Thursday, February 21, 2013
A real Mideast peace process should look different
A real Mideast peace process should look different
Before anyone utters the words 'peace process,' Israel should consider making what used to be known as 'confidence-building measures.' Otherwise, talk of peace is just empty words.
By Gideon Levy | Feb.21, 2013 |
A moment before our attention shifts once more to the chatter about peace and the nonsense about the talks, about Barack Obama’s upcoming visit and Tzipi Livni’s appointment as “chief negotiator,” it would be good if we remembered what people ought to mean when they utter the words “peace process.” Not another round of negotiations, endless meetings and photo opportunities. We’ve already had enough of those to spare, and they led nowhere. The solution has long been known, and it could have been carried out long ago.
A real peace process should look different. It is not an outline by Bill Clinton or George Bush, but an outline of peace. Such an outline cannot start at the negotiating table; That is where it should end. Israel must first show its good intentions – intentions that have always been absent at its table. A real peace process must start on the ground. After 46 years, the burden of proof of intent to end the occupation rests on Israel’s shoulders. The Palestinian Authority did its part long ago by declaring its intentions, ceasing terrorism and engaging in security cooperation with Israel.
The proof must come from Israel now, and it must be in deeds, not words. If Israel really desires peace – and it is quite doubtful that this is so – it must engage in a series of acts that were once known as “confidence-building measures.” Without them, the Palestinians have no reason to join another masquerade whose entire purpose, for Israel, is to placate the Americans and look good for Europe. Everyone – from the devotees of the talks to Benjamin Netanyahu to Yair Lapid – admits it.
The first step is, of course, to freeze construction in the settlements. A country that intends to return land doesn’t build on it. That’s elementary. Afterward, prisoners should be released. A country that unjustly puts people who were released in a prisoner exchange back in jail conveys every message but one of peace. A country that jails thousands of prisoners, some of whom are political prisoners in every way, deprived of rights and severely discriminated against, is not conveying good intentions either.
It is not hard to guess the kind of turnabout in consciousness Palestinian society will undergo if it gets to see at least some of its offspring return to their homes, some after decades of imprisonment, without a deal, without a kidnapping, without pressure, solely as a demonstration of Israel’s good will. That will bring about immediate change. But for that to happen, we must first free ourselves from the bad, old pattern of zero-sum-game thinking that has accompanied the occupation from the first, according to which everything that is good for the Palestinians is bad for Israel.
Afterward, we must stop the thefts and expulsions. We must stop the ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley and the southern Hebron hills, stop expelling shepherds from their pastures and farmers from their fields. Enough designating land as firing ranges, which is nothing more than a cover for a mini-transfer. Enough demolishing homes that were constructed illegally according to a law that never permits them to be built. Enough with the “requirements of natural increase,” which only the settlers have. Enough with the “nature reserves,” which is also expulsion in disguise.
The Civil Administration – a euphemism for martial law – must prove that Israel wants the “process.” The time has come to end the nighttime raids on villages, the arrest of children and nonviolent demonstrators and brutal searches in the dead of night. It is also time to stop evicting people from their homes over pre-1948 purchase rights that apply only to Jews. The military court system must also make changes, as must IDF commanders in the territories: not every Palestinian is a suspicious object.
Israel’s good intent must also include opening its gates to the controlled entry of workers from the territories. Police officers and Border Police troops, who go after illegal aliens – people who wish only to find work in Israel because they have no alternative – are not agents of change; Palestinian workers who find a livelihood in Israel actually are.
All these measures are possible. They are obligated by reality for those who wish to change that reality, and they do not endanger security. What's necessary is good intentions. Those who declare themselves in favor of a peace process must take these measures. All the rest is nothing but empty words.
ARI SHAVIT/ Yair Lapid's crucial choice
If the Yesh Atid leader insists on keeping strange bedfellows with Habayit Hayehudi, a settlement freeze is unlikely – and peace prospects will suffer.
Yair Lapid, the chairman of Yesh Atid, wants to be prime minister. Okay, good. Lapid doesn’t have the experience necessary to be prime minister. Okay, good. But Lapid has impressive political skills, which he demonstrated during the election campaign. Okay, good. Therefore, in order to prove that he is indeed worthy of being prime minister in the future, the good Israeli needs to prove he is a good reader of the reality map. He has to prove he knows how to distinguish between what is important and what is not.
Here is the map of reality: The Middle Eastern order has collapsed. The lineup of stabilizing powers that enabled us to be here in a reasonable way for decades no longer exists. Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear. In Egypt there is instability. Syria is coming apart. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and is threatening to take over Judea and Samaria as well.
In this state of affairs it is perfectly clear that in order to maintain deterrence and to defend its borders, Israel will have to use force in various sectors from time to time. In order to use force Israel will need legitimacy. Therefore, for the sake of security, Israel must immediately freeze construction in the settlements that are not inside the large settlement blocs. Only the right freeze will grant Israel the legitimacy credit it needs to in order to protect its existence.
Here is another corner of the map of reality: About 360,000 Israelis are living in Judea and Samaria today. In the past four years the number of settlers increased by about 65,000. In the coming four years the number is liable to increase by 100,000. No one knows exactly what the point of no return is, but the point of no return exists. Beyond a certain line, from which we are not far, the partition of the land will become impossible and Israel will become a bi-national state. Therefore, for the sake of Zionism, Israel must immediately freeze construction in the settlements that are not inside the large settlement blocs. Only the right freeze will grant Israel a future.
If Lapid is reading the map of the reality and is distinguishing between what is important and what is not, there is only one policy conclusion: The 33rd government of the state of Israel must be the freeze government. Yes, it has to deal with sharing the country's economic burden, with intelligence and moderation. Yes, it has to change the system of government, with wisdom and caution. Yes, it has to see to education, housing and health. But the government must strive for all these exalted domestic aims at a time when Israel has a strong defense and foreign policy edifice, based on a freeze of construction in the settlements. Without the right freeze, Israel is liable to find itself reaping a whirlwind that will prevent it from dealing with the depth problems of Israeli society and the Israeli state.
If Lapid is reading the reality map and distinguishing between what is important and what is not, there is only one political conclusion: The 33rd government of Israel must be a Likud-center-ultra-Orthodox government. It must consist of Likud Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, Shas, Hatnuah and Kadima. There is no room for the cynical alliance between Lapid and Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett. The sane center’s longing for a change must not be subordinated to Gush Emunim’s settlement lust. Yesh Atid MK Ruth Calderon’s beautiful values must not be shackled to Rabbi Zalman Melamed and Rabbi Dov Lior’s racism and exclusion of women. It is impossible to talk about the Israeli sovereign and walk hand in hand with the rabbis of refusal – who encourage their soldier-followers to disobey army orders – and Zalman Melamed the encouragers of refusal in the National Union and Tekuma, factions within Habayit Hayehudi.
The coming days are crucial days. If Lapid reads (belatedly) the map of the reality and distinguishes (belatedly) between what is important and what is not, he could endow Israel with a government in which there is quite a lot of hope. But if Lapid sticks to his strange alliance with Habayit Hayehudi he will force that party on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thereby preventing the freeze, encouraging the swelling fanaticism and undermining the Israeli home.
Is this the future the Israelis who voted for Yesh Atid sought? Is this the proof that Lapid has the qualifications necessary for becoming prime minister in the future? The choice is Yair’s.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Only in Israel
Jerusalem police detain 10 women at Western Wall, after largest monthly gathering yet
Six IDF paratroopers who liberated the wall in 1967 joined the service, to show support for Women of the Wall; Rabbi Susan Silverman, sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, among those detained after the monthly service, after the IDF veterans and media had already left the premise.
By Judy Maltz | Feb.11, 2013 | 8:45 AM |
Ten women who took part in a monthly prayer service at the Western Wall on Monday were arrested as they were leaving the plaza of the holy site, and taken in for questioning by police. Police waited until most of the hundreds of participants in the service, their supporters, and the media had dispersed to make the arrests. They were released after close to three hours of questioning.
Among those arrested were Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall; Lesley Sachs, its director; Rabbi Susan Silverman, the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, along with her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz; Lior Nevo, a rabbinical student in the advanced stages of pregnancy; and two rabbis from the United States – Debra Cantor from Connecticut and Robin Fryer Bodzin from New York.
Until that point, police had largely refrained from intervening during the service, standing on the sidelines as the women donned prayer shawls, recited the prayers out loud and even danced in a hora-like circle, holding onto their prayer shawls with outstretched arms. In past months, women were arrested on the spot for partaking in similar practices.
At one point, police asked three women who were wearing prayer shawls to follow them. When the women refused and sat on the ground linking arms, police left them alone.
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky responded angrily when he heard news of the arrests, Haaretz has learned. Sharansky, who was instructed last month by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recommend a solution to the ongoing controversy over prayer at the Western Wall, had contacted Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Pariente last week and requested that he dispatch only female police officers to the upcoming Women of the Wall prayer service and refrain from unnecessary interference. Upon news of the arrests, he called the police chief and strongly urged him to release the women as soon as possible.
Organizers estimated that several hundred women participated in the service, not including dozens of male supporters who joined them in prayer from the other side of the barrier separating men and women at the Western Wall.
Among the men were six former Israel Defense Forces paratroopers who had liberated the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War and who had come to show their support for the women’s organization.
It was the biggest crowd ever to participate in the monthly prayer service which began two decades ago, organizers said. This month's service also drew an unusually large delegation of international press members.
Responding to pressure from the non-Orthodox Jewish world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision last month to revisit government policy concerning prayer at the Western Wall and instructed Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky to prepare recommendations to resolve the ongoing controversy between Women of the Wall and the Orthodox establishment.
At the conclusion of the morning service and minutes before police detained her on Monday, Hoffman said she was sure the reason police had refrained this month from interfering during the organization’s prayers was because of the presence of the former paratroopers.
“It’s because of Israelis like you who decided to get up and do something that for the first time in 22 months, we were actually able to complete the service without any interferences from the police,” Hoffman told the paratroopers after the service.
Paraphrasing the famous words of the late Motta Gur, who led the paratrooper brigade that liberated the Western Wall, she said: “The Western Wall is in our hands.”
The undisputed star of this month’s Women of the Wall event was Dr. Yitzhak Yifat, the Jerusalem gynecologist whose image was immortalized in the famous photo taken by David Rubinger during the Six-Day War of the three paratroopers standing at the Western Wall. Yiftah, the soldier standing in the middle of the photo, this morning held a small paratrooper flag in his hand as he stood with the crowd of male supporters overlooking the women’s section of the plaza.
“I decided to come here to show my support for all those who wish to pray at the Kotel whatever way they wish, so long as they are not doing anything immoral,” said Yiftah. “It breaks my heart that the ultra-Orthodox have decided the Kotel belongs to them.”
Eilon Bartov, another paratrooper who fought in the 1967 battle in the Old City of Jerusalem, said he had decided to attend the prayer service as an act of protest against the police. “For me it is astonishing that women can be arrested in this country for wearing prayer shawls,” he said. “It is as though we were in Iran.”
After Hoffman and the others were detained, members of Women and the Wall and their supporters continued the traditional Monday morning Torah reading service outside the police interrogation center in the Old City where they were being held.
At the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Western Wall, several women had their prayer shawls confiscated by police as they arrived for the morning prayer service. Most, however, managed to hide them from police by wearing them under their coats.
During the entire prayer service, female police officers holding camcorders stood on the sidelines recording scenes of the women participating in the service.
Opponents of Women of the Wall maintain the group’s tactics are overly confrontational and gimmicky and that by engaging in practices many Orthodox Jews consider to be provocations, its members are harming rather than promoting the cause of Jewish pluralism and tolerance. Their opponents also say that Women of the Wall should move their prayer services over to the nearby Robinson’s Arch area that was offered to them by the government as an alternative venue rather than insist on congregating at the Kotel.
Michal Kafrey, a longtime resident of the nearby Jewish Quarter of the Old City, said she was not a member of Women of the Wall but had decided to join the group for the first time in order to express her outrage at how the women had been treated by police in recent months. “When I saw those scenes of the women being arrested on TV, I said to myself that enough is enough,” she said.
Rabbi Ellen Nemhauser, part of a delegation of women from Atlanta, Ga., who had come to Israel this month in order to participate in the Women of the Wall Service, said: “It’s very troubling for those of us in the States who see this as our Jewish homeland and yet half of us don’t have access to be who we are at our holiest sites. I wear a tallit every time I pray, but here in the Jewish state, I can’t. It’s ironic that it’s the only place in the world where I can’t.”
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, director of the Reform Movement in Israel, decried the arrests and urged Israel's politicians to make the struggle for religious freedom a priority.
"The Women of the Wall's prayers were carried out without any public disturbance, until the police's biased and outrageous decision to detain some of the worshipers," said.
"From here at the Western Wall, I called on the public security ministry and the police commissioner to order the release of these women immediately," Kariv added. "We call on the various parties to put the issue of freedom of ritual at the Western Wall and freedom of religion in Israel on the table during coalition negotiations."
Among those arrested were Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall; Lesley Sachs, its director; Rabbi Susan Silverman, the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, along with her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz; Lior Nevo, a rabbinical student in the advanced stages of pregnancy; and two rabbis from the United States – Debra Cantor from Connecticut and Robin Fryer Bodzin from New York.
Until that point, police had largely refrained from intervening during the service, standing on the sidelines as the women donned prayer shawls, recited the prayers out loud and even danced in a hora-like circle, holding onto their prayer shawls with outstretched arms. In past months, women were arrested on the spot for partaking in similar practices.
At one point, police asked three women who were wearing prayer shawls to follow them. When the women refused and sat on the ground linking arms, police left them alone.
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky responded angrily when he heard news of the arrests, Haaretz has learned. Sharansky, who was instructed last month by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recommend a solution to the ongoing controversy over prayer at the Western Wall, had contacted Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Pariente last week and requested that he dispatch only female police officers to the upcoming Women of the Wall prayer service and refrain from unnecessary interference. Upon news of the arrests, he called the police chief and strongly urged him to release the women as soon as possible.
Organizers estimated that several hundred women participated in the service, not including dozens of male supporters who joined them in prayer from the other side of the barrier separating men and women at the Western Wall.
Among the men were six former Israel Defense Forces paratroopers who had liberated the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War and who had come to show their support for the women’s organization.
It was the biggest crowd ever to participate in the monthly prayer service which began two decades ago, organizers said. This month's service also drew an unusually large delegation of international press members.
Responding to pressure from the non-Orthodox Jewish world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision last month to revisit government policy concerning prayer at the Western Wall and instructed Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky to prepare recommendations to resolve the ongoing controversy between Women of the Wall and the Orthodox establishment.
At the conclusion of the morning service and minutes before police detained her on Monday, Hoffman said she was sure the reason police had refrained this month from interfering during the organization’s prayers was because of the presence of the former paratroopers.
“It’s because of Israelis like you who decided to get up and do something that for the first time in 22 months, we were actually able to complete the service without any interferences from the police,” Hoffman told the paratroopers after the service.
Paraphrasing the famous words of the late Motta Gur, who led the paratrooper brigade that liberated the Western Wall, she said: “The Western Wall is in our hands.”
The undisputed star of this month’s Women of the Wall event was Dr. Yitzhak Yifat, the Jerusalem gynecologist whose image was immortalized in the famous photo taken by David Rubinger during the Six-Day War of the three paratroopers standing at the Western Wall. Yiftah, the soldier standing in the middle of the photo, this morning held a small paratrooper flag in his hand as he stood with the crowd of male supporters overlooking the women’s section of the plaza.
“I decided to come here to show my support for all those who wish to pray at the Kotel whatever way they wish, so long as they are not doing anything immoral,” said Yiftah. “It breaks my heart that the ultra-Orthodox have decided the Kotel belongs to them.”
Eilon Bartov, another paratrooper who fought in the 1967 battle in the Old City of Jerusalem, said he had decided to attend the prayer service as an act of protest against the police. “For me it is astonishing that women can be arrested in this country for wearing prayer shawls,” he said. “It is as though we were in Iran.”
After Hoffman and the others were detained, members of Women and the Wall and their supporters continued the traditional Monday morning Torah reading service outside the police interrogation center in the Old City where they were being held.
At the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Western Wall, several women had their prayer shawls confiscated by police as they arrived for the morning prayer service. Most, however, managed to hide them from police by wearing them under their coats.
During the entire prayer service, female police officers holding camcorders stood on the sidelines recording scenes of the women participating in the service.
Opponents of Women of the Wall maintain the group’s tactics are overly confrontational and gimmicky and that by engaging in practices many Orthodox Jews consider to be provocations, its members are harming rather than promoting the cause of Jewish pluralism and tolerance. Their opponents also say that Women of the Wall should move their prayer services over to the nearby Robinson’s Arch area that was offered to them by the government as an alternative venue rather than insist on congregating at the Kotel.
Michal Kafrey, a longtime resident of the nearby Jewish Quarter of the Old City, said she was not a member of Women of the Wall but had decided to join the group for the first time in order to express her outrage at how the women had been treated by police in recent months. “When I saw those scenes of the women being arrested on TV, I said to myself that enough is enough,” she said.
Rabbi Ellen Nemhauser, part of a delegation of women from Atlanta, Ga., who had come to Israel this month in order to participate in the Women of the Wall Service, said: “It’s very troubling for those of us in the States who see this as our Jewish homeland and yet half of us don’t have access to be who we are at our holiest sites. I wear a tallit every time I pray, but here in the Jewish state, I can’t. It’s ironic that it’s the only place in the world where I can’t.”
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, director of the Reform Movement in Israel, decried the arrests and urged Israel's politicians to make the struggle for religious freedom a priority.
"The Women of the Wall's prayers were carried out without any public disturbance, until the police's biased and outrageous decision to detain some of the worshipers," said.
"From here at the Western Wall, I called on the public security ministry and the police commissioner to order the release of these women immediately," Kariv added. "We call on the various parties to put the issue of freedom of ritual at the Western Wall and freedom of religion in Israel on the table during coalition negotiations."
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF5cCo2cHvE
Rabbi David Hartman, the passionate leader of Orthodox renewal
The renowned U.S.-born rabbi established the Shalom Hartman Institute, an international Jewish studies center, to bridge orthodoxy and academia. Thousands owe him their Jewish education.
By Yair Ettinger | Feb.10, 2013 | 6:32 PM |
Rabbi Prof. David Hartman, a leader of the liberal wing of Orthodox Judaism, philosopher and educator to whom thousands of people owe their Jewish knowledge and education, passed away Sunday morning in Jerusalem. Hartman was the founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute, an international center for Jewish studies based in Jerusalem that incorporates an academic research institute, study halls, schools and educational programs. He passed away after a long illness, at the age of 81.
Hartman's name is identified with the Orthodox renewal movement in the past generation: He adhered to halakha (Jewish religious law) while also promoting pluralistic and liberal values. He supported the revolution of Torah studies for women and encouraged joint study and debate among people of ranging outlooks who were affiliated with various denominations both in and outside of Judaism.
Hartman was born in 1931 in Brooklyn to a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) family, and throughout his adolescence studied in a number of Haredi yeshivas, including the prestigious Lakewood Yeshiva. In 1953, as a student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the leading rabbis and thinkers of the generation, he received rabbinical certification from Yeshiva University in Manhattan. While continuing his studies with Rabbi Soloveichik, he completed a master's degree in philosophy at Fordham University. In the late 1950s he served as the rabbi of a congregation in the Bronx, and then left for Montreal, where he served as congregational rabbi while writing his doctoral thesis in philosophy at McGill University.
In 1971, in the wake of the Six-Day War, he immigrated to Israel with his family and began teaching Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and continued doing so for over two decades. At the same time he served as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
In an attempt to breach the conservative boundaries of Orthodox Judaism, Hartman did not make do with writing books and academic teaching. In late 1976, in light of the messianic awakening led by the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and its head, and the crisis following the Yom Kippur War, Hartman gathered a series of Jewish studies scholars around him and founded the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, named after his father.
The charismatic Hartman, whose lively lessons were regularly conducted in three languages – Hebrew, English and Yiddish – attracted dozens of intellectuals from the entire academic leadership in Israel, and among his most prominent students were Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Noam Zohar, Zvi Zohar, Menachem Lorberbaum and Israel Knohl.
The institute at first focused primarily on academic activity, but over the years boys' and girls' schools, a graduate-level study hall and additional frameworks were established around it. In recent years the Hartman Institute has been involved in educational programs in varied fields, including for example training senior Israel Defense Forces officers in Jewish studies, and training teachers of Jewish studies. Under Hartman's sponsorship the institute also cooperated with secular frameworks for Jewish studies, and continues to support them.
Hartman published dozens of articles and books, including "Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest," "Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future," "A Living Covenant," "A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism," and "Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides." His writing was devoted to an attempt to bring together tradition and the present, halakha and a religious atmosphere with contemporary creativity and thought.
The Jewish establishment rejected him, and during certain periods the same was true of academe, and still he achieved international recognition, for example when he was awarded the Avi Chai Foundation Prize (2000) and the Guardian of Jerusalem Prize (2001), as well as honorary doctorates from Yale University, Hebrew Union College and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.
Hartman had ties with several prime ministers and advised them on issues related to the Jewish world and religious pluralism. From 1977 to 1984 he was the adviser of Education Minister Zevulun Hammer. Hartman often spoke in favor of a diplomatic arrangement with the Palestinians and at the same time was a fervent Zionist, and he also dealt with the subject extensively in his books and lessons.
Prof. Moshe Idel, a research fellow at the Hartman Institute for over 20 years, said that Hartman was exceptional both as a rabbi and a philosopher. "Philosophers don't build: They criticize, they understand phenomena. You won't find many philosophers who have built a community. Hartman built a community the way the Hasidic movement does. It's not a teacher, it's someone who creates," said Idel.
He added that "It's impossible to describe his activity only in the Orthodox context. If a journalist like Thomas Friedman comes to Israel and goes directly to interview Hartman, that's not Orthodoxy. If ministers and prime ministers come to consult with him, that's not Orthodoxy.
"He was a voice in the Jewish world. He thought that the Jewish world deserved a voice that differed from that given it by Orthodoxy and by academe. He himself couldn't find himself in either of those worlds. He was looking for something with involvement and openness and pragmatism, and that's impossible to find in the usual places. Because of his greatness he couldn't find himself in those places, so he looked for something that he could shape. He didn't shape an institution, he shaped people."
Hartman had five children, including Dr. Donniel Hartman, who has headed the institute in recent years.
Rabbi Prof. David Hartman's funeral will leave Monday at 11 A.M. from the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
Hartman's name is identified with the Orthodox renewal movement in the past generation: He adhered to halakha (Jewish religious law) while also promoting pluralistic and liberal values. He supported the revolution of Torah studies for women and encouraged joint study and debate among people of ranging outlooks who were affiliated with various denominations both in and outside of Judaism.
Hartman was born in 1931 in Brooklyn to a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) family, and throughout his adolescence studied in a number of Haredi yeshivas, including the prestigious Lakewood Yeshiva. In 1953, as a student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the leading rabbis and thinkers of the generation, he received rabbinical certification from Yeshiva University in Manhattan. While continuing his studies with Rabbi Soloveichik, he completed a master's degree in philosophy at Fordham University. In the late 1950s he served as the rabbi of a congregation in the Bronx, and then left for Montreal, where he served as congregational rabbi while writing his doctoral thesis in philosophy at McGill University.
In 1971, in the wake of the Six-Day War, he immigrated to Israel with his family and began teaching Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and continued doing so for over two decades. At the same time he served as a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
In an attempt to breach the conservative boundaries of Orthodox Judaism, Hartman did not make do with writing books and academic teaching. In late 1976, in light of the messianic awakening led by the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and its head, and the crisis following the Yom Kippur War, Hartman gathered a series of Jewish studies scholars around him and founded the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, named after his father.
The charismatic Hartman, whose lively lessons were regularly conducted in three languages – Hebrew, English and Yiddish – attracted dozens of intellectuals from the entire academic leadership in Israel, and among his most prominent students were Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Noam Zohar, Zvi Zohar, Menachem Lorberbaum and Israel Knohl.
The institute at first focused primarily on academic activity, but over the years boys' and girls' schools, a graduate-level study hall and additional frameworks were established around it. In recent years the Hartman Institute has been involved in educational programs in varied fields, including for example training senior Israel Defense Forces officers in Jewish studies, and training teachers of Jewish studies. Under Hartman's sponsorship the institute also cooperated with secular frameworks for Jewish studies, and continues to support them.
Hartman published dozens of articles and books, including "Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest," "Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future," "A Living Covenant," "A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism," and "Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides." His writing was devoted to an attempt to bring together tradition and the present, halakha and a religious atmosphere with contemporary creativity and thought.
The Jewish establishment rejected him, and during certain periods the same was true of academe, and still he achieved international recognition, for example when he was awarded the Avi Chai Foundation Prize (2000) and the Guardian of Jerusalem Prize (2001), as well as honorary doctorates from Yale University, Hebrew Union College and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.
Hartman had ties with several prime ministers and advised them on issues related to the Jewish world and religious pluralism. From 1977 to 1984 he was the adviser of Education Minister Zevulun Hammer. Hartman often spoke in favor of a diplomatic arrangement with the Palestinians and at the same time was a fervent Zionist, and he also dealt with the subject extensively in his books and lessons.
Prof. Moshe Idel, a research fellow at the Hartman Institute for over 20 years, said that Hartman was exceptional both as a rabbi and a philosopher. "Philosophers don't build: They criticize, they understand phenomena. You won't find many philosophers who have built a community. Hartman built a community the way the Hasidic movement does. It's not a teacher, it's someone who creates," said Idel.
He added that "It's impossible to describe his activity only in the Orthodox context. If a journalist like Thomas Friedman comes to Israel and goes directly to interview Hartman, that's not Orthodoxy. If ministers and prime ministers come to consult with him, that's not Orthodoxy.
"He was a voice in the Jewish world. He thought that the Jewish world deserved a voice that differed from that given it by Orthodoxy and by academe. He himself couldn't find himself in either of those worlds. He was looking for something with involvement and openness and pragmatism, and that's impossible to find in the usual places. Because of his greatness he couldn't find himself in those places, so he looked for something that he could shape. He didn't shape an institution, he shaped people."
Hartman had five children, including Dr. Donniel Hartman, who has headed the institute in recent years.
Rabbi Prof. David Hartman's funeral will leave Monday at 11 A.M. from the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
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