Haim Drukman

Haim Drukman (חיים דרוקמן; 15 November 1932 – 25 December 2022) was an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and politician.

The most senior spiritual leader of the Religious Zionist community at the time of his death, he served as rosh yeshiva (dean) of Yeshivat Or Etzion, and head of the Center for Bnei Akiva Yeshivot.

A founder of Gush Emunim, Drukman served in the Israeli Knesset as a member of the National Religious Party and Morasha.

As director of the State Conversion Authority, he worked to make Jewish conversions more accessible to immigrant Russians of Jewish descent.

He was awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to society and education.

Haim Meir Drukman was born in Kuty in the Second Polish Republic (today in Ukraine).

His mother's name was Milkah.

After hiding with his parents during the Holocaust, he made aliyah to Mandate Palestine in 1944 by posing as the child of a different set of parents.

He was reunited with his real parents after World War II.

In this capacity, he took part in the rebuilding of two religious kibbutzim, Tirat Tzvi and Sa'ad, which were damaged in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

After his discharge, Drukman studied at the Aliyah Institute in Petah Tikva and the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva in Kfar Haroeh.

He then transferred to the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he became a student of Zvi Yehuda Kook.

In 1949, Drukman joined the Israel Defense Forces as part of the Bnei Akiva gar'in (pioneer group) in the Nahal brigade.

In 1952, he became a member of Bnei Akiva's National Directorate, and from 1955 until 1956, he served as an emissary of the organisation to the United States, at Kook's behest.

In 1964, once again with his teacher's encouragement, Drukman founded Yeshivat Or Etzion, a Bnei Akiva-affiliated mamlachti dati (state religious) high school, in Merkaz Shapira.

In 1974, he played a leading role in the establishment of Gush Emunim, an ultranationalist right-wing settler organisation.

In 1977, he established a hesder yeshiva there, which for many years was the largest one in the country.

He remained rosh yeshiva (dean) there for the rest of his life.

Drukman was first elected to the Knesset in the 1977 elections on the National Religious Party's (NRP) list and served as a member of the 9th Knesset from 1977 to 1981.

He was a member of the Knesset committees for the Appointment of Rabbinic Judges, Foreign Affairs and Defense, and Education and Culture during this tenure.

He was re-elected in 1981, again representing the National Religious Party in the 10th Knesset from 1981 to 1984 and serving as a member of the same Knesset committees as he had during the 9th Knesset.

He was appointed Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs on 11 August 1981.

However, as an opponent of the Camp David Accords, he lost the post on 2 March 1982.

On 10 October 1983, he broke away from the NRP and attempted to form a Knesset faction named the Zionist Religious Camp, but was refused permission to do so by the House Committee.

Instead, he sat as a single member of Knesset for the remainder of his term.

In the run-up to the 1984 elections, he and Avraham Verdiger formed a new party, Morasha.

It won two seats, taken by the two founders.

Although the party joined the government, neither Drukman nor Verdiger were given cabinet posts.

On 29 July 1986, Drukman left Morasha and returned to the NRP.

In response to a wave of emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, a considerable number of whom having questions as to their Jewishness, Drukman became involved in Jewish conversion advocacy, even setting up a special beth din (religious court) for this purpose.

In 1995, he founded Ohr MeOfir there, an academy for high school graduates of the Ethiopian community.

Since 1996, he had also been the head of the Center for Bnei Akiva Yeshivot and ulpanot (girls-only high schools) in Israel.

In 2004, he was appointed director of the newly created State Conversion Authority, which provides services to candidates for conversion to Judaism through the Prime Minister's Office.

Throughout this period, he often came into disagreement with senior Haredi rabbis in Israel in regard to his conversion standards, which they deemed to be too lax according to their reading of halakha (Jewish law).

After rabbinic courts rolled back thousands of Drukman's conversions, the Supreme Court of Israel reinstated them.

Drukman's efforts were recognised by Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that the rabbi "found a way of bringing hearts together that helped masses of new immigrants to join the ranks of our people".

Drukman was considered to be the most influential spiritual leader of Religious Zionism.

He was instrumental in shifting this sector over from the centre-left, where it had been during Israel's founding, to the far right.

For all of his Jewish advocacy, he was forever mindful to the reality that Israel was founded as a democratic state of all its citizens.

For close to 50 years, many political campaigns and deals involving Religious Zionism were forged in Drukman's living room.