Rabbi Shlomo Goren הרב שלמה גורן
first Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces; Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi 5732–5743
Born in Zambrów in Poland, brought as a child to the Land of Israel. He learned early and hard: he published a commentary on the Mishneh Torah at seventeen, and Sha'arei Taharah on the laws of the mikveh at twenty-one.
The army rabbinate. In 5708 he founded the Military Rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces and headed it until 5728—twenty years. The task was new: an army in which kashrut, the Sabbath and the burial of the fallen are ordered by law, and in which halakhah must answer questions that had not existed before.
7 June 1967. After the taking of the Old City he conducted at the Western Wall the first Jewish prayer service since 5708—with a shofar and a Torah scroll. The photograph became one of the best known in Jewish history.
The Chief Rabbinate. From 5728 to 5732 Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv–Jaffa, and from 5732 to 5743 Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Books. HaYerushalmi HaMeforash—a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud (5721), for which he received the Israel Prize. And many volumes on questions that had until then stood only in books and now stood in life: war, the army, the state.
He died on 24 Cheshvan 5755.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- HaYerushalmi HaMeforash, 5721 — the commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud; the Israel Prize
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Goren, Shlomo” — the military rabbinate, the Wall in 1967, the Chief Rabbinate
Basis: documents and evidence.