Rabbi Yehuda Amital הרב יהודה עמיטל
founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion; from him came the hesder yeshivot
Born in Oradea in Romania. In 5704, when the Germans came, his whole family was sent to Auschwitz and killed. He himself was sent to a labour camp, where he spent eight months; he was liberated by Soviet forces on 4 October 1944.
Har Etzion. After the Six-Day War he became the founding rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in Gush Etzion; it opened in 5728, twenty-four years after the camp, with thirty students, and he led it for forty years.
The hesder yeshiva. The idea itself—of joining army service with learning in a yeshiva—is attributed to him. In 5751 the hesder programme received the Israel Prize for its special contribution to society and the State.
A man who lost everyone in the Holocaust set about building learning in the place where it is joined to service and to the country. That is not a chance combination but his answer to what he had lived through.
He died on 27 Tammuz 5770.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The Israel Prize of 5751 to the hesder yeshiva programme — the recognition of the idea associated with his name
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Amital, Yehuda” — the years, the Holocaust, the founding of Har Etzion in 1968
Basis: documents and evidence.