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Rabbi Chaim Druckman, giant of Israeli settlement and Religious Zionist movements, dies at 90
(JTA) — Rabbi Chaim Druckman, whose mission was to unite the people of Israel, was father to a movement now poised to sow some of its deepest divisions in decades.
Druckman, who died Sunday at 90 after contracting COVID-19, was a giant in the religious Zionism movement, which sought to integrate the two preeminent philosophies that saw themselves as bulwarks against Jewish disintegration: Orthodox Judaism and Zionism.
In the 1950s, he established the hesder movement, which blended Torah study with military service. For tens of thousands of religious Jews, his innovation resolved a dilemma that had beset Israel’s founders: What was the most meaningful way for young Orthodox men to spend their first years of adulthood?
“We study Torah to fulfill our national obligation and serve in the army to fulfill our religious obligation,” Druckman often said.
Over the years, he led yeshivas and youth movements to extend that vision, and in 2012, he won the Israel Prize, Israel’s national award, for his lifetime of contributions to religious Zionist education.
Yet as much as he sought to bridge divides, he was as frequently positioned at their fault lines, in recent years disparaging non-Orthodox Jews and mentoring extremists who seek the marginalization of non-Jewish and non-Orthodox minorities in Israel. He also at least twice defended and sought to rehabilitate religious leaders convicted of sexual abuse, including of children.
Druckman was born in 1932 in Kuty, in what was then Poland and what is now Ukraine. He and his parents went into hiding during the Holocaust and then fled to the Soviet Union. He entered British Mandate Palestine in 1944 posing as the child of another couple and was reunited with his parents after the war.
He soon became a disciple of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the rabbi who helped shape the nationalist outlook of the National Religious Party. Kook’s teachings drove Druckman to become one of the first leaders of the religious Zionist movement to embrace the settlement of lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. He was at the seminal 1968 Passover seder in Hebron that is widely seen as the launch of the religious settlement movement and is believed to have coined the name of its principal body, Gush Emunim, which means bloc of believers.
Druckman became a figurehead of the settlement movement, although he lived most of his life in Mercaz Shapira, the Israeli village near Ashkelon where he ran the influential Or Etzion Yeshiva. He served in the Knesset in coalitions led by Likud and Labor prime ministers, from 1977 to 1988 and then from 1999 to 2003, with short periods in the opposition.
In the wake of the massive influx immigrants after the fall of the Soviet Union, Druckman as a senior religious court judge led an effort to ease conversion to Orthodox Judaism. His suasions backfired, leading haredi Orthodox judges to seek the nullification of thousands of conversions he had supervised.
However much he preached reconciliation among Jews, he stood hard and fast against any attempt to dismantle settlements, going so far as to advise soldiers to refuse orders to take part in the removal of settlements. He also stood by Jews accused and convicted of violent crimes associated with tensions over the settlements, including murder and terrorism, raising funds for those accused and welcoming them back into society.
He also stood by people who were accused of sexual abuse multiple times. He was rebuked in 1999 for failing to report credible reports of sexual assault by a yeshiva head he supervised, Zev Kopilevich, and he later championed another rabbi convicted of sexual abuse, Moti Elon. While he conceded in 2013 that the government was right to rebuke him, he also dismissed as “gossip” just this month multiple allegations of rape against another yeshiva head, Zvi Tau.
Until recently, Druckman championed Naftali Bennett and his Jewish Home Party as the natural heir to the National Religious Party tradition — but in 2021 when Bennett chose the path of reconciliation once championed by Druckman, joining a unity government with secular parties, Druckman cut him off and instead embraced the extremist Religious Zionist Party led by Bezalel Smotrich.
Druckman played a role in brokering the entry of the Religious Zionist Party into the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to bring to power in coming days. The entry of Smotrich and a colleague, Itamar Ben-Gvir, into the government is likely to precipitate a crisis with Diaspora Jewry. They favor restricting Israeli laws to favor the Orthodox, annexing the West Bank and loosening laws that restrict troops from killing or physically harming Palestinians.
At Druckman’s funeral on Monday, Smotrich said Druckman “reproached” him frequently for his excesses, but in a recent interview with Yisrael Hayom, the nationalist daily, Druckman made clear that many of the ideas Smotrich champions had his blessing, including his proposal for a state based on religious law and his plans for anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Tens of thousands of people attended Druckman’s funeral Monday in his home village of Mercaz Shapira. Israel’s leaders at his funeral remembered him as a unifier.
“All of us were your sons, all of us were your students,” President Isaac Herzog said, according to the Times of Israel.
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Why France celebrated a Jewish avenger of Ukrainian pogroms
Some 81 years ago this month, a person in Warsaw would have enjoyed the odd spectacle of a mob of Jews surrounding France’s Polish embassy, wildly proclaiming the greatness of the French Republic. The occasion: Jews everywhere were celebrating France because, after a sensational eight-day trial (which even made the front page of The New York Times), a jury of 12 petit-bourgeois Parisians had astonishingly acquitted the Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant and anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard of the charge of murder for shooting to death former Ukrainian president Symon Petliura in the middle of the Latin Quarter, an act the accused fully acknowledged committing.
Schwartzbard had declared to the police (who in turn informed the press) that he had killed Petliura to avenge the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews in the 1919 Ukrainian pogroms. The massacres had been perpetrated by armies fighting in the civil war that erupted after the Russian Revolution — among them troops of the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic, which Petliura headed. (To this day, historians debate the extent of Petliura’s responsibility for the pogroms.)
In court, Schwartzbard’s attorneys managed to turn the tables, and effectively put Petliura on trial. The defense successfully argued that Schwartzbard should not be held guilty of murder, because Petliura was responsible for the pogroms, which claimed the lives of 15 of Schwartzbard’s relatives. A French law review of the day described the argument on Schwartzbard’s behalf as yet another crime-of-passion defense.
This defense worked because France rallied to Schwartzbard’s cause, in an outpouring of pro-Jewish, anti-pogrom sentiment. Seventeen months passed between Petliura’s assassination on May 25, 1926 ,and Schwartzbard’s trial, which ran from October 18 through October 26, 1927, and all that time France’s newspapers mainly kept up sympathetic coverage, with the notable exception of right-wing stalwarts Le Figaro and l’Action Française. The country’s most respected intellectuals flocked en masse to the Schwartzbard camp, publicly endorsing the justice of his deed.
Today, that national outburst of pro-Jewish sentiment would likely strike most American Jews as surprising and somewhat unbelievable, sandwiched as it was between France’s notorious antisemitic episodes — the Dreyfus trial over 30 years before and the Vichy government’s deportations of Jews to German concentration camps 15 years later. What is more, in recent years, Jews have been reminded of this ugly history by high-visibility anti-Jewish violence coming from France’s Muslim youths — often poor, disaffected and furious about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The frequency of violence probably peaked in 2004, but the 2006 kidnapping-torture-murder of a 23-year-old French Jew, Ilan Halimi, left more American Jews than ever convinced that France is an antisemitic country.
How is it, then, that the world saw such an upswell of philosemitism in France around the Schwartzbard case? Was this an aberration, merely a time-out from prejudice?
Actually, things were going well for Jews in general in France in the 1920s. So much so that one American Jewish tourist, fresh off the ship from Europe, declared to the Forward newspaper, “There is no antisemitism in France.”
Those were halcyon days partly because the country was relatively prosperous, which tends to enhance tolerance. France had near-full employment and the economy and the wages of workingmen were growing. During the 1927 trial, the French were enjoying a particularly strong sense of well-being because the return to power of Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré in July 1926 had brought an end to years of financial crises and stabilized the franc, which had been ruined by war.
At the same time, Jews had become curiously chic. A circle of Jewish literary lions came of age and sold their books to a wide audience. These included books about Jews and Judaism, such as Edmond Fleg’s (né Flegenheimer) “Why I Am a Jew.” Best-selling writer Albert Londres, a gentile, spent months visiting the world’s Jewish communities in order to write “Le Juif errant est arrivé” (“The Wandering Jew Has Arrived”).
In addition, it was crucial to the trial that the terrible war of 1914 to 1918 remained the foremost fact in French consciousness through the 1920s. All of France had pulled together for the war effort, making taboo antisemitism and other forms of prejudice. And Schwartzbard himself was emblematic of the French cause in the war — no one could miss the Croix de Guerre he wore to court, which had been awarded him when he was wounded in battle after volunteering to fight for France (as had 36,000 other Jewish immigrants).
Even the staunchly right-wing and hitherto antisemitic newspaper La Liberté ran a front-page editorial calling for Schwartzbard to be acquitted — as a noble soldier who had fought for France. Whereas, as the defense never missed an opportunity to remind the court, Petliura had allied his army with Germany in 1918.
Paradoxically, the Dreyfus Affair deserves major credit for Schwartzbard’s acquittal. First of all, it recruited intellectuals into a leadership role in civic affairs and institutionalized them as a lobby that Schwartzbard’s lawyer, Henry Torrès, was able to activate for Schwartzbard in a massive public relations campaign. They included the likes of the writer Joseph Kessel (perhaps best known today for his novel “Belle de jour”) and future prime minister Léon Blum (one of the five French Jews who, over the course of the country’s history, have served as its head of government, a record unmatched outside of Israel).
Perhaps more important, the years of Dreyfusard activism institutionalized, for many in France, the notion that antisemitism was a distinct evil that there was an absolute duty to oppose — everywhere, all the time. Therefore, when Schwartzbard came along, they had to stand up against pogroms. (The defense, remember, had already converted the trial into a trial of pogroms, not of a man.)
Indeed, the Dreyfusards transfigured the fight against antisemitism into a fight to defend the Republic — and Republicanism. The fight became symbolically enshrined in the official Republican creed when the ashes of leading Dreyfusard and “J’accuse” author Emile Zola were laid to rest in the Panthéon in 1908. Thus, at the very end of Schwartzbard’s trial, Torrès could successfully implore the jury, “You are today, gentlemen, responsible for the prestige of our nation and the thousands of human lives that will depend on the verdict of France.”
France’s Dreyfusard legacy is not dead. True, there are still antisemites in France — including a representation of right-wing French Catholics, along with the angry Muslims. But France also deserves credit for tolerance. France’s Jews are well-integrated into the fabric of French society, and for all the news of anti-Jewish attacks, there are also considerable well-springs of good will, rooted in the very essence of the French Republican tradition. In 1791, the French revolutionaries made their country the first in Europe to grant equal rights and the franchise to its Jewish population. Indeed, among the reasons that many French Jews returned after World War II and that many Jews still love France today is that they know that the best of human impulses can be found there, and not only the worst.
Deborah Waroff is a New York-based writer. She is completing a biography of Sholom Schwartzbard.
The post Why France celebrated a Jewish avenger of Ukrainian pogroms appeared first on The Forward.
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Yiddish Glory resounds in China and Korea
די שאַפֿער פֿונעם מוזיקאַלישן פּראָיעקט „ייִדיש גלאָרי‟ — דער מוזיקער פּסוי קאָראָלענקאָ און די ייִדיש־פֿאָרשערין אַנאַ שטערנשיס — האָבן לעצטנס זיך אומגעקערט פֿון זייערע ערשטע אַזיאַטישע גאַסטראָלן איבער כינע און דרום־קאָרעע.
צום ערשטן מאָל האָט אַ ברייטער עולם אין אָט די לענדער דערהערט אַ גאַנצע ריי חורבן־לידער אויף ייִדיש, אַרײַנגערעכנט גאָר זעלטענע, וועלכע זענען אין קיין אַלבאָם נאָך נישט אַרײַן: למשל, די קופּלעטן „אַדאָלף היטלער – ברוינער המן‟. אין אַן אַנדער ליד ברענגט מען אַ קאַטיושע היטלערן פֿאַר אַ כּלה.
אַנאַ שטערנשיס האָט בעת אַ שמועס מיט מיר דערקלערט, אַז דער פּראָיעקט „ייִדיש גלאָרי‟ נעמט אַרום גאָר אַ סך לידער, בערך 260–300 פֿון משה בערעגאָווסקיס ריזיקן אַרכיוו, געזאַמלט בשעת דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה אָדער באַלד נאָך איר סוף. בלויז אַ קליינעם טייל פֿון די דאָזיקע אוצרות האָט מען שוין וווּנדערלעך אויסגעשפּילט אין זייער ערשטן אַלבאָם „די פֿאַרלוירענע לידער פֿון דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה‟, וועלכער איז אַרויס אין 2018 און נאָמינירט געוואָרן פֿאַר אַ „גראַמי־פּרעמיע‟ (די אָנגעזעענע פּריזן פֿאַר מוזיק), און אינעם צווייטן אַלבאָם, „די פֿאַרשוויגענע לידער‟, וואָס איז אַרויס אין מאַרץ 2026.
בסך־הכּל, זענען זיי בשותּפֿות אויפֿגעטראָטן מיט זעקס לעקציע־קאָנצערטן: פֿאַר יעדן ליד, וואָס קאָראָלענקאָ האָט אויסגעזונגען, זיך באַגלייטנדיק אויף דער פּיאַנע, האָט שטערנשיס דאָס ליד דערקלערט אויף ענגליש. דער עולם האָט אויך געקענט לייענען די איבערזעצונגען פֿון די לידער אויף אַן עקראַן. אַחוץ דעם, האָט די פּראָפֿעסאָרין אויפֿגעטראָטן מיט צוויי אייגענע רעפֿעראַטן.
איין לעקציע־קאָנצערט איז פֿאָרגעקומען אינעם קאָרעיִש־ישׂראלדיקן ביבלישן אינסטיטוט – אַ קריסטלעכע געזעלשאַפֿט, וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער שטאָט פּאַדזשו לעבן סעול. דער פֿאַרזאַמלטער עולם, ווי שטערנשיס האָט איבערגעגעבן, איז כּמעט דורכאויס באַשטאַנען פֿון פּאַסטאָרן. די קאָרעער האָט באַזונדערט גערירט די טעמע פֿון צעריסענע משפּחות, ווײַל בײַ אַ סך פֿון זיי זענען קרובֿים געבליבן אָפּגעריסן אין אַן אַנדער לאַנד – צפֿון־קאָרעע.
אינעם שאַנכײַער אינטערנאַציאָנאַלן אוניווערסיטעט זענען שטערנשיס און קאָרעלענקאָ אויפֿגעטראָטן מיט צוויי לעקציע־קאָנצערטן: וועגן די ייִדישע לידער פֿון געטאָ און וועגן הומאָר – אויפֿן סמך פֿונעם זעלבן אַרכיוו „ייִדיש גלאָרי‟. אַזאַ טעמע איז באַזונדערס שווער צו דערקלערן אַן עולם, וואָס פֿאַרשטייט נישט קיין ייִדיש און ווייסט נישט, אַז אַפֿילו אין די ערגסטע צײַטן פֿון רציחה און טויט, האָבן ייִדן ווײַטער געפֿונען כּוח זיך צו וויצלען אָדער נאָך מער – געשעפּט כּוחות און האָפֿענונגען פֿונעם הומאָר.
נאָך איין לעקציע־קאָנצערט איז פֿאָרגעקומען אינעם שאַנכײַער מוזיי פֿון ייִדישע פּליטים, געווימדעט די לעבנס פֿון בערך 23 טויזנט ייִדן, וועלכע האָבן זיך געראַטעוועט פֿון די נאַציס אין שאַנכײַ.
אינעם כינעזישן אוניווערסיטעט פֿון האָנג־קאָנג איז פֿאָרגעקומען נאָך אַ קאָנצערט און דערנאָך האָט אַנאַ שטערנשיס אַליין דורכגעפֿירט אַ סעמינאַר וועגן מוזיק און גוואַלד, ווי אויך אַ לעקציע אינעם האָנג־קאָנגער ייִדישן קהילה־צענטער. אַחרון אַחרון חבֿיבֿ, זענען שטערנשיס און קאָראָלענקאָ אויפֿגעטראָטן אין ביידזשין; דאָס איז געווען אַ בשותּפֿותדיקע אונטערנעמונג פֿון דער שטאָטישער ייִדישער קהילה און סטודענטן פֿונעם פּעקינער אוניערסיטעט.
שטערנשיס האָט באַמערקט, אַז די כינעזער האָט באַזונדערס פֿאַרחידושט דער פֿאַקט, וואָס משה בערעגאָווסקי איז פֿאַרמישפּט געוואָרן אויף 10 יאָר סטאַלינס לאַגערן בלויז פֿאַרן זאַמלען פֿאָלקסלידער. פֿאַרשטייט זיך, זענען געווען אַ סך פֿראַגעס וועגן דער ייִדישע מוזיקאַלישער טראַדיציע און אירע וואָרצלען. „צי זענט איר אַליין ייִדן?‟ האָט מען זיי כּסדר געפֿרעגט.
דאָס איז נישט קיין איבעריקע קשיא. הײַנט טרעפֿן זיך אין כינע מענטשן, וועלכע שטודירן ייִדיש, נישט האָבנדיק קיין ייִדישע וואָרצלען. אין 2015 האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס דערציילט וועגן דער יונגער כינעזישער סטודענטקע יאַנג מענג, וועלכע האָט צום ערשטן מאָל איבערגעזעצט אַ קלאַסיש כינעזיש ליד אויף ייִדיש. שפּעטער, מיט עטלעכע יאָר צוריק, האָט זי געפֿירט ייִדיש־לימודים אינעם פּעקינער אוניווערסיטעט, און איצט פֿירט זי אָן מיטן קורס „די ייִדישע ציוויליזאַציע‟. פּונקט זי, צוזאַמען מיט דער אָרטיקער ייִדישער קהילה־פֿירערין ראָבערטאַ ליפּסאָן, האָט אָרגאַניזירט דעם אויפֿטריט פֿון קאָראָלענקאָ און שטערנשיס אין ביידזשין.
קאָראָלענקאָ האָט מיר דערציילט וועגן זײַן נסיעה אויף ייִדיש. ער האָט איבערגעגעבן, אַז דער אינסטיטוט אין פּאַדזשו איז פֿאַקטיש אַ מין פּראָטעסטאַנטישער קלויסטער, וועלכער האָט אויסגעבויט דעם ערשטן און איינציקן חורבן־מוזיי אין קאָרעע. נאָכן קאָנצערט האָט מען זיי געבראַכט אינעם מוזיי פֿון דער קאָרעיִשער מלחמה, וווּ מע האָט זיי געוויזן פֿאָטאָגראַפֿיעס פֿון אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישע סאָלדאַטן.
אין שאַנכײַ האָט זייערע צוויי אונטערנעמונגען אָרגאַניזירט די פּראָפֿעסאָרין אַנרואָ באַאָ, אַ לערערין פֿון ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור. זי פֿירט אַ קורס וועגן מענדעלע, פּרץ, באַשעוויס און בערגעלסאָן. אויף אַלע קאָנצערטן, האָט קאָראָלענקאָ באַמערקט, זענען אַ סך צוהערער געווען כינעזישע סטודענטן, וואָס לערנען זיך ייִדיש. אַ טייל פֿון די כינעזישע ליבהאָבער פֿון ייִדיש האָבן אים געזאָגט אַז מאַאָ האָט שטאַרק ליב געהאַט שלום־עליכמען. ס׳איז טאַקע אמת, אַז אין מאַאָס צײַטן זענען אַ צאָל ווערק זײַנע פּובליקירט געוואָרן אויף כינעזיש — מסתּמא ווײַל שלום־עליכם האָט מיט וואַרעמקייט געשילדערט פּשוטע אָרעמע לײַט.
נאָך אַ טשיקאַוועס: דער קאָנצערט אין ביידזשין האָט זיך געשלאָסן מיטן קאָלעקטיוון זינגען „לאָמיר אַלע אין איינעם‟. דערנאָך האָט איינער אַ קהילה־מיטגליד אָנגעהויבן זינגען דניאל קאַנס ווערסיע פֿונעם ליד „אוי, איר נאַרישע ציוניסטן‟, וואָס שטאַמט אויך פֿון בערעגאָווסקיס אַרכיוו. „נו, האָב איך אַוודאי מיטגעזונגען‟, האָט פּסוי קאָראָלענקאָ געזאָגט.
ער האָט צוגעגעבן, אַז זייערע גאַסטראָלן האָבן אַרויסגערופֿן אַ גרויסן אינטערעס בײַ דער כינעזישער מעדיאַ. אי יאַנג מענגס סטודענטן נאָכן ביידזשינער קאָנצערט, אי די צײַטונג „מינג פּאַאָ‟ האָבן אים געפֿרעגט: וואָס האָט אים מאָטיווירט זיך אויסצולערנען ייִדיש? האָט קאָראָלענקאָ געענטפֿערט, אַז אַ סך סאָוועטישע קינדער־לידער, מיט וועלכע ער איז אויפֿגעוואַקסן ווי אַ קינד, זענען טיף פֿאַרבונדן מיט דער ייִדישער פֿאָלקסמוזיק. ווען אין בערעגאָווסקיס אַרכיוו זענען נישט געווען קיין נאָטן, האָט די סאָוועטישע פּאָפּולערע קולטור באַגײַסטערט אים צו שאַפֿן נײַע ייִדישלעכע מעלאָדיעס.
דאָס איז טאַקע גאָר אַ ברייטע טעמע פֿאַר פֿאָרשונגען און חידושים; למשל, דער באַקאַנטער ייִדישער קאָמפּאָזיטאָר משה ווײַנבערג האָט געשאַפֿן די מוזיק פֿאַר צענדליקער סאָוועטישע קינדער־פֿילמען און אַנימאַציעס. בײַ אַ ריי אַנדערע סאָוועטישע קינדער־קאָמפּאָזיטאָרן איז דאָס מאַמע־לשון אויך געווען ייִדיש.
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Yad Vashem chooses Germany for first overseas education centers
(JTA) — BERLIN – For the first time in its 73-year history, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum and archive, is establishing educational centers outside the Jewish state.
The institution announced in a statement Thursday that the first centers will be in Germany — one in Munich, and a subsidiary in Leipzig.
The Conference of European Rabbis, which moved to Munich from London in 2023, said it looked forward to working together with the new center.
And Rabbi Zsolt Balla, State Rabbi of Saxony, said the decision to open an extension in Leipzig “sends a strong signal in support of a culture of remembrance, education and the protection of Jewish life.”
The sites will be shaped in consultation with partner organizations in Germany, Yad Vashem added. A brainstorming meeting is tentatively planned for early next year, with programming expected to begin in three years.
“Working together with our German partners, this center will help ensure that the truth of the Holocaust is preserved and passed on to future generations,” said Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan.
Wenzel Michalski, chair of the Berlin-based Friends of Yad Vashem, participated in talks leading to the decision.
“We’re coming to an era where the witnesses are dying,” Michalski said. His late father, Franz, spoke with many school groups in Germany about his experiences during the Holocaust.
German Education Minister Karen Prien, who has Jewish roots, said that one of the goals of the centers is to help “combat antisemitism across Germany and Europe.” She added that many young people in the country “still know too little about the Shoah.”
“In a world without Holocaust survivors, one needs new ways to tell the story,” said Michalski. “It is the chief obligation and task of Yad Vashem” to ensure that they do.
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