Today in 1918, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, one of the most important rabbis in the history of the State of Israel, was born.
Rav Goren was born into a religious family in Poland, and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine at the age of 7. Soon he was discovered to be an genius, and he began studying at the Hebron Yeshiva at the age of 12, with a permit to the Rabbinate at the age of 17 (!). Goren began to write Torah books, and at the same time did not abandon external scholars, and studied philosophy and mathematics at the Hebrew University. At the same time, Goren was found to be an man of action, when he became active in the Haganah organization and in the underground ‘Lehi’, and in the War of Independence he became one of the senior officers on the Jerusalem front. With the establishment of the IDF, he became the Chief Military Rabbi, a position he held until 1971; during his years in office, Goren consolidated the image of the military rabbinate and greatly influenced the spirit and policy of the IDF, and his actions in the Six Day War were widely publicized and widely distributed. He then served as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, a role in which he served for two years – until becoming Chief Rabbi (Ashkenazi) of Israel alongside Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. During his decade in office, Goren influenced the boundaries and image of the Rabbinate (most notably his ruling in the Law of ‘the Brother and Sister’ case), and religious Zionism as a whole. Rabbi Goren won the Israel Prize and the Rav Kook Prize, and died in 1994.
Photo Source: Wikipedia
