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The Chazon Ish, Ben-Gurion

and Rav Tzvi Yehudah

Haggai Huberman

The only son of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook was one of the most influential leaders of
Religious Zionism after the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1952, he became the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav,
where he served for thirty years until his passing. Many of his students, including Rabbis Chanan Porat, Shlomo Aviner,
Zvi Tau, Moshe Levinger and Chaim Drukman, became the leading Religious Zionist rabbis of the next generation. Rav Tzvi
Yehudah passed away on Purim 5742 (March 9, 1982); may his memory be a blessing for all of Am Yisrael. In this essay, Haggai
Huberman explores Rav Tzvi Yehudah’s perspective on secular Israelis and how it differed from that of the Chazon Ish.

few months ago, while visiting that a few hundred years ago, when two – the meeting between David Ben-Gurion
Paris, a local guide took us on a people came to alleys like this one at the and the “Chazon Ish”, Rav Avraham Yeshaya
tour of the old quarter of the city. same time, the poor were forced to give Karelitz zt”l, on October 20, 1952. The back-
A e were standing in front of a way to the rich. In those days, the rich and ground to the meeting was an ongoing coa-
W
narrow alley whose width only allows the poor wore very different clothing, and so lition crisis that seemed intractable at the
passage of one person at a time, and so if it was clear to all that the poor must allow time. A month before, on Erev Rosh Hasha-
two people simultaneously walk down the the rich to pass. nah, the representatives of the Charedi
alley from different directions, one person parties Agudat Yisrael and Poalei Agudat
must push himself up against the wall until My Paris tour reminded me of something Yisrael left the governing coalition because
the other one passes. The guide explained that happened almost exactly 70 years ago of their opposition to the recruitment of

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