Schlomo Goren

Schlomo Goren

Goren (right) and Avraham Shapira at a book publication

Schlomo Goren (born February 3, 1917 in Zambrów , Poland as Schlomo Gorenchik ; † October 29, 1994 in Tel Aviv ; Hebrew שלמה גורן) was an Orthodox, religious Zionist rabbi in Israel who founded the military rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces and subsequently served as the third chief rabbi of the Ashkenazim in Israel from 1973 to 1983 .

Goren was born in Poland and immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine with his family in 1925 . He served in the Israel Defense Forces during three wars, wrote several award-winning books on Jewish law, and was appointed Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1968 . From 1973 to 1983 he was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, after which he founded the Idra Yeshiva in Jerusalem , which he directed until his death ( Idra in Aramaic means goren in Hebrew, barn in German ).

Life

childhood

Goren grew up in Kfar Hasidim , a village of religious Jews near Haifa that his father co-founded. At the age of twelve he attended the Hebron yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he was referred to as a child prodigy. His first book "Holy Crown" (נזר הקודש) on a religious topic was published when he was seventeen years old.

Military career

Goren's career was marked by the devotion to the religious-Zionist values ​​of his youth. He volunteered for the Haganah in 1936 and worked as a chaplain for the Jerusalem area during the Palestine War, where he was also tested and qualified as a paratrooper . Ultimately, Goren was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Goren, with the rank of Major General ( Aluf ), was appointed Chief Rabbi of the IDF Military Rabbinate; he held this position until 1968.

Goren served, among other things, during the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967. He was also present during the capture of East Jerusalem on June 7, 1967, where he said a prayer of thanks that was broadcast live across Israel. Shortly afterwards, Goren, blowing in the shofar and carrying a Torah scroll, held the first Jewish prayer at the Western Wall since 1948. This incident was one of the defining moments of the war, and many photos of Goren surrounded by praying soldiers became very famous in Israel. In 1972 he retired from military service, in the same year he was elected Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazim.

Controversy

Goren was known for his controversial positions regarding Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount . A widespread story about Goren states that shortly after the capture of the Temple Mount by Israeli troops, the rabbi either advocated the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock by them, or merely said that the structures would be accidentally destroyed Been a "good thing". This allegation of the call to destroy the mosques was made by General Uzi Narkiss , an eyewitness in an interview with the daily Haaretz . Goren's assistant Menachem Ha-Cohen, who was with him on that historic day, denied ever hearing such a statement from Goren. Goren himself denied the charge several times. However, later in the same year he spoke about the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque at a military conference that was also broadcast on the Israeli army radio station: “Of course we should have blown it up. It is a tragedy that we did not do it. "

Awards

For his work Ha-Yerushalmi ha-Meforash , a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud , Goren received the Israel Prize in the field of rabbinical literature in 1961 . The Bar Ilan University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1980 .

literature

• Shalom Freedman: Rabbi Shlomo Goren: Torah Sage and General . Urim, Jerusalem 2006, ISBN 978-965-7108-81-9 .

Web links

Commons : Schlomo Goren  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ jta.org
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Shlomo Goren. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. From britannica.com, accessed March 8, 2020.
3. ↑ Goren at the Dome of the Rock. ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. hairetz.co.il. (Hebrew) 
4. ↑ Six Day War: Jerusalem Reunited. Excerpt from Rabbi Shlomo Goren: Torah Sage and General ; Jewish Book Review .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Nur Masalha: The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel . Zed Books, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84277-761-9 , p. 79.
6. ^ The Political Role of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate in the Temple Mount Question . Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
7. ^ Honorary Doctorate Recipients. Bar Ilan University website.