The sovereignty movement mourns the passing of one of the pillars of the settlement movement, the late Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, and undertakes to continue to leverage his legacy, a legacy of sovereignty over the Land kf Israel.
With the passing of the late Rabbi, we bring here the special interview he gave to Issue No. 6. In which the Rabbi describes the importance of the vision of sovereignty and its implementation:
A few months after the death of Rav Moshe Levinger ZTZ”L, who was the founder of the Jewish settlement in Hevron and the engine behind the general drive of settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, we conversed with his partner in revolution, the head of Nir Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, Rav Eliezer Waldman, about the days when they learned from the Mapainiks* how to ensure ownership of a territory.
“We both learned in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva beginning in the year 1958, and after a short period we began to learn together as a study-partners”, relates Rav Waldman about the initial link with the person who eventually became linked by family as well, when he suggested Miriam, a relative, to Rav Levinger as a partner in matrimony, and then one year after their wedding, Rav Levinger suggested his relative to Rav Waldman.
The deep ties between the two, ties that led to the momentum in the settlement movement, began as a spirit that reverberated between the walls of the study house under the leadership of their rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, ZT”L. “There was spiritual tension that was brimming with expectation of additional steps that would be taken by the Almighty toward redemption. We were taught to see the entire Zionist process, from the beginning, as the deeds of the Almighty which would arouse the People of Israel in the diaspora to redemption, national responsibility, rebellion against exile and immigration to the Land of Israel, and therefore we felt that the entire process from the beginning had a divine dimension. Therefore, we certainly saw the settlement and the establishment of the State of Israel, everything, as the deeds of the Almighty toward the redemption of Israel. Beyond the fact that we were living the experience of Israel’s independence as the glory of the Almighty, we still expected additional steps”.
The posters in B’nei B’rak and Jerusalem were infuriating
The next steps came with the Six Day War, which broke out a short time after the famous speech of Rav Tzvi Yehuda on the eve of Independence Day, 1967, when the Rav’s cried out ‘Where is our Hevron? Where is our Nablus? Have we forgotten them?’ The day after Independence Day, Nasser, the president of Egypt, announced to the whole world that he was about to throw the Jews into the sea; he mobilized his army and gave the order to remove the UN soldiers who were on the border of the Negev and Sinai and in Israel they began mobilization and preparations. Three weeks of tension began, which raised our expectation and the awareness that the Almighty had opened before us the gates of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan Heights was what joined us together”.
During the three weeks of preparations nd the tension before the war, while the entire people was mobilized, the three – Rav Levinger, Rav Waldman and Rav Drukman – were not mobilized since they served in the military rabbinate and at this time mobilization of rabbis and rabbis who taught in yeshiva had not yet begun. “During those days we saw posters in Jerusalem and in B’nei B’rak and announcements in the haredi newspapers which called on the People of Israel to repent, since we were faced with great danger to our existence. We, Rav Drukman and I, thought about this, and we said that this should not be the message, not a message of fear. Clearly, it was good and important to repent, but not out of fear. The message should have been the strengthening of security for the People of Israel and the expectation of redemption in order to uplift the spirit and the sense of security“.
“The next day Rav Levinger came to us from Nehalim and he also thought the same thing. We went to Rav Tzvi Yehuda and told him these things. He agreed with us and said that we should compose some text and that he and other rabbis would sign on it. We composed the text on the Wednesday before the war, but before we had a chance to deliver the text to the media the war broke out”, recalls Rav Waldman.
We also have the privilege of taking part in the process of redemption
The war ended and the return of the people to its historic cradle inspired the entire people with a new spirit; in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva the spiritual excitement was tremendous. “Our role was clear to us. The Almighty had opened the heart of the Land of Israel so that we could build Jewish life in it, so that we could settle in these areas. The issue of settlement burned within us.
It was with this feeling that the friends went forth for the first time in a settlement operation in the heart of the Land with the first action being the mobilization for the operation to return to Kfar Etzion under the leadership of Rav Hanan Porat. “The ascension to Kfar Etzion was done in Elul, three months after the war and we believed that it was a very important operation but we could not be satisfied with the renewal of a kibbutz, since we felt that we should return and rebuild our ancient cities and we thought that the best place would be Hevron”, says Rav Waldman and immediately hastens to clarify that whenever he expresses himself in the plural it is not accurate. “It is important to know that the great engine, the initiator, the activist and the operator day and night with great faith and energy of activity and organization was Rav Levinger. Without him this entire reality would not have been created.”
“We acted in the beginning in three fronts - first to sign families up who would be willing to move to Hevron. The second front was the effort to rent or buy houses in Hevron. The third front was dealing with the government, to obtain governmental authorization for the operation. Actually, the only front that we succeeded in was in signing up families. On the other two fronts we did not succeed at that time. Even if there were Arabs who were willing to rent houses, they were subjected to terror so they changed their minds. In the government as well, the government of Levy Eshcol, they were not willing to give authorization. They did not say no expressly, but rather that it was not the right time, and so forth”.
A practical lesson in Zionism from Yigal Alon
In parallel with waiting for the first authorization by the government, the cadre of pioneers continued their efforts to locate houses for rent. During this period, notes Rav Waldman, a wide-ranging awakening began in Israel for a Greater Israel. Public figures of the Right and Left joined together under this banner, among them Eliezer Livne, Natan Alterman, Moshe Shamir, Yisrael Eldad, Geula Cohen and with them, representatives of Rav Nerya’s religious group, Rav Levinger, Rav Waldman and others. “This was an awakening that indicated the immediate existence of a vision that we learned about in the study house. In ‘Lights’ and in the Natziv’s epistle we learned that in the future, interest in the Land of Israel would unite the various shades of the People of Israel, proving the divine dimension of the events as well as their importance, and now – the events are being realized”.
“Regarding the delayed authorization, our friend from the left-leaning part of the movement suggested to us to meet with the minister of labor, Yigal Alon, who was known as an activist, and ask him for advice. We took the suggestion, went to Alon and presented him with our wish for governmental authorization. We were surprised by his answer. He told us ‘Are you crazy? You want governmental authorization? This is not how Zionism works. We have never asked for authorization from the official institutions, instead, we first established facts on the ground and afterward we asked for authorization. If we had not done it this way, Ginosar and Hanita would not have been established’. This surprised us. We were taught to act according to legal custom .
Before Pesach a group of friends decided to go up to Hevron. There were, indeed, no houses for sale or rent but they found out about the Park Hotel, at the northern entrance to Hevron. “It was an old abandoned hotel. The owner of the hotel, Kawasme, was happy for the opportunity to earn a little money. We signed a contract to rent the hotel for a week with an option to renew for a month, and later with an option for a year, because at that point we did not know what the future would be”.
“We told him that we did not need his workers and that we would manage without them. Our wives came and koshered the hotel. The rumor was passed by word of mouth that we were about to organize the first Pesach in Hevron since 1929. Many signed up to participate for the Seder. About one hundred people took part. During the holiday itself there was no more space in the rooms and the men slept in the hallways on mattresses”, continues Rav Waldman, who, together with his wife, were one of three families which, it was decided, would remain living at the hotel. The other families were the Levinger family and the Amiram family. The night of the Seder itself “was wonderful. We invited Rav Drukman to conduct the Seder. We danced all the way to the Cave of the Patriarchs and this is how the Jewish community in Hevron was renewed. It began with three families staying there, and today there are already more than ten thousand people in Kiryat ArbaHevron. It seems that Yigal Alon was right.
We were in the Park Hotel for a full month while the government deliberated over our matter. Yigal Alon supported us in the unity government together with MAFDAL ministers. Begin led the demand that, in a vote by the government, there would be no objection to recognizing us, and therefore he proposed that the wording would not include recognition of the renewal of the Jewish community in Hevron, but instead, it would be for the renewal of the yeshiva that was destroyed in the riots of 1929. To the leftist ministers, they explained that a yeshiva is easy to move from place to place, and therefore there was no reason to vote against it. Thus, a great renewal came about in the history of the settlement enterprise – at first, a community would begin with a yeshiva, and not the opposite”.
He Admires and blesses the leaders of the demand for sovereignty
It is difficult for Rav Waldman to forget the lesson that the new settlers learned from the veteran representative of the settlement enterprise. “We went according to the classic Zionist way, as Alon said ‘established facts on the ground’, the furthest furrow of the plow is where the border will be. The borders were not determined at the beginning”, he reminds us, and is convinced that in the matter of sovereignty as well, the government and the state leadership will join the voices that will arise from the field.
Rav Waldman relates to the transformation in consciousness brought about by Women in Green regarding the demand for sovereignty over all parts of the Land of Israel, “I want to bless and express admiration for the Women in Green movement, which speaks clearly about the matter of sovereignty and says that the Land is ours. As long as these words are not heard in the government, because of various misgivings, various pressures and weak faith, at least we will clearly say words about the truth and the life of the Land of Israel”.
Rav Waldman says that the vision of Israeli sovereignty over all of the Land is not only a matter concerning the People of Israel but a matter concerning the entire world and all of the nations. “We are meant to bring a blessing to all families of the earth. This is what is said to our father Abraham in the Almighty’s first words to him: ‘In thee, all families of the Earth will be blessed’. We can bring this blessing from this Land in its entirety only when it is under our control and when Jewish life flourishes within it. The nations must know that they will not have a blessing, also those around us and those that think of themselves as great powers, except from the People of Israel, and therefore they must know that it is a privilege for them to help the People of Israel to settle in the Land of Israel. The prophet describes how the nations will carry Israel on their shoulders. The process is gradual and it is important to establish facts - the reality of millions of Jews who will live in every area of the Land of Israel. We are doing this and the Almighty has been helping us with miracles in recent decades”.