Shlomo Goren

Shlomo Goren (שְׁלֹמֹה גֹּרֶן; 3 February 1917 – 29 October 1994), was a Polish-born Israeli rabbi and Talmudic scholar.

An Orthodox Jew and Religious Zionist, he was considered a foremost rabbinical legal authority on matters of Jewish religious law (halakha).

His parents, Avraham Goronczik and Haya Tzipora, emigrated in 1925 to join the Yishuv in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine.

His family was among the founders of Kfar Hasidim, an Orthodox Jewish village located near the city of Haifa, where Goren grew up.

As a young boy, he was sent to Jerusalem to study at the Etz Chaim Yeshiva.

Later, when he was 12, he became the youngest student to enter the Hebron Yeshiva, where he was identified as a Judaic prodigy.

His first book, dealing with korbanot (ritual sacrifices) at the former Temple in Jerusalem, was published when he was 17.

At the same age, he received rabbinic ordination.

He volunteered for the Haganah in 1936, and served as a chaplain for the Jerusalem area following the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, during which he tested for and qualified as an IDF paratrooper.

Goren was also a chaplain of the Carmeli Brigade at this time.

Immediately after the war, he engaged, often at great personal risk, in collecting the bodies of deceased soldiers to give them a proper burial.

He strongly opposed the idea of separated religious and secular military units and worked for the integration of all IDF soldiers in the same units.

He was the most prominent halakhic authority involved in rulings for religious soldiers regarding their military service.

Goren was eventually promoted to the rank of brigadier-general.

From 1940 until 1944, Goren was enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, and classics.

Goren's military career as an Orthodox Jew was characterized by a commitment to the Religious Zionist values of his youth.

In 1948, Goren founded and served as the first head of the Military Rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a position he held until 1968.

Shortly afterwards, blowing a shofar and carrying a Torah scroll, he held the first Jewish prayer session at the Western Wall since 1948.

The event was one of the defining moments of the Arab–Israeli conflict, and several photographs of Goren surrounded by soldiers in prayer have since become famous among Jews in Israel and worldwide.

The most famous of these photographs shows Goren blowing the shofar against the background of the Western Wall.

Goren attracted many admirers through his passion for Religious Zionism and his combining of Zionist activism with a commitment to Judaism and Jewish scholarship.

However, his uncompromising personality later resulted in him becoming a polarizing and controversial figure in Israeli politics.

Goren called the vehement attacks against him a "moral and religious scandal".

The Langer Controversy

Goren served in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Six-Day War of 1967, following which he was promoted to the rank of general.

On 7 June 1967, when Israeli troops captured East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, Goren gave a prayer of thanksgiving, which was broadcast live to the entire country.

Subsequently, he served as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv–Jaffa between 1968 and his 1972 election as the Chief Rabbi of Israel; the third Ashkenazi Jew to hold office.

Following Israel's independence, Goren was appointed as the head of the IDF's Military Rabbinate with the rank of major-general, a position he held until 1968.

He used the opportunity to help establish and organize the military chaplaincy's framework, streamlining processes to get soldiers accommodations for kosher food and prayer services.

Goren personally wrote a new prayerbook to accommodate the different prayer styles used by various Jewish ethnic subgroups serving in the IDF.

In November 1972, Goren presided over a panel of nine dayanim to review the case of Sgt. Maj. Hanoch Langer, and his sister Miriam, who had been declared mamzerim, and therefore ineligible for marriage to an Israelite by a Beit Din in Petah Tikva.

The Langer children had been designated as mamzerim because their mother had married their father, without having been divorced from her previous husband, thus committing adultery according to Jewish law.

Fearing a review of the case would prompt the secularists in the government, such as Gideon Hausner of the Independent Liberal Party, to press for the introduction of civil marriage in Israel to break the rabbinate's exclusive control over marriage, Goren controversially reversed the ruling.

Goren's reversal was fiercely opposed, primarily by the Agudat Yisrael and Rav Ovadiah Yosef.

Some prominent rabbis, however, such as Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Yosef Eliahu Henkin, came out in support of Goren.

The controversy severely affected Goren's reputation.

Goren spent most of his term as Chief Rabbi of Israel attempting to reconcile Jewish religious teachings with modern problems of the state, including advancements in technological progress and various high-profile conversion cases.

After his 1983 retirement from the country's Chief Rabbinate, Goren served as the head of a yeshiva that he established in Jerusalem.

While serving in the IDF, Goren fought in three of the Arab–Israeli wars, and wrote several award-winning books on halakha.

Goren was born into an Orthodox Ashkenazi Jewish family in the town of Zambrów, Poland.