, an event that fundamentally changed his public standing and turned him into a national symbol.[1, 3] Ahead of Independence Day 5727, while he was in Australia, he heard of the closing of the Straits of Tiran and decided to return immediately to Israel, declaring that he would be able to pray at the Western Wall even before the festival of Shavuot.[1] On arriving home, he acted on the political and military level; at the direction of the Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, he was sent to persuade the ministers Moshe Chaim Shapira and Zerach Warhaftig, who feared going to war, to support the military move and the appointment of Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister.[1]
With the outbreak of the fighting on 5 June, Rabbi Goren disseminated a special morale-raising speech that he had prepared in advance for broadcast on Kol Israel, based on biblical verses from the book of Deuteronomy, and joined the fighting forces on the southern front in the Nahal Oz area, equipped with a shofar and a small Torah scroll.[1] During the fighting the command car in which he was riding was hit by an Egyptian shell, and most of the crew were wounded.[1] Rabbi Goren worked under heavy fire for several hours to give the wounded first aid, until the evacuation vehicle arrived.[1]
When the Jordanian front opened, he immediately went up to Jerusalem and joined the fighters of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade under the command of Mordechai Gur.[1] He entered the Old City with them through the Lions' Gate and was among the first to reach the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.[1, 3] On the Temple Mount and at the Wall, Rabbi Goren contributed to the historic moment when he sounded the shofar, recited the Shehecheyanu blessing, recited Hallel with a blessing, and offered the prayer El Malei Rachamim in memory of the fallen.[1] Because of errors in assessing the positions of the forces, Rabbi Goren and his driver, in an unprecedented manner, were the first to reach Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs (Machpelah) in Hebron, where Rabbi Goren had the Arab notables of the city sign a formal instrument of surrender.[1, 3]
For Rabbi Goren, the liberation of the Temple Mount was not merely a historic event but a religious opportunity not to be missed.[1, 8] He opened a Military Rabbinate study center (midrasha) in an apartment building near the Mughrabi Gate, appointed army officers as "Temple Mount officers" to serve as military governors of the compound, and asked the Engineering Corps to carry out precise topographical measurements of the mount.[1] The aim of the measurements was to determine the exact location of the Holy of Holies and the Temple, in order to define halakhically in which areas Jews may enter in purity without transgressing the prohibition punishable by karet.[1, 9]
Rabbi Goren ascended secretly to the Dome of the Rock, identified with the site of the Holy of Holies, carrying a Torah scroll and a shofar, and even approached the architect Moshe Safdie with a request to design the rebuilding of the Temple on the area of the mount (a request Safdie refused).[1, 3] When Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided to remove the military study center from the mount and to transfer the day-to-day administration to the Muslim Waqf, Rabbi Goren led a sharp public struggle to thwart the move.[1] The struggle failed, and Rabbi Goren expressed throughout his life deep regret that he had not fought more resolutely, describing Dayan's decision as a grave sin of abandoning Mount Moriah to strangers.[1, 9]
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Rabbi Goren's Torah, Political and Halakhic Teaching
Theocracy and the Legitimacy of Secular Law
Rabbi Goren's political thought presents a complex attempt to grant full halakhic legitimacy to the secular institutions of government and law of the State of Israel, without giving up the aspiration to make the Torah the basic constitution of the state.[1] Following Josephus Flavius, Rabbi Goren supported the idea of "theocracy," which he defined as the existence of an eternal and unchanging divine constitution expressing absolute justice, as distinct from constitutions formulated by human beings that change according to political interests.[1] In his view, the proper structure of Jewish government consists of a Sanhedrin (the legislative and spiritual authority) and a king (the executive authority), with a clear separation of powers.[1]
In order to bridge the gap between the ideal theocratic regime and the secular reality of the State of Israel, Rabbi Goren adopted the Derashot HaRan (the sermons of Rabbeinu Nissim Gerondi), which distinguish between two systems of justice [1]:
The law of the Torah through the Sanhedrin: expressing absolute, fixed and unchanging justice.
The law of the kingdom: expressing relative justice, and granting the political government authority to enact parallel laws and to establish courts in order to regulate the needs of the hour and of security.
Relying on this approach, and on the rulings of Rav Kook in the book Mishpat Kohen, Rabbi Goren determined that the Knesset and the courts of the State of Israel operate by virtue of the authority of "kingship in Israel" anchored in halakha.[1] In this way he granted unprecedented religious legitimacy to the secular institutions of government, in contrast to the conservative Haredi position that denied their authority.[1] Nevertheless, Rabbi Goren held that on the national and public plane halakha admits no compromise, and that the state is obligated to act according to halakha in state matters such as conversion, since the Torah does not give a person free choice but imposes its values on the public plane.[1]
Military Ethics and the Morality of Combat in the Light of Halakha
Rabbi Goren's halakhic teaching in the field of the morality of combat, as formulated in his essay opening the series of his books Meshiv Milchamah, constitutes a milestone in shaping the ethics of the IDF.[2] Rabbi Goren opened with a discussion of principle and determined that human life is the very highest value in the Torah of Israel and in halakha, and that this value applies to every person created in the image of God, without distinction between Jew and non-Jew.[2] From this he determined that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not discriminate between souls, and he forbade rejoicing at the downfall of Israel's enemies.[2]
On the basis of this humanistic conception, Rabbi Goren set out six fundamental principles for the conduct of war [2]:
The sanctity of the image of God: recognition of the preciousness of every person created in the image, and the duty to save life as a supreme value.[2]
The prohibition on evading combat: the definition of war for the defense of the people against its enemies as an "obligatory war" (milchemet mitzvah) (by virtue of Maimonides' (Rambam's) definition, "delivering Israel from the hand of an enemy"), which overrides personal moral aversion to bloodshed.[2, 10]
A strict distinction between combatants and civilians: an absolute prohibition on harming a non-combatant population, and especially women and children.[2]
Morality beyond the letter of the law: a demand for the highest moral standard in capital matters (a "supra-halakha"), based on King David's being prevented from building the Temple because of the blood he had shed, and on our father Jacob's condemnation of the deed of Simeon and Levi in Shechem.[2]
The responsibility of leaders: the imposition of indirect and vicarious responsibility on leaders and officers in charge of the population.[2]
Compassion and respect for the enemy: a duty to treat captives with compassion and to take care over the dignity of the enemy's dead.[2]
Rabbi Goren courageously confronted difficult Torah sources that apparently point to total annihilation, such as the command "you shall save alive nothing that breathes" and the saying of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi), "The best of the gentiles in time of war—kill."[2] He explained that the biblical command was valid solely with regard to the seven nations of Canaan in ancient times because of their exceptional cruelty, and that nothing may be learned from it regarding present-day wars, which are wars of defense alone.[2] Rashbi's words he interpreted as a tactical warning to soldiers in the hour of battle not to trust an enemy who may take them by surprise, and not as a halakhic permission to harm non-combatant civilians.[2]
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The Great Controversies and the Breaks with the Haredi World
The Mamzerim Affair and the Ruling on the Brother and Sister
The most dramatic and shattering event of Rabbi Goren's tenure as Chief Rabbi of Israel was the "brother and sister affair" (Hanoch and Miriam Langer) in 1972.[14, 15, 16] The Langer siblings had earlier been declared mamzerim by the conservative rabbinical courts, on the claim that their mother had married their father, her second husband, without having received a get from her first husband.[15] The question of the siblings' status as mamzerim depended entirely on the validity of the conversion of the first husband, who was a convert of Polish origin.[15] If the first husband is not regarded as a valid convert, then the mother's marriage to him never took effect, and consequently her children from the second husband are not mamzerim.[15]
The affair aroused an enormous public storm, led to demonstrations, and threatened to create a sharp coalition crisis in Golda Meir's government.[14] Defense Minister Moshe Dayan intervened personally, and a dramatic bill to permit civil marriage was brought up in the Knesset, which threatened to bring down the religious establishment in the country.[14] Upon his election to the office of Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Goren decided to cut the halakhic Gordian knot.[15] He convened a special and secret rabbinical court composed of nine anonymous rabbis, with only himself identified by name, in order to protect the judges and their families from threats and harm by zealous elements.[15]
The special court conducted a comprehensive examination concerning the first husband.[14] It emerged that despite his claim that he put on tefillin every day, the man did not know how to put them on, did not know basic prayers, and even erred and became confused in completing the most fundamental verse of all, "Hear, O Israel" (Shema Yisrael).[14] Further testimony showed that he used to eat pork and had even been seen visiting a church.[14]
On the basis of these findings, Rabbi Goren wrote a revolutionary ruling that permitted the siblings to enter the congregation of Israel.[15] Rabbi Goren argued that just as the three-year presumption (chazakah) of ownership of land is not valid without an explicit claim of title, so too the convert must explain and prove the manner in which he converted in order to enjoy a presumption of conversion.[15] Against him, a judge of the Great Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Bezalel Zolty, argued that there is a "presumption of conduct" based on the fact that a person has been publicly known as a convert for years, and that his conversion must not be invalidated retroactively on the basis of his later behavior.[15]
The Haredi reaction to the ruling was harsh and unprecedented.[14] The Council of Torah Sages headed by Rabbi Moshe Chevroni declared the ruling completely void, and Rabbi Goren was placed under tight police guard.[14] The burial place of his father, whose memorial day fell close to that time, was kept secret for fear that the grave would be desecrated by furious demonstrators.[14] This ruling deepened irreparably the rift between the Haredi public and the Chief Rabbinate, and led the Haredi leader Rabbi Shach to wage a personal war to the bitter end against Rabbi Goren.[14, 15] Rabbi Goren's colleague, the Rishon LeZion Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, expressed in his personal letters great anger at the one-sided and high-handed way in which Rabbi Goren had conducted the affair, bypassing the regular courts.[16]
The Affair of Helen Seidman's Conversion
In 1970 another public storm arose around Helen Seidman (formerly Shannon), a citizen of the United States who lived on Kibbutz Nahal Oz and had married a kibbutz member who was a kohen in a civil marriage.[1] Seidman had undergone a Reform conversion and asked to be registered as Jewish in the Population Registry.[1] The Chief Rabbinate firmly opposed this, and there was grave concern that the High Court of Justice would accept her petition and grant precedent-setting legal recognition to Reform conversions in the country.[1]
In order to prevent such a ruling, Rabbi Goren, who was then still Chief Rabbi of the IDF, decided to act with exceptional speed and to convert Seidman within a single day.[1] After the conversion was at first not recognized because of the Chief Military Rabbi's lack of formal authority to convert civilians, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who was then Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv) approved the conversion, with the backing of the Chief Rabbis Yitzhak Nissim and Isser Yehuda Unterman.[1]
The speedy procedure aroused the wrath of the Haredi rabbis, who attacked the conversion on the claim that it had been carried out without a sincere "acceptance of the commandments" (kabbalat mitzvot), owing to the fact that Seidman continued to live on a secular kibbutz and remained married to a kohen, a marriage forbidden by halakha.[1] Among scholars this affair is regarded as the beginning of the ideological and political break between Rabbi Goren and the Haredi Torah establishment.[1]
The Controversy over the Uniform Prayer Rite in the IDF
Rabbi Goren's attempt in 1963 to shape a uniform prayer rite for the IDF was part of his great program for the integration of the exiles and the creation of a uniform state army.[17] Rabbi Goren chose to establish "Nusach Sefard" (the combined Ashkenazi-Hasidic rite) as the official and binding rite of the army, believing that it constituted a fair compromise combining the Ashkenazi rite and the Sephardic rite.[17] His practical aim was to prevent daily disputes and arguments among the different soldiers who were forced to pray together in order to make up a minyan in the small bases.[17]
This decision met with sharp opposition from three different directions [17]:
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: came out against the order, arguing that Nusach Sefard is Ashkenazi in essence, and that imposing it on soldiers of Eastern communities constitutes an erasure of their glorious communal heritage and causes them to abandon the customs of their fathers.
Rabbis of the classical Ashkenazi stream: argued that a true compromise should have been carried out as a precise balance between the original rite of the Sephardim and the Sefard-Hasidic rite, and not as the imposition of a Hasidic rite alone.
Rabbi Dov Lior: criticized the move and argued that the attempt to create a hybrid damaged both rites, and left the IDF rite "bald on this side and on that." He put it in a witty phrase: "The rite in the IDF is uniform in that everyone says, 'This is not my rite.'"
Because of these objections, the uniform rite did not take root among the fighters, and today most prayers in IDF bases are conducted according to the personal custom of the prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur) leading the prayer at that moment.[17]
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Summary: The Statist Legacy of the Shaper of the Halakha of National Revival
Rabbi Shlomo Goren remains one of the most influential, daring and far-reaching figures in the history of the modern State of Israel.[1] He was a pioneer and trailblazer who placed the sovereign and statist conception at the center of his halakhic rulings, absolutely refusing to leave halakha hostage to exilic and conservative patterns of thought.[1, 3] Throughout all the years of his tenure, as Chief Military Rabbi and as the supreme halakhic authority in the state, he strove to prove that the Torah's system of laws is capable of governing a modern military force, solving hard social problems and granting religious legitimacy to the secular institutions of government.[1, 2]
Although his daring rulings, such as the release of the Langer siblings and the conversion of Helen Seidman, brought upon him the wrath of wide Haredi circles and led to a deep rift with them, Rabbi Goren was not deterred and continued to place the needs of the state and the people at the top of his concerns.[1, 14] His comprehensive moral teaching, which balances the sanctity of the life of every person as a person with the uncompromising duty to fight for the defense of the homeland and for sovereignty over the holy places, constitutes to this day the ideological foundation of statist religious Zionism and of the religious and spiritual system of the Israel Defense Forces.[2, 9] His rich literary legacy, which includes his groundbreaking research on the Jerusalem Talmud and the series of his books Meshiv Milchamah, remains a living testimony to his scholarly genius and to his great vision for shaping the spiritual face of the sovereign State of Israel.[2, 6, 11]